I had started whole30 this week, but fell off the band wagon and have to start over. To help me stay more on track this time, I am employing a framework that the project manager in me has implemented a few times. It's nerdy, but it works. Here's some background. Majority of the technology currently being developed uses an agile approach. What this means is that software, whether it be for web or mobile takes an iterative approach. Build one feature on top of the other, release to get feedback and rebuild. This allows a more continuous improvement of an application instead of a version release that takes months and doesn't have the right features. Teams mostly follow an approach that allows them to review what needs to be built and assess how they are progressing towards those goals on a daily and weekly basis. Most teams follow the scrum process that further allows them to build a process into their work days and work loads thus reducing the "chicken running around without it's head" scenario. You can read more about scrum here and here.
Given my experience in scrum and software development, why not approach whole30 using the agile way, which means breaking it down to chunks, iterating as each week is completed and following a standard set of processes. I've simplified it a bit and focused on the three areas:
Planning
Planning is core to scrum as it ensures that everyone in the team is aware of what needs to be done and their role in it. In software development, this is means refining the product backlog, which is a set of requirements. For me in the whole30, this means planning my meals, my grocery shopping and what upcoming events I have scheduled. For example, for this week, I have two lunches scheduled so I have notified my guests that I am doing this program so that the are aware and are not surprised if a push back on a dish.
Act
I decided to timebox my whole30 into 7 day increments. This means that instead of planning and looking for the next 30 days, I am breaking it down to small chunks. In scrum, sprints define how long the team will work to accomplish a given set of tasks. By breaking it down into 7 day increments, I now have built-in a start and stop day. It also allows me to focus only in the next 7 days which creates less stress overall
Review
At the end of the sprint, the teams review what they have developed or coded and run a retrospective which looks at what they completed well and what they can improve on for the next sprint. For me, this means answering the following 3 questions: what went well, what did not go well, what can I improve on. This helps me gauge if I am eating enough, if there are foods that I need to introduce to add variety to my meals, if there are foods that I did not touch at all, etc.
I'll keep going through this iteration a few times until I complete my whole30. I will post a review summary as a way to document and keep track of my progress after each 7 days.