Read This Before You Do An Elimination Diet

Over the last 10 years, elimination diets have been trending as a means to solve just about all of our health problems.

Hormonal issues? Go on an elimination diet. Weight Issues? Elimination diet. Acne? Eliminate. Breastfed baby that doesn’t sleep? Eliminate. Fungal Infection? Eliminate.

I kid you not. They are everywhere.

Most of these protocols urge us to eliminate foods that make up a large portion of our daily intake, such as wheat, dairy, soy, nuts, meat, fish, and eggs. It’s to the point that many people hardly have anything left on their list of “acceptable food and drink” except water and spinach.

And not even spinach is safe.

Truly, if you search for it, I believe there’s someone touting the benefits of eliminating just about every food out there. Whether there is research to support it or not is another story.

And while elimination diets have definitely gotten out of hand, there may be a place for them.

This post is not meant to make you feel guilty for going on an elimination diet. In fact, I just recently finished one (gasp*), but more on that later.

Whatever health concern you’re facing that’s causing you to consider an elimination diet, it’s important to do a cost/benefit analysis beforehand.

What’s more, every elimination diet should have a detailed exit strategy. After all, the goal of healthful eating is to be able to eat and digest a GREATER variety of foods not less.

So first, let’s do just that.

Counting the costs of an elimination diet

What do you hope this elimination diet will do for you? Is it possible to improve your health in other ways, by adding nutritious foods or supplements to your diet as opposed to eliminating them?

Elimination diets can cause stress. Often in the beginning we end up undereating, either because we’re unprepared or we don’t know what to eat now that a major food item is removed. This caloric restriction itself causes physical stress to the body.

Elimination diets can also cause mental stress, as we tend to worry more over every morsel that goes into our mouths. They can cause relational stress when we aren’t able to eat what our loved ones are eating, and financial stress if we’re buying separate foods from the rest of our household.

Stress and the inflammation it causes is a major contributing factor for many of the conditions we try to treat with elimination diets. So going on elimination diets to heal these conditions and causing stress to the body by doing so can be a little bit of a vicious cycle.

In the end, you need to determine whether the pros of eliminating food will outweigh the stress caused by eliminating it. In many cases, there is a better option, such as supplementing with probiotics for digestive health, increasing or decreasing the amount of plant matter in your diet, ADDING other nutritious foods related to your condition, or making lifestyle improvements to reduce stress and promote recovery.

If after all your consideration, you determine that an elimination diet is still warranted, then there are some important strategies to implement in order to maintain physical and mental health during the process.

Recently, we underwent some challenges with breastfeeding our sweet daughter. She developed a feeding aversion, which is an entirely separate post in itself, BUT I felt it was worth eliminating dairy from my diet to see whether or not it affected her acceptance of milk.

Here are some things that made the elimination diet “successful” if you will.

Start with an Exit Strategy

I knew I needed to give my daughter and I’s bodies 2 weeks without dairy before I could assess its effect. Once those 2 weeks were over I planned to slowly add dairy foods back in and watch for any effect. If no noticeable differences were seen, I planned to continue eating dairy.

You can do the same: have a plan for how long you will eliminate the food and a plan for adding it back into your diet. Keep a symptom log and honestly evaluate if the food negatively affects you or not. I usually recommend eliminating for 2 weeks and no longer than a month, but consider your individual health care provider or dietitian’s advice.

Resist the temptation to eliminate more foods than necessary

I very much prefer the slower process of eliminating one food at a time and then adding it back in before eliminating another food. However, some prefer to eliminate all potential aggravating foods at once so they can find the culprit faster. Again, as long as there is a predetermined short time frame and a strategy for adding as many foods as possible back into your diet, this is up to you and dependent on how you count the costs of such an elimination diet.

It’s tempting when you eliminate one food to want to fall back into black and white food rules, especially if you have a significant dieting or disordered eating history. Resist the urge to keep adding more and more foods to the “No” list as this will defeat the purpose of finding the food trigger (you won’t know which food it was) and it will likely cause you to become undernourished and food-obsessed.

Plan to meet your nutrient needs

Be diligent to think up snacks and meals that fit with your elimination diet in the beginning. The last thing you want to do when trying to promote health is become undernourished. Eliminating foods like dairy and wheat can leave you with much fewer options come meal time. Let me tell you dairy is in almost every meal I make. I LOVE IT. So that was a hard one. BUT, with planning I made sure I had plenty of dairy free snacks and meals on hand to stay nourished and prevent stress caused by under eating.

Find ways to up satisfaction

Elimination diets can put a big damper on our enjoyment of food. But we know satisfaction and JOY in eating are important parts of health and God’s design for nourishment. So, find ways to make your favorite foods without the potentially triggering ingredient. For example, I LOVE cereal and chocolate chip cookies. Both have milk in them. SO I looked up some recipes for dairy free chocolate chip cookies and I bought vanilla coconut milk (tastiest milk substitute IMO) and continued to have both of my favorite snacks.

Speak with your loved ones ahead of time.

Try not to put your loved ones on an elimination diet too. Instead, speak with them ahead of time about what you’re doing and give them the time frame you’re doing it in. They may be able to support you better if they understand why you’re doing the elimination diet and that it’s not a forever thing.

If eliminating the food doesn’t make a difference, then eat the food!

This one may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important that you resume eating the food to maintain the gut microbiota and enzymes needed to digest that food. Some elimination diets when done for a long time can become self-fulfilling prophecies. If we eliminate the food long enough, we lose the enzymes and bacteria to digest it and thus may experience discomfort when adding it back in. We then falsely assume we were sensitive to that food all along.

Don’t let the lies of diet culture seep in after an elimination diet and tell you that such and such food is now bad or to be approached with caution if you truly didn’t see any improvement when eliminating it. The enemy is sneaky and He wants us to get caught up in the diet/shame cycle believing that certain foods are clean/unclean to the point that we are distracted and paralyzed from God’s purpose for our lives. Just “let the devil know not today” and keep on keepin’ on with your food freedom friend!

If past elimination diets have wreaked havoc on your relationship with food and body and you’re ready to make peace with food, we’d love to help! Make sure to check out our prayer and health resources and Joyful Health course. We want you to learn to eat well and move free by grace, food restrictions or not.