When I was in high school, Mama Ruth and I embarked on our first official cleanse. If I remember correctly, it involved a lot of vegetable broth (we were vegetarians in those days), a lemon/water/cayenne concoction, and various juices. It lasted 14 long days and ended (for me, anyway) with a chocolate-chip cookie binge, which I promptly purged. While I was no stranger to long periods of time without food, the concept of cleansing to renew and heal my body or to discover which foods made me look and feel my best was lost on me at the time. I was in it for the quick weight loss and sense of control over my body, and my life, that restricting food provided for me. 

I’m grateful that my healing journey has brought me to a place where I no longer need to restrict food to feel a sense of control over my body or my life. In the years since that first (fairly radical) cleanse, I’ve successfully completed numerous cleanses and I regularly practice food elimination as a way to stay in touch with my ever-evolving nutritional needs. Healing my relationship with food and making the choice to nurture, rather than punish, my body is a change that came through subtle shifts in both my thoughts and actions. It was a change in perspective, deeply connected to my highest intention of creating vibrant health in my body and happiness in my life. To honor that intention, I find it helpful to check in with myself before moving forward with significant changes to my daily diet. I do that by making sure the change I’m making is truly aligned with my intention of creating vibrant health. If I suspect it isn’t, I turn my attention toward healing the part of myself seeking comfort in old, outmoded habits that don’t support me.  I invite you to explore your own intentions for sorting out your food issues as you embark on the elimination diet. 

While the structure I set out for you below is not a formal cleanse, when you make the choice to remove common toxic triggers from your diet, it frees your body up to do a more thorough job of removing impurities from your system, which can lead to both physical and emotional symptoms. Once we are no longer hiding behind our brain fog, bodily discomfort, and food addictions, the truth of our lives can emerge, and sometimes that can be a scary thing. We often have very good reasons for numbing ourselves to the difficult aspects of our lives, and when we strip that comfort away, we make space for our unresolved emotions to come up. This is a good time to go ahead and be gentle with yourself and reach out for support when you need it. 

How It Works

An elimination diet removes all the inflammatory and processed foods from your diet and allows you to get clear on what foods are toxic triggers for you. When we understand what foods are toxic triggers for us and take steps to alleviate or reduce them, energy levels increase, our minds get clearer, our sleep is deeper, and skin takes on a “lit from within” glow. If your own curiosity has led you to sorting out your food issues, I want to congratulate you on being willing to do the (sometimes hard) work of learning to listen to your body. 

So, it’s pretty simple: no gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, processed sugar, coffee, or alcohol for 23 days. Why 23 days? Antibodies, which are the proteins that your immune system makes when it reacts to foods, take about 21 to 23 days to turn over, so if you’re sensitive to something 23 days is going to give you the full benefit of eliminating it from your diet. That said, I’ve had success with clients who followed a 10-day elimination diet, so if that sounds a bit more doable to you, feel free to start there. Either way, the next step is key. Following your elimination diet, you will move into the reintroduction phase. This reintroduction is key because it gives you the opportunity to discover exactly which foods trigger a response for you. If you were to add back every potential trigger food on day 24 and felt like something wasn’t working well in your body, it would be really difficult to discover exactly which food it was! Here’s a quick snapshot of the foods you’ll either be enjoying or holding off on while you sort out your food issues:

Enjoy These Foods

• Greens and fresh vegetables (with a few exceptions)
• Whole fruits, fresh or frozen (with a few exceptions) 
• Animal Protein: wild game (rabbit, pheasant, bison, venison, elk), lamb, duck, organic chicken and turkey, grass-fed beef
• Vegetable Protein: split peas, lentils, bee pollen, spirulina, blue green algae
• Fish: fresh or water-packed cold-water fish (trout, salmon, halibut, tuna, mackerel, sardines)
• Nuts & Seeds: hemp, sesame, and sunflower seeds; pecans, almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios, macadