Daily Apple offers Whole30 Book Club – Worthington Daily Globe

Diets and advice books written by medical professionals have offered a dizzying array of oftentimes conflicting opinions to the public. Many of these diets — see the grapefruit diet and the cookie diet for faddish failures — have been less than healthful and completely unhelpful.

Amanda Walljasper-Tate, owner of the Daily Apple in downtown Worthington, is always ready to dispense accurate health-related advice and provide customers with what they need to achieve their health goals. A new resource that the Walljasper-Tate and her team are offering Worthington-area residents aims to go far beyond fad diets and extreme advice to bring customers healthy lives long-term.

This resource, a book club based on the recently published title “The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom,” provides support for participants as they undertake a “nutritional reset.”

“This is a program, based on the book by longtime health professionals Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, that I have been familiar with for quite a while now,” Walljasper-Tate explained. “I loved the book — the whole concept is eating whole, real foods in a pretty restricted way for 30 days, reset your body, and then slowly reintroduce other foods back in to see how the body reacts.”

Walljasper-Tate vouched for the experience and authenticity of the book and program.

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned over the years in the natural health business is what we eat affects us so much — personally, I’ve had to avoid gluten for the last five years,” she said. “The book (The Whole30) is very popular in the natural health realm. The authors are experts in the field and have been doing it for a long time, and it is by no means a new thing.”

The Daily Apple’s book club, which meets at 5:30 Tuesday evenings at the store in Worthington and is open to all, has been in full swing for weeks already.

“The first few weeks of the book club, we’ve had about 24 people show up, with more new people joining,” Walljasper-Tate said. “We are learning more and more every day that the foods we eat affect how we feel. Doing it together gives you that encouragement and inspiration.”

This book club is not the only source of peer assistance for the current group of Whole30 participants, though.

“We also have a private, paid Facebook group that we’ll keep going for two months or longer,” said Walljasper-Tate. “It’s really inexpensive — $ 14 — and gives members access to Jenna Donkersloot, our certified personal trainer on staff, myself, and lots of advice and inspiration. We have people that don’t live around here joining for motivation.”

Although the 30-day duration of the initial nutritional reset and nationwide presence may make Whole30 look somewhat similar to some detox/fad diets, Walljasper-Tate assures that is anything but.

“This is for people who are looking for ways to get healthy — it’s not a diet or a fad — and is about eating whole, real foods for the rest of your life,” Walljasper-Tate enthused. “The whole idea is, this is a 30-day start to learn healthier habits, figure out which foods trigger adverse reactions in your body, and get working on healthy meal prep.”

During the book club’s meetings and in discussion in the Facebook group, a number of interesting trends in motivation and learning have emerged.

“What we are hearing people say is that they just want to learn how to cook better, make healthier choices and develop new healthy habits,” Walljasper-Tate said. “There is so much you can learn by coming to meetings and networking; sharing recipes and successes and struggles.”

Some participants in the Whole30 program continue on, doing 90-day resets, and others with severe health issues follow the program even longer to see greater results, Walljasper-Tate said, She endorses the book and its guidelines personally.

“I am on day six, having started a little later, and I feel so much energy,” she said. “It is amazing how much better I feel in such a short time. It’s not even just about weight loss — it’s about getting healthy, having more energy, and feeling better.”

Donkersloot, the Daily Apple’s on-staff personal trainer, explained how fitness plays into the Whole30 way of living.

“I think that eating healthy food is number one, but exercise is a huge part of a healthy lifestyle, too,” Donkersloot detailed. “As for exercise, it is important for beginners to take it one step at a time. People that dive in too quickly are setting themselves up for failure, and you don’t have to join the gym to get exercise. You can do small things like parking farther away from your work, taking the stairs, or doing something active every time a commercial comes on TV.”

“When you exercise, you will start feeling better more quickly and get an added benefit,” added Walljasper-Tate.

At this time, the first and current Whole30 book club hosted by the Daily Apple is ongoing, and again is open to all interested people. The Daily Apple Worthington also has a Facebook page where information and updates about the Whole30 book club are posted. Walljasper-Tate is enthusiastic about the club so far, and looks to continuing educational opportunities in the future. 

“People are more than welcome to join us at 5:30 at the store on Tuesday nights,” Walljasper-Tate said. “We’re already making plans to do it again or keep it going because there has been such a big response. 

“If you are interested about the paid Facebook group or anything else, people can contact us at any time. We only meet one night a week, and there’s six other days, so that’s why we put these other tools into place to help people be successful.”

The Daily Apple team, Walljasper-Tate emphasized, is knowledgeable and readily available to answer any health-related inquiries

“We love to answer questions at the Daily Apple, help people, and step them through this process in getting healthier. The cool part is that we’re all always learning — I’m still constantly learning, I feel better than I did in my 20s, and I’m thankful for that.”