Removing the major reactive foods (wheat, dairy, and eggs) wipes out a large percentage of what most people eat, for some people up to 80-90%. Many people never get out of this stage because they simply don’t know what to eat. Planning is important on an ECD because 99% of the fast, easy, convenience foods are not going to be appropriate. So having meals figured out in advance is critical to your success.
The first step here is getting a handle on what you regularly eat. Let me use myself as an example. Before the ECD we ate fairly well; a low wheat diet without much added sugar.
A typical day looked something like this for me:
- Breakfast: A smoothie made in my blender (3 raw eggs, ½ cup of whole milk unflavored yogurt, ½ cup of frozen blueberries, stevia to taste, added water to thin the consistency)
- Snack: None
- Lunch: Salad greens with roast chicken, peppers, avocado, and grated parmesan cheese. Dressing typically either balsamic vinegar and olive oil or a prepared garlic-parmesan dressing.
- Snack: An apple, or a piece of cheese. Sometimes both. Often a small handful of dark chocolate chips.
- Dinner: A protein portion (chicken, protein, beef, fish) and a side of vegetables topped with butter, a sweet potato a couple of times per week. A side salad with bleu cheese crumbles, balsamic and olive oil.
- Snack: A coconut ice cream bar
- Fluids: Mostly water, green tea, glass of kombucha with a few ounces of pomegranate juice added.
As you can see my standard diet was low in wheat and high in dairy. Before you think I’m anywhere near perfect, we tended to eat out 1-2 times per week depending on the week. This could range from relatively healthy food to pretty “junky” food like pizza, burritos, hamburgers, and ice cream cones. I admit to a special fondness for donuts (about once per month; I highly recommend Top Pot donuts here in Seattle, if you’re going to eat a donut make it a good one) but I did draw the line at sodas, Twinkies, Slurpies, and potato chips.
So looking over my average day, it’s important to see what’s going to have to come out. The biggest thing coming out for me are eggs for breakfast, and dairy in general. It’s important to see what needs to come out and then even more importantly what is going to replace it. Some people who aren’t prepared for an ECD do a kind of hunger strike for 2-3 days where they simply abstain from eating reactive foods but don’t put anything in its place. This is a recipe for disaster. One suggestion is to find two new foods to take the place of every food that is going to come out. This may seem like a lot of work, but the effort you put in on the front end is going to make a huge amount of difference in the 3-4 weeks you are on the ECD.
I recommend you come up with 2 options for breakfast, 2-3 options for lunch, and 5-7 options for dinner, then plan to repeat these options for the 3-4 weeks of the ECD. I used the Garden of Eating, a wonderful, highly recommended cookbook to plan out most of the recipes we’ll be using.
If at all possible, I highly recommend staying away from ‘faux’ foods. That is, don’t replace milk with almond milk, cheese with a processed “no cheese” cheese, bread with rice bread, etc. Simply removing the reactive foods will give you a huge boost in your health and well-being, but I recommend taking it a step farther, and at least for 3-4 weeks, purge fake food from your diet entirely. I recommend you focus on: Meat, Fish, Fowl, Natural fats, Vegetables, Fruits & Nuts.
What are your thoughts? Feel free to share them with us in the comments section below.