Undieting in Real Life - Part 4
Consider a Food Experiment
Food experiments can be very useful. It’ll let you fully know how a food feels to you, so you can choose to eat it with your eyes wide open.
But, there’s a very important distinction here – knowing that your body doesn’t like a food doesn’t mean you have to eliminate it from your life forever immediately!
Let me explain this a bit better:
Let’s say you remove gluten from your diet for a week and you notice that your joints or your digestive system feel a lot better. This information can feel very empowering and frightening at the same time.
But/and – this isn’t a deadly allergy. Unless you discover you have celiac disease or have an anaphylactic reaction to gluten (which is rare and rarely begins in adulthood), you can eat that food any time you bloody-well feel like it. But, you eat it with the knowledge that you might have some digestive distress or joint pain for the next few days.
I believe that this knowledge has a HUGE power in our bodies. It can help your symptoms feel less random. I find that it’s the random symptoms that can feel the most frustrating!
For example: If I have too much dairy (or at times any dairy) my body gets inflamed. It usually takes a few days so it would have been a hard connection to find if I hadn’t eliminated it in the past so I know what symptoms it can trigger.
Lately, this inflammation has been hitting my toes. That means, if I enjoy some delightful smoked apple cheddar tonight, then I shouldn’t be surprised if my toes are a bit stiff and sore when I walk across the room in a few days. And, that pain will subside by about day 4 or 5 so I just need to be patient.
I would find it MUCH more worrisome if my toe pain felt random and I didn’t know what triggered it. This is the power of a food elimination experiment.
Important points to consider:
This could be done at the beginning of the month when your motivation is high and you’re excited for a challenge, or later in the month when you’re eating more veggies and are less reliant on the food(s) you want to experiment with. And, you don’t have to do it at all. This is a very optional experiment.
You can try one food at a time or many at once. Take YOU into account and decide what’s best for you.
Look for alternative options before you get started. Make sure you have some on hand, it’ll make it easier to get through the experiment. If you’re stuck and unsure of what to get, send me a message or post it on our Facebook Page and I’ll give you loads of ideas :)
How to conduct a food experiment
The most common food sensitivities are gluten (wheat, rye, barley, kamut, spelt), dairy, and refined sugar (doesn’t include fruit, honey, maple syrup, or other unprocessed sugar). If you’ve never done an elimination experiment, start here.
You can tackle them one at a time or pull all 3 out and see how you go. There are pros and cons to both options, so go with what feels best for you.
Step 1 –
Remove the food(s) for 7 days. This is the first and only time I’m going to tell you this – you have to be 100% perfect with an elimination diet experiment. One small slip and your body could react to it for up to 5 days. So…if you oops, then your 7 days starts all over again (sorry!).
Step 2 –
During those 7 days take note of how you feel. Sometimes you won’t feel noticeably different, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some improvement…it might have come on too slowly to notice.
Step 3 -
On about day 8 or 11, enjoy the heck out of one of the foods you’ve eliminated. Have at least 3 servings and really go at it.
Then, notice how you feel for the next 5 days. Any symptoms come back? Any change in your energy? Mood? Pain?
Step 4 -
If you’ve removed more than one food, go back to eating how you did in the first 7 – 10 days and try the next food about 5 days later. That will give your body the time to calm down your reaction to the first food. Repeat until you’ve tested all of the foods you’ve eliminated.
Now that you know how your body feels when you eat these foods, you can decide what your relationship with them will be from now on. Do you want to continue to eat them? Do you want to eat less or remove them entirely? It’s totally up to you!
A note on gluten –
If you react to gluten, you might be only reacting to wheat, not to the whole gluten family. Repeat the experiment with only wheat and see if you get the same results as removing all gluten grains. It’s common for people to only react to wheat, but be able to enjoy rye or spelt as much as they’d like :)
Food experiments are just that, experiments. The first time I removed dairy from my diet I felt SO much better…but I also felt deprived and miserable. It took me over 4 years to try again. That time I slowly removed dairy so it was easy and I didn’t feel deprived at all. This was about 15 years ago and dairy still plays a very minor role in my life. I have some when I want it, but I usually don’t care.
Once you’re done your experiment you can choose what your relationship will be with that food. If you want to remove it but are struggling with feeling deprived, reach out and I’m happy to help you find alternatives.
In Conclusion
Dieting culture has been in our lives for generations and is so tied up inside healthy eating it’s hard to know one from the other. That’s okay. It can take time to unwind dieting out of your life and I’m always here to help. Reach out with questions, frustrations, and share successes anytime you’d like. I’d love to hear from you ❤️
And, it’s a great time to circle back to the notes you took in Part 1…how are you feeling now?
Got any questions or comments? Comment below, jump to our private Facebook Group, or the Ask Lisa page :).