What is the Elimination Diet?

First of all, it’s important to note that unlike other diets (like the Mediterranean Diet) which focus on changing the types and quantities of foods you eat on a long term basis to improve health and quality of life, the Elimination Diet is focused on short term changes in order to discover food sensitivities that may be affecting your health. Many digestive issues like heartburn, indigestion, irritable bowel, skin problems, and even joint problems can be caused by the foods you eat. Eliminating these foods from your diet can alleviate the uncomfortable symptoms and improve the quality of life.

Tips before getting started

In the weeks before you start the Elimination Diet, spend some time researching recipes that are elimination-diet friendly. Use these recipes to create shopping lists of foods/meals that are safe to eat during the diet. Go through your kitchen and pantry and remove foods that are on the avoid list to help reduce temptation.

How does it work?

The idea is to remove as many of the questionable foods from your diet as possible for 2 - 4 weeks. Feel free to snack to keep your energy up and drink plenty of water, 2 - 4 liters per day. Avoid pre-packaged or pre-made foods if at all possible, but if you do eat them simply make sure to scan their ingredient lists to make sure they don’t contain foods you are trying to avoid.

Foods to Avoid

• Dairy

• Wheat

• Corn

• Eggs

• Citrus

• Nuts

• Soy products

• Refined sugars

• Peanuts

• Alcohol

• Caffeine

• Any foods you eat more than three times a week

Keep Track of Your Symptoms

During the 2 - 4 weeks of avoiding the above foods, you need to keep a journal of your symptoms. It is very important that you try not to miss any days! Just mark the level of your symptoms for each day: 0 being no symptoms/discomfort at all and 10 being the worst symptoms you’ve ever had. Over the course of these weeks, you should hopefully see the numbers going down. If they remain high throughout the entirety of the 4 weeks, talk to your doctor to find out if something else may be causing your symptoms. Keep in mind that it may take 2 or even 3 weeks before you start seeing improvement, so don’t give up too quickly.

Reintroducing Foods

After finishing the weeks completely avoiding certain foods, you can start introducing them back into your diet one at a time. Choose one group, like dairy for instance, and eat it for 2 - 3 days. Keep track of your symptoms closely during this time and make sure to write down what food you introduced. If your symptoms remain good (close to 0), you can move on to the next food group and repeat the process. If your symptoms get worse (move towards higher numbers), remove that food item from your diet once more and wait 3 days for symptoms to decrease before moving on to the next one. This process can be slow, taking 4 - 6 weeks for most people to complete, but it should give you a better idea of which foods are causing the symptoms so that you can completely avoid them in the future.