You deserve to feel the best you possibly can, and there’s no time like the beginning of a brand new year to do it. Why not make an elimination diet a part of your New Years’ resolution? It’s easier than you think, and it can really help you get to know your body and have a better understanding as to what works for it and what doesn’t. The key to a brand new, better, you could be in an elimination diet. Here’s everything you should know.
Tips for starting an elimination diet
While this kind of diet has been used for years and years, there is a technique to doing it right without compromising your nutrition. It’s not something that you want to start on a whim. Make sure that you have done your research on elimination diets and that you know what it is going to entail. From there:
- Get a dietician or nutritionist on board: Since you will be removing a lot of food from your diet, it’s a good idea to have a specialist helping out. It could be in making suggestions, pointing towards recipes, or offering reminders in terms of your overall nutrition and health. Just because you are taking out food from your diet doesn’t mean that you get to avoid or ignore your nutrition!
- Keep a food log before, during and after: Food logging can be a pain when you are getting used to it. However, for an elimination diet to be most effective, you will need to understand how food is working with your body before, during, and after it is done. Food logging is the key to doing that. You’ll use a journal to log what you’re eating and how you feel after it, paying specific attention to symptoms such as rashes, bloating, indigestion and more.
- Start with taking out everything you think might be causing a problem: With the food log to guide you, you’ll take out everything you think may be causing you a problem and allow your body to, essentially, detox from the problem foods. During these few weeks, you’ll often feel better and healthier. This is because you are no longer eating anything that you are intolerant or allergic to.
- Reintroduce the problem foods after a few weeks, one at a time: Once you have a few weeks feeling good and in control, you’ll slowly reintroduce the problem foods — one at a time — and watch for those symptoms. When you feel the symptoms, you’ll know that you are intolerant or allergic to those foods. It’s important to keep going until you’ve reintroduced all of those foods back into your diet, as you may have more than one intolerance or allergy.
- Use the results to help you decide the next step: When you’ve got the results, you can decide what is going to be the next step for you. Perhaps it’s an allergy test and/or an intolerance test to determine which you are experiencing and, in the case of the intolerance test, how severe it might be.
Your New Years’ resolution is going to be fun and helpful for your health, comfort, and overall happiness. All you have to do is plan out your elimination diet carefully and get ready to enjoy the freedom of food once again!
