The Elimination Diet

This week I'll be talking about the illusive "Elimination Diet" that I've mentioned in my previous posts, so read, share, and be blessed!

In last weeks post I shared that we waited until after school got out for summer break to start the Elimination Diet because of a couple different reasons...

1. Our daughter was used to eating the school lunch every day and we were concerned that the change in routine would cause issues. We were worried she wouldn't eat. We were also concerned that she would eat the school food anyways and we had no way to control that.

2. We wanted to use up as much of the stuff we had in our pantry that had gluten in it, so it wasn't wasted.

3. If there were going to be any protests, disagreements or flat out meltdowns over what we were or were NOT eating, we wanted them to happen at home.

This decision worked out really well for our family and believe it or not, we really didn't have many protests and not one meltdown!

You're probably thinking, "Well that's all fine and dandy, but what the heck is this Elimination Diet thing anyways and why do it?" Well, I'll fill you in on that right now...

The name "Elimination Diet" is pretty self explanatory, you eliminate something from your diet. Basically you eliminate whatever you think you may be allergic to. In our case we eliminated all gluten, wheat, dairy and food coloring.

So, for 2 weeks you completely cut out the type of food your testing for. You have to be very strict or else your results may not be accurate.

During the 2 weeks of elimination I encourage you to notice how you feel. The first week you may feel a little run down, tired, not 100% yourself because you're basically detoxing your body. But pay special attention to how you feel week two. Keep a journal to monitor how you're feeling. For my family in week two, we all felt that we had more energy, we were all in better moods, we felt less sluggish and bloated after eating, and we had seen improvements in skin conditions we all possessed.

Once week two of going "cold turkey" is over, (get the journal out because you're going to need it for this part) slowly add things back in and document how you feel. The key word in that sentence is SLOWLY. Try one thing the first day that has whatever you cut out and give your body time to react. Write down how you feel. The next day, do it again. Do it until you feel convinced your body either reacts to it or doesn't.

Note: sometimes when adding something back in, we wouldn't notice a reaction until days later or sometimes not at all. So for us we decided that since we felt better and noticed huge improvements in our daughter by cutting it out, that that decision was better than having it and hoping we wouldn't have a reaction to it. I think it's better to be safe than sorry. It's kind of like playing Russian Roulette, but with food, nooooo thank you!!!!

Our family felt so good and had seen such a HUGE difference in our daughters emotional/behavioral health from being off of it for two weeks that we didn't even feel we needed the evidence of what would happen when added back in, but we did, ONCE!

My husbands work had an event and sent the employees home with the left over churros (a BIG stick of gluten!), so we figured, why not, let's see what happens... Within a few minutes of eating it, a category 5 meltdown had struck our daughter, the rest of us felt extremely bloated, and for the rest of the day we felt tired and run down.

That was huge proof for us that we all had a reaction to gluten, some more sever than others, but still a reaction. One of our son's had such a severe reation to dairy that within hours of eating it he had diarreah and a bloody diaper rash (sorry for the gross details).

We had a similar meltdown after allowing frosting from a birthday cake that had been artificially colored, as well as allowing just a few Halloween candies, confirmed the reaction to food coloring.

So, for us, the proof was in the "gluten, dairy, and food-coloring" puddding (yes, the punn was intended! Just humor me and laugh)!

I encourage you to try it, the only thing it takes really is 2 weeks of commitment. That's about how long most people last with their New Year's Resolution so, I know you can do it!

I'll write soon on what we ate during the 2 weeks and things we gave up (I never knew until then how many things, gluten was in!). If you are interested in trying the Elimination Diet, let me know and I'll help in any way I can.

Until next time, blessings!