Food is intensely personal for us. It is far more than fuel for the body. Food is comfort and food helps shape our identity via our ethnicity, culture, and upbringing. Asking people to change their food habits, is asking them to change their lives, and I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t see such tremendous improvements in people’s health and well-being by removing reactive foods (foods that cause a problem for them).
Let me give you an example. A woman had severe seasonal allergies, she dreaded pollen season with a passion. She was on the maximum doses of all the allergy medications and was still barely keeping her allergies under control. Blood allergy testing showed that she was very reactive to wheat, dairy, and eggs (the big 3). She cried a little bit at hearing this because it meant that virtually everything she ate on a regular basis was out. But she took to the challenge with relish, and decided that this was going to be her chance to get back into the kitchen and experiment, finding tasty foods that she could eat and enjoy. Within a few weeks her allergies were gone completely. She stopped all of her allergy medication and has had no sign of her allergies, unless she eats some dairy, wheat, or eggs. She is thrilled with her results and couldn’t be happier she took the plunge and did an elimination diet. And for those who worry about giving up groups of foods forever, I expect over time as her gut heals and her immune system normalizes she will be able to reintroduce most of those foods back into her diet.
Before undertaking an ECD it’s important to determine your motivation. What is going to give you the drive to persist through the early cravings? What is going to allow you to say no when you get in situations where it would be so much easier to simply say yes? Unless you plan to be a hermit for the 3-4 week duration of the elimination part of the diet, you need to have motivation. One strong source of motivation is others. Most of us don’t tell anyone about any diet or lifestyle changes we’re trying to make, that way if we fail, no one knows. Turn that around, and tell all your friends, tell your co-workers. Enlist their help and let them hold you accountable. That way when you are tempted to reach for that food you know you others are going to know.
For me, I have three sources of motivation. The first is simply curiosity. As mentioned in my previous post when we saw the changes a change in diet caused in our pets, I became curious. What changes would I see in myself if I did the same? So this is an experiment to see what happens. The second source of motivation is my desire to have experienced the therapies I ask my patients to go through. It is a belief of mine to, whenever possible, try the therapies out on myself that I recommend to my patients. That way I know what the therapies feel like, and it helps me understand what my patients are going through. The ECD is one that I have held out on, because without any major health problems I simply did not want to give up the foods that I enjoy. The third source of motivation is others, when my wife and I first came up with the idea, the first thing I did was quickly post the idea to my blog and to my mailing list. That way, many people know about this, and are going to hold me accountable for completing it.
If possible, get your friends or family to join you on the ECD (often easier said than done). It’s especially important to have the help of people you are living with. If you can all go on the diet together it creates a shared camaraderie and helps to keep the foods that have been removed out of the house.
Stay tuned as this series on the ECD will continue.
Do you have any thoughts on the ECD? Have you tried one? We’d love to hear your comments, please post them in the comments section below.