The release of our first hardcover book, It Starts With Food, is scheduled for June 12^th – just a few weeks from today. And with all the buzz (it’s been in the top ten of Amazon’s “Hot New Releases in Nutrition” for a month now), people have been asking:

Is there a difference between It Starts With Food and the Whole30® Success Guide?

Sometimes we say, “Well, yes, as one is a downloadable PDF; and one is an honest-to-Grisham 330-page, more-than-400-references, hardcover, illustrated BOOK!” but that’s not really answering the question very well. So over the next few weeks, until It Starts With Food is released, we’ll be giving you some very special sneak peeks under the cover. Today, we’re showing you the It Starts With Food table of contents, and outlining the material included in the book.

It Starts With Food

This book – our labor of love – is not just about the Whole30; rather, it outlines our overall big-picture-start-to-finish nutritional recommendations. There is far more to life (and our program!) than just the Whole30, and It Starts With Food (ISWF) walks you through every stage. In this book, the Whole30 is not the star of this show – it’s just one chapter in a book full of life-changing information.

Download the It Starts With Food table of contents!

The first part of the book is designed to provide a more detailed background of our recommendations than you’ve read on our website or heard in our seminars. We outline our four “Good Food standards” and explain in detail how your food’s interaction with these four systems – the brain, your metabolism and hormones, the gut, and the immune system – profoundly impact your long-term habits, health, and happiness. We do dive into the science-y details in this section, but you know we use lots of analogies to make sure you, your mom, and your grandfather can easily keep up.

Once we’ve laid the groundwork for making good choices, we start talking about food! We detail the foods that should be off your plate (you know these guys), the foods you should be eating on a daily basis, and how to put these foods together into easy, delicious, satisfying meals. We give you lots of background information, but we don’t overstate the science. (We worked with Smart people like Mat Lalonde, J. Stanton and Pedro Bastos to make sure our science was tight – no hyperbole, and no hype.) These are the chapters that will help you explain why artificial sweeteners aren’t a healthy option, why you don’t eat grains, or why dairy makes you congested – and will help every reader overcome the most common newbie obstacle: “But what the heck do you eat?”

The lynchpin of these sections – the thing that holds them all together – is our Whole30® program. Here is where the reader will be asked to take our recommendations into their own hands, and see for themselves how the foods they’ve been eating have been affecting their quality of life. We outline the program in detail, including what to expect during your 30 days, and how to reintroduce some less-healthy foods in a smart fashion designed to help you increase awareness. This part includes all the material (and then some) featured in the Whole30 Success Guide.

The last sections of the book are devoted to life after your Whole30 – how to turn 30 days into life-long, sustainable habits. These sections are perhaps the most important (and the most lovingly crafted) of the whole book – because if you can’t continue your new habits for more than 30 days, what good is our program? We explain what to do when your Whole 30 is over, how to “ride your own bike,” common triggers that will, inevitably, push you off-track, and how to get back on track quickly and effortlessly. We also talk about how to share your experience with friends and family, and what to do if you find yourself having to defend your recent dietary and lifestyle changes.

This section also includes all of our tweaks for special populations. We outline specific protocols for those with health conditions like diabetes, autoimmune conditions, IBS/IBD, and food allergies; pregnant and breastfeeding women; vegetarians and vegans; active individuals (athletes and exercisers); and kids.

Finally, we present our Meal Map, created and designed by Melissa Joulwan (author of Well Fed and the founder of The Clothes Make the Girl). You’ll have to wait until next week for a sneak peek of the Meal Map – but we will say it’s the kind of meal plan you always wish you saw in a healthy eating book – the kind that will make you say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” (And the color insert photographs, taken by Mel’s husband Dave Humphreys, will have you drooling before we can say “coffee mocha steak rub.”)

The Wrap-Up

In summary, we wrote It Starts With Food to be your complete resource for a lifetime of healthy eating. We designed the material so those already in the Paleo-know can reinforce their knowledge, update their science, and better be able to explain their choices to others while introducing new people –parents, grandparents, friends and co-workers – to our program, and our life-changing results.

Pre-order It Starts With Food on Amazon and Barnes and Noble today!

In the coming weeks, we’ll be previewing more from the book, offering special giveaways for those who pre-order, and moving forward with our plan to change the world by getting ISWF on all the mainstream bestseller lists. You can help – in fact, you’ll have to, to make our bestselling dreams come true! (Why should Forks Over Knives continue to hog all the nutrition limelight, right?)

Post questions, comments, or general excitement and enthusiasm to comments – and as always, thank you for your support.