Thursday 25 August 2011

Elimination / Exclusion Diets


Before we begin, a little disclaimer; As we've said before we aren't health professionals in any way shape or form, if you have found anything in the post that you are interested in incorporating into your health regime check with your health practitioner to make sure that it is suitable and safe for you.

In a previous post, a reader left a comment asking whether there is a specific way to do an exclusion diet/elimination diet. The short answer is, No. With saying that though, there is a wrong way to do an exclusion/elimination diet. So let's begin.

When it comes to serious consideration of general diet rehauls the mere mention of an exclusion or elimination diet (for the sake of not having to read that label over and over again we'll refer to them as "exclusion diets") brings one thought to mind:

"What the FRAK am I going to eat now?? How will I cope without yummy stuff?? Are you telling me I have to live my life without Sabor?"

(Sabor means flavour, but we felt like it was the only way to truly convey the mind melt down that you will be going through combined with your hidden or not-so-hidden passion for the foods that you eat.)

The thing is that there is life after an exclusion diet. There is life after gluten, dairy, sugar, nuts, and anything that you may have an intolerance or allergy to. But we're not going to lie to you; exclusion diets are hard. On the plus side, the world is more equipped for intolerances now. Doctor's are still the same and, unless you are very lucky, they will probably end up shrugging your symptoms off. And that would be fine if they, and not you, were the ones with the symptoms.

Another tidbit is this; don't expect to get much sympathy from your friends or new people. My intolerances/allergies/whatever label you would like to give them have been a source of hilarity for my friends and new people. I'm sure deep down somewhere they have an ounce of sympathy, but it's nowhere near the surface of human expression. Make sure, however, that you do have someone that you can get some support from. It will help.

My first exclusion diet was intense and ill-informed. It was a week long grape diet, my food diary went like this:
day 1: first day on grape diet, feel a bit wierd. But it's ok, I like grapes.
day 2: Ok, this grape thing is too much. What the hell? who chose grapes?
day 3: I hate grapes. I hate the mother of all grapes, and I hate anyone who eats grapes! I'm looking at you!

You get the jist. That is a prime example of how NOT to do an exclusion diet, but oddly enough it did actually prepare me for my not-so-restrictive-but-still-restrictive (Compared to my then diet.) exclusion diet.

From my own experience, I would advise keeping a food and symptom diary. I know, I know; it doesn't sound like a lot of fun...and it's not. But it will give you a better idea about your eating habits and any foods that are offenders will show themselves.

You can also have food intolerance testing, offered at most health stores and online. And, of course, coeliac can be tested for by using a blood test, endoscopy or colonoscopy. Food allergies can also be tested for.

How to keep a food diary
  1. Designate a notebook as your food diary
  2. Each day make entries detailing the ingredients of foods that you eat. To simplify things, try to avoid prepacked food or convenience meals. Also list any symptoms that you might have; stomach cramps, sweating, hives, itchy skin, bloating, dark circles under the eyes etc. and make a note of when the symptoms occured.
  3. After a few weeks, review your diary entries and see if you can find a pattern of foods and symptoms.
  4. Make a note of any potentially offending foods, to prepare for your exclusion diet.
Getting to the diet:your options.

Now that you've identified your potential offending foods, you've got a few choices;

  1. Eliminate one food at a time, and monitor your progress using your food diary. After a few weeks reintroduce a very small amount of the food and monitor your symptoms.
  2. Choose a detox diet and, if necessary, tailor it to your needs. In most cases you won't need to. If you're interested our review and daily updates on the holford detox diet can be found here.
  3. If there are a lot of foods that you have trouble with try not to eliminate them in one go.  In our cases we each eliminated up to 4 each time, and kept strict food diaries.
  4. Repeat your chosen process if necessary, although you might only want to do a detox diet once or twice a year.
What worked for me?
It was glaringly obvious that wheat was a big offender; my stomach would bloat up, I would get dark circles under my eyes, and I would get very very drowsy - to the point of unwittingly falling asleep at the dinner table. I then went on to do Caroline Vorderman's detox diet which helped a lot with my symptoms and the excess weight that I was carrying.

After that I chose to seriously identify the foods that I could and couldn't tolerate and tailored my diet to fit me. It sounds simple and I can assure you that it is; you just need a huge helping of will power. In my case the comfort of not having symptoms urged me to carry on.

As I've said before, sometimes inert foods will switch up on you. I don't know why this is, I can't find any papers about it and my doctor has no clue either. One of the benefits about having food intolerances is that you become very adept and quickly adapting to change. Which is quite a plus.

In terms of fitness or holistic therapies; Yoga was highly beneficial for me, as was reflexology and Em found that Tai Chi helped her to recover from her symptoms.

We hope that you enjoyed today's post, as we said at the top; if any of this has interested you or spurred you on to take action please see your health professional to discuss your options.
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