It Starts with Food is a new book by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig from Whole9, the founders of The Whole30® Program which has helped tons of people getting their nutrition back on track.

Since I am a person who prefer less hassle carrying a hard copy book, I only purchased the e-Book version so I could always load it on my iPhone and read it on my home from work since I usually take public transportation.

The book is very easy to understand and I like how The Hartwigs talking science stuff in our common words so a regular person like me who have no idea could actually make a correlations since they use a lot of everyday analogy to explain how our gut system works.

Things that I’ve learned and liked about this book:
1. I understand more why certain food, such as sweets could make us crave for more and it’s more than just about willpower.

2. Their approach is very non-dogmatic and everything is backed up with a solid science.

3. Just because we have hereditary genetic disease such as high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease we are not totally doomed. In fact it’s highly reversible once we change our lifestyle and food choices.

4. Sugar = sugar = sugar. It doesn’t matter if it’s natural or artificial, it’s still SUGAR. Better don’t over consume it, especially if we are still metabolically deranged.

Majority of the topics they covered in the book aren’t new to me as I’ve been eating pretty clean for the past a year and half but in the end I felt even stronger with my lifestyle and food choices that I’ve made.

Additionally, I’ve done their Whole30® Program twice (one last year and another one earlier this year) and I couldn’t even feel better. Even for someone like me who’s not metabolically deranged, sweet tooth problem nor I need to lose any extra weight, I still see a lot of benefits doing Whole30®. It really changed my tastebuds sensitivity to food and I could tell you that I couldn’t even take more than 2 bites into those overly processed sugary stuff (cakes, cookies, sugary cereals etc). Even those Asian bakery cakes which I used to loved and craved so much in the past didn’t taste as good as it used to be – at least to my current tastebuds. My tastebuds could even appreciate more of the natural foods and it could even detects hint of sweetness from plain steamed vegetables. In the past, I’d have to shower those steamed plain veggies with some kind of condiment sauce or else I wouldn’t be able to swallow them.

I would say 95% of my daily food intake is pretty close Whole30 compliant, with 5% of other stuff that might be out of my control – when eating out or eating at in-laws place which most food are cooked in vegetable oil, soy sauce, msg, and with some processed meat etc. I know I shouldn’t put some kind of percentage number to how I eat and stuff but it just to give you a general idea about my current food intake. I for sure am not a fan of counting calories, measuring food portion into certain amount nor I strive to be a perfect healthy eater ALL THE TIME.

From time to time I do still indulge something that quite off limit like those dry baked fish chips that my parents brought from my home country, some dark chocolate here and there etc.

Ok sorry I derailed a bit from this book review, but in general, I’ve come to this stage and even feel strongly after reading this book.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book for anyone who’s looking into changing their lifestyle and food intake in a healthy way. Even I’d consider getting the hardcopy version so I could have my skeptical parents and relatives about my lifestyle and food choices to read it and will be a bit more open minded about it.

Thank you Dallas and Melissa for bringing this knowledge to all of us! 🙂

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