It occurred to me that new readers might not be familiar with my long, loving track record with the Whole 30. It's not a success...
Read MoreWhole30 Resources Roundup
Since 2009, I’ve completed a handful of Whole30 months, usually when I was (a) trying to get a grip on what was happening with my health (see “thyroid removal complications“), or (b) trying to clean up my act after a big adventure, like a vacation or particularly stressful work project.
I realized the other day that because I’ve been doing this Whole30 schtick for so long, I’ve amassed a lot of helpful resources from my blog and others. So this page is a collection of links to information that I hope will help make the Whole30 more manageable for you, whether it’s your first or your fourth (or fourteenth).
If you need a reminder of why you’re doing this in the first place…
30 Reasons to Whole30
My list of the reasons I think the Whole30 is the greatest thing since Sunbutter.
Whole30 Success Stories
A collection of success stories on the Whole30 web site.
A-Z: Real-Life Testimonials
The Whole30 collection of quotes from people who solved health issues from A-Z
If you need a fully fleshed-out meal plan…
These food plans include step-by-step instructions for how to do a big ol’ cookup that should give you enough food to get through a week, give or take. Each one also includes a shopping list and links to other helpful resources.
Whole30 Food Plan: Week 1
Whole30 Food Plan: Week 2
Whole30 Food Plan: Week 3
Whole30 Food Plan: Week 4
If you need easy meal ideas that don’t require a recipe…
Great Ingredients: No Recipe Required
Tips for meal ideas that literally require no recipe, just some chopping and plating.
10 Paleo Flavor Boosters
A spritz here and a mince there and bang! you’ve got delicious food instead of just ingredients
Stuff to Put on Eggs
11 Whole30 approved eggcellent ideas. (sorry.)
Stuff to Put on Broccoli
11 Whole30 approved broccoli toppers.
Stuff to Put on Burgers
11 Whole30 approved ways to dress up a burger patty.
Steam-Sauté Veggies
The easiest way I know to cook lots of veggies and make ’em taste good.
If you need recipe ideas…
30 Whole30-Friendly Recipes
A collection of recipes from my favorite bloggers.
My Whole30 Recipe Collection
My recipe index is filled with Whole30 approved recipes!
Nom Nom Paleo’s 30 Days of Recipes
A month’s worth of meals and beauty shots from the fabulous Nom Nom Paleo.
Holly Would If She Could: A Month of Whole30 Dinner Ideas
A deliciously curated list of meals from Holly, who has excellent taste and sense of humor.
Stupid Easy Paleo: Whole30 Recipe Index
Steph from Stupid Easy Paleo also has a Whole30 approved index.
Whole30 Recipes on Instagram (plus, details on how to find Whole30 info on Instagram)
The Whole30 is BLOWING UP on Instragram. Visual inspiration at its finest!
My cookbooks
Together, Well Fed Weeknights, Well Fed and Well Fed 2 provide almost than 500 Whole30-friendly recipes and meal ideas, plus tips on organizing weekly cookups, cooking quickly, shopping lists, and much more.
Well Fed Weeknights: Complete Paleo Meals in 45 Minutes or Less: My latest release! More than 125 complete paleo meals on your table in 45 minutes or less. My love of food and adventure is baked into this collection of recipes inspired by takeout classics, food trucks, and cuisines from around the world—all free of grains, dairy, legumes, and soy (Whole30 compliant!). Includes recipes like Korean Beef with Kimchi Salsa, Dirty Rice, Fried Chicken Meatballs, Pizza Noodles, Sticky Orange Sunflower Chicken, Italian Hoagie Salad, Mexican Mole Meatballs, Loaded Baked Fries, and and so many more.
Well Fed: Paleo Recipes For People Who Love To Eat: The original that started it all! With 115+ original recipes and variations—and detailed instructions on how to do a weekly cookup—this book will help you see that paleo eating, too often defined by what you give up, is really about what you’ll gain: health, vitality, a light heart, and memorable meals to be shared with the people you love. All but one dessert recipe is officially Whole30 approved. Includes recipes like Chocolate Chili, The Best Chicken You’ll Ever Eat, Scotch Eggs, Homemade Mayo, Velvety Butternut Squash, Pad Thai, Coconut Almond Green Beans, and many more.
