Have you ever wondered if you should try an elimination diet to help improve your digestion and overall health? If so, keep reading because this ultimate elimination diets guide will help you with understanding all aspects of elimination diets. I’ve done them a few times in my life and have helped others do them as a part of my health coaching and I’d love to help you with it too.
What is an elimination diet?
This is the first question that needs to be answered in case you don’t already know what one is. An elimination diet is the process of eliminating one or more foods or categories of foods from your diet for a short period of time in order to figure out if certain foods are causing various health challenges. Usually an elimination diet is something you do for about 2-3 weeks per food or category of foods and then you move on to something else.
Why Elimination Diets Don’t Work
While an elimination diet can work really well for some people, they don’t work for everyone. The most common reasons why they don’t work include:
Trying to eliminate too many foods at once
Not having support and accountability
Not meal planning ahead of time
Not having a strong enough why and motivation for doing it.
This post goes into more details about the mistakes people usually make with elimination diets.
How to Create an Elimination Diet Plan
Creating an elimination diet plan requires you to do many of the same things you need to do when creating a gluten free meal plan or any other kind of meal plan. You need to plan in advance and avoid last minute I don’t know what to eat for dinner situations.
How to use a Food Journal for a Successful Elimination Diet
While you could try and make the situation more complicated, the reality is that using a food journal for a successful elimination diet, is just like using a food journal anytime. You need to right down everything you eat and drink and when you eat and drink it.
Elimination Diet Books
There are a variety of elimination diet books that can help. However, there are only a few I really recommend.
How a Health Coach Can Help with an Elimination Diet
Hiring a health coach can be the difference between succeeding with an elimination diet or not for some people. Elimination diets require a lot of work, determination and motivation as well as will power and not everyone can do one on their own. I’m more than happy to help you with one if you are interested.
Reasons to do an Elimination Diet
Why would you do an elimination diet? The main reasons people do them are because they have allergies and or food sensitivities they haven’t been able to identify through any other means, or they have digestive issues and want to figure out what they need to remove from their diet to solve them.
Have questions about elimination diets? Leave them in the comments below. I’m also happy to do a call with you to discuss how I can help you succeed with an elimination diet.
Did this help you? If so, I would greatly appreciate a share on Facebook, twitter, linkedin, or pinterest.
My Favorite Products (Affiliate links- if you make a purchase I may earn a small commission)
Thrive Market - healthy gluten free, sugar free and speciality online food and household products
Silk and Sonder Monthly Journals and Planners
My Portable Infrared Sauna
Self Care Journal
Martie discounted food
Olipop - healthy soda with probiotics and prebiotics
Digestion Kit
Stress Oils
