Eliminate Confusion About the Elimination Diet
In the gut health community there’s a lot of talk about the elimination diet. Many have tried it, others are curious to. The elimination diet is a restrictive way of eating with two main objectives: identify food sensitivities and heal your body.
Unlike other diets which can be sustained for months or even years, such as the vegetarian diet, the vegan diet, the paleo diet, or the keto diet, the elimination diet is not intended to be a “way of eating” or a lifestyle. In fact, it’s specifically designed to be short-term for healing and data collection.
Before you embark on the elimination diet, let’s go through what the diet is and is not, how to make the most of it, and who it’s for.
Is the elimination diet right for me?
That depends. How are you feeling? Do you have any inflammatory illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, migraines, or obesity? Do you have irritability, brain fog, headaches, acne, joint pain, eczema, digestive issues, sleep disturbances, or hormonal imbalances?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then an elimination diet may be worth trying.
If you answered “No,” enjoy your excellent health and don’t bother with it!
The elimination diet is a short-term diet.
Almost any ailment can be traced back to poor gut health. In that sense, many inflammatory illnesses (such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease) are really symptoms of a dysfunctional gut.
For 4-6 weeks an individual will remove suspected trigger foods (foods that may be causing symptoms, damaging the gut, or both). The diet is not meant to be sustained long-term.
How does the elimination diet work?
Make a list of all suspected trigger foods. The foods you remove will depend on what’s currently in your diet and what you think may be triggering you. It’s important to remove foods that are common irritants (dairy, sugar and artificial sweeteners, coffee, alcohol, gluten, eggs, soy, and corn) in addition to other foods you suspect.
Maintain a diet that excludes these foods for 4-6 weeks. Once this time has passed, introduce these foods one at a time, tracking how you feel.
One at a time does not mean eggs with breakfast and gluten with lunch. It can take up to 72 hours to have a reaction to food, so in order to get a clear sense of whether a food triggers you, try one food and allow several days to see how you feel before moving onto another food.
What you CAN eat.
The elimination diet is limiting. There’s no sugar coating that fact. That being said, there are plenty of healthy, whole, non-processed foods you can eat during these 4-6 weeks: meat, fish, poultry, legumes, spices, vegetables, fruits, potatoes, rice, quinoa, oats, and plant-based milks and yogurts.
What to expect.
Most people will start to feel better within a week of removing these foods because there’s a high likelihood at least one, if not several of the eliminated foods were causing digestive distress, fatigue, headaches, blood sugar spikes, and so on.
If after a few weeks you’re not feeling any better, you can experiment by removing a few other foods, such as grains, nuts, potatoes, seafood, or beans. These are foods that can be difficult to process for many people, so it’s worth testing it out on yourself.
Unfortunately, when a person has an unhealthy gut, even healthy foods can become triggers. When the gut wall has become leaky it allows food particles and toxins to enter the blood stream. If you find you’re reacting to a lot of perfectly healthy foods that you could once tolerate, you may have a leaky gut.
What happens after 4-6 weeks?
Unfortunately the diet doesn’t end there. The initial 4-6 weeks is the time for avoiding all possible trigger foods. Once that time period is over, you’ll be spending several more weeks testing out these foods (one or two foods a week) until you are satisfied with your findings. This is called the reintroduction phase.
Once that phase is over, you should have a clear idea of which foods cause problems, and which work well with your body.
“If I discover a food triggers me, does this mean I can never have it again?”
No! The human body is resilient. Additionally, over time our microbiome changes, which will change the way we react to food. There’s no guarantee or set timeline for when you can bring trigger foods back in your diet — it will require testing to determine if they still trigger you.
Try not to worry about it for now. If you need to improve your health and eliminate symptoms, it’s important to:
first, eliminate possible trigger foods
second, reintroduce each food one at a time to identify which ones trigger you
third, keep those foods out of your diet for several months to give your gut a chance to heal (your doctor may prescribe gut-healing supplements to help the process along)
Once you feel better, you can re-try foods again.
More often than not, once the gut has healed, you’ll be able to tolerate more foods again. Bear in mind, foods like dairy, alcohol, and sugar (and gluten in many cases) have a reputation for being inflammatory and damaging to the gut, so don’t be surprised if those foods in particular don’t make it back into the regular meal rotation.