Well Fed 2: More Paleo Recipes For People Who Love To Eat: The delicious follow-up! Well Fed 2 includes 110 original recipes, plus 45 of my popular “You Know How You Could Do That?” variations. You’ll also find 44 Quick Meal ideas (no recipe required!) and tips for turning individual dishes into multi-course meals. All but two recipes are officially Whole30 approved. Recipes include 15 meatball varieties, Oven-Fried Salmon Cakes, Thai Tod Mun Chicken Cakes, Pizza Veggies, Savory Granola, Slow Cooker Italian Pork Roast, BBQ Beef, and many more.
Whole30 books: I’m proud to have contributed four delicious recipes to The Whole30 Cookbook. And I also recommend the other Whole30-related books for feeding your brain: It Starts With Food, Food Freedom Forever, and The Whole30.
If you need help shopping & prepping…
Paleo Kitchen: Stocking Up
An outline of how I shop for our household with tips on how you can adapt what I do to what you need.
Paleo Kitchen: The Method Behind My Madness
A plan for making Hot Plates based on pre-cooked ingredients – saves time, never gets boring!
If you need tips for making your Whole30 a success…
20 Ways to Make Paleo Easier & More Fun
A post crammed with tips, tricks, and advice to win at paleo
How to be a Paleo Social Butterfly
Tips for keeping a social life while you’re Whole30-ing — without feeling deprived or killing anyone.
True Hunger vs. Emotional Appetite
Tips for distinguishing between the two so you can eat happily and healthily.
Holly Would If She Could: 10 Tips
Holly is a pro, and her advice is awesome.
Stupid Easy Paleo: 5 Tips (video) | Stupid Easy Paleo: 5 More Tips (video)
Steph at Stupid Easy Paleo is also a Whole30 vet with great insights to share.
The Whole30 Daily
This email service is worth every penny of the $14.95 cost. Daily email every day of your Whole30 with science, entertainment, tips, tricks, ideas, recipes, and more. It’s like personal coaching every day of your Whole30. (Full disclosure: My husband Dave and I worked on this project with Whole9 and we’re partners in the business.)
If you just need to know it’s do-able…
My Whole30/autoimmune protocol experiment (November 2012)
Just to see if I felt any differently, I did the autoimmune protocol (AIP). It was… interesting.
Daily recaps of my Whole30/autoimmune protocol experiment (November 2012)
List of every meal I ate, plus sleep and mood, during my AIP Whole30.
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This is perfect! About to read your views on the AIP version, as I am debating if I want to go that far right now or not. I already know the foods I have issues with and a few that are questionable. Thanks!!
Good luck! I found the AIP challenging, but also really helpful.
This is awesome – thanks for all your hard work. I’ve been toying with the idea but this is likely to push me over the edge to “just do it!”
I hope you decide to do it! This is such a great time of year to try it because there’s so much support and momentum online. Happy new year to you!
I am starting January 5th, when I return from vacation and get back to my normal schedule. I will be starting my third Whole30 but plan to stretch it out longer. I know regular butter isn’t part of the Whole30, but was considering using it because I use very little. Do you have thoughts on modifying to use butter once in a while?
Thank you!
I really encourage you to take the time to make ghee if you want to eat butter during your Whole30. It’s super easy and tastes just the same as regular butter, but without the problematic dairy proteins. Be sure to use grassfed butter! Ghee instructions here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/ghee-recipe.html
Thanks, I do have ghee and have used it in the past. Just wanted a different point of view on the butter. Thank you 🙂
I’m starting my first one and am excited and nervous at the same time. The food plan with shopping lists is wonderful! I bought Well Fed and We’ll Fed 2 as Christmas presents for my mom because she loved your recipes that I made for her. I hope your holidays were wonderful!
Thank you for putting this great list together! I’ve been preparing for my second Whole 30 challenge for a couple of weeks. My New Year’s Eve will be spent cooking and prepping meals — I can’t wait to be in my kitchen. I’m so excited because now I feel ready. I was anxious even a few hours ago before I came across your handy list of resources. Thank you so much. P.S. I love your cookbook! (I just have the first one. I asked for the second one for my birthday in February.)
Thank you so much for organizing this post – I know I’ll be referring to it often during my next whole30. I just got your book Well Fed 2 from the family resolution bundle from paleo parents and I’m so excited that I don’t have to wait a month to dig in, literally! 🙂 Wish me luck! or resolve or something like that because luck really has nothing to do with chocolate…
Hooray! Have fun with the recipes in Well Fed 2 and best wishes for an awesome Whole30.
I am starting my second Whole30 on January 5th. I am also starting an on ramp program at a local CrossFit gym–nervous but excited! Thanks for the reminder about your cookbooks being nearly completely Whole30 approved. I’m also looking forward to ordering from Barefoot Provisions to stock up–thanks for posting about them! Sugar-free fish sauce is oddly hard to come by in NH.
Congratulations on all your new year habits — have fun at CrossFit! Definitely take advantage of all those clean Whole30 recipes in WF and WF2 — makes it a lot easier! I buy my fish sauce online; Red Boat is the bomb. Happy new year!
Again, I just want to say THANK YOU. In spring of 2012 when I was looking for a way to incorporate more vegetables into my real foods diet and stumbled upon this thing called Paleo, it was *your* delicious-looking recipes that gave me the inspiration to do my very first Whole30 as a kind of veggie “boot camp.” I never anticipated that this would become a way of life. You are so generous to keep encouraging people with resources and recipes. Your books remain my absolute favorites, and you are *always* my first recommendation to anyone who is interested in trying Paleo living. Thank you so, so much. I wish there was a bigger way to express my deep appreciation, because you so deserve it.
You totally made my day, and I’m not exaggerating even a little bit. I had to do some yucky work this afternoon, and I was feeling very unsuccessful. So… thank you so much for this note. It means a lot to know my site and recipes are helpful.
Are you doing another Whole30? I started today because I ate a TON of grain-free cookies and dark chocolate lately — time to stop that 😉
Yes, I am planning to start my next Whole30 on January 12. (3 family birthdays in the first week of January, so I want to partake of grain-free celebration foods!) <3
Hi Melissa
I was sitting around asking myself, “Why do I need to do another whole30?”. So many other things I want to focus on, do I want the distraction of whole30 cooking & grocery shopping?
At the same time, I was also thinking about the shortbread cookies that I really wanted to have with my tea. Hmmm. (Marks & Spencers has arrived in my city, and with that grains came back into my diet, big time).
So I decided to see what you posted here and sure enough, found motivation & meal plans, hurray. Well Fed 1 powered me through my first whole30 (which was also my intro to Paleo eating in general), and Well Fed 2 remains my go-to book regardless where I am on the Paleo spectrum that day.
A big merci from the other side of the pond!
Sarah
Happy new year! Sorry I strong-armed you into thinking about Whole30ing 😉
I’m really glad you’re enjoying Well Fed and Well Fed 2 — thanks for being part of my little online world. XO
Thanks for the awesome Well Fed books! My husband and I are doing our first whole30 starting tomorrow and the hot plates alone will keep us on point. Plus these are dished that I think my tiny humans will like too. Plus my husband is excited to have mayo back in his life.
Happy Whole30-ing to you! Have a wonderful month!
My husband and I started our 2nd Whole30, yesterday, Jan 2, 2015. Our first Whole30 was last year, same time – we gave away 12 grocery bags of food (SAD) in preparation. This year, we went through pantry, fridge & Freezer and only had 1 bag of food items we could not eat on Whole30; I guess we didn’t stray to far off the Paleo Path this past year. I know that my body cannot tolerate dairy and sugar after the first Whole30 – I stayed away from the dairy; however over the past 3 months (holidays) I’ve had more refined sugar that I care to admit. The pain in my shoulder, elbows and knees has come back. No more sugar for me. Thank you for all that you are doing to inspire all of us out here striving to eat healthy and to live happy, healthy and painfree. I also purchased Well Fed – lots of new spices and ideas to bring into our kitchen. Tomorrow is Weekly Cook Up – I love it!
Happy Whole30-ing to you! Sounds like have great habits already so you should feel really good this month!
Dana totally stole my comment! You are the best and Well Fed totally got me through my first Whole30 exclaiming all the way how delicious every recipe is.
It’s great for people who feel they don’t know how to cook or meal plan or even just how to estimate how much to buy for the week.
Grateful to have found you and your food love!
You are too good to me! I’m grateful for you and your enthusiasm! Happy new year!
This is exactly what I have been searching for….wanting to change my eating habits, but how? I really don’t like cooking, so your hot plates are really appealing. A question – Are your weekly meal plans based on 1 person or 2??
They should feed 2-4 people, depending on the size of the people. I’m 5’4″/160 lbs. and my husband is 6’5″ so it feeds the two of us, but he eats as much as two people my size.
Hola Melissa,
Thanks for all this info. I bought the Whole 30 book but
I skiped so many parts that just got me lost. I
don’t have any disease that will force or motivate the Whole 30 eating habits but I’m very insterested in eating healthier. My
doubt comes in because I don’t like coconut taste (well maybe in a dessert once in a blue moon). Can I just go by the Whole 30 cooking with Ghee instead? Or using the Ghee to cook every meal is discouraged?
I am awaiting my, It Starts With Food and Well Fed, books via Amazon, and starting my first round of Whole30. I would be lying if I didn’t tell you Im feeling super nervous and a little overwhelmed. I haven’t heard of some of the ingredients used in recipes (Ghee and Coconut Amino to name a couple)and have started many “diets” but never made the lifestyle change stick. My friend told me about your website today and I am super glad she did. It is helping to melt a little of this apprehension away as I am going to give this my all and see what I can do in 30 days. Thanks for all the great hints and recipes!
I am so happy to have found your blog, it is making my first Whole30 and absolute joy to accomplish! One question, what do you suggest as a substitute for Sunbutter? My dad is allergic to sunflower seeds, but a few of your recipes call for it, and I would hate to exclude him from dinner due to, you know, death. 😉 Thanks in advance!-m
No messy dinner party deaths here! You can almost always replace Sunbutter with almond butter, especially in the Sunshine Sauce and the West African Chicken Stew in Well Fed 2. Another good alternative is cashew butter; it’s a bit sweeter, however. And someone told me they made Sunshine Sauce with tahini, and that they really liked it.
Thanks a bunch!
Hi Melissa! I wanted to let you know that I started the Whole30 about 16 days ago and I got both of your cookbooks before I started. I think 13 out of the 16 days I have made your recipes for dinner. I want to tell you that they have all been delicious! I mean outrageous. I didn’t think I could do the whole30 at all but with your recipes, it’s making it so much easier for sure! I have 3 kids and they are picky eaters, but tonight’s dinner was the Italian Pork Roast…everyone pounded it! Success!! So thanks for the great suggestions and oh so delicious recipes. I don’t think I would’ve lasted without them! Keep ’em coming! 🙂
Congratulations on WHole30-gin! I’m really glad our cookbooks are helping you through the month and making it a little bit tastier. YAY! Hope your last two weeks are awesome.
Hi Melissa,
This is a great list! Thank you once again for being my go-to person/blog when it come to the Whole30! I’ve been following you for years and your information/advice/recipes have gotten me through many a rough day on the whole30!
I’m on Day 6 of the W30. I miss wine and cheese but am pleased with how easy it’s been. Sleeping like a baby. But I’m so tired of cooking and thinking about food. This is a great list. I’m making a week’s worth of food right now. Thank you thank you.
Congratulations on Whole30-ing! Have a great month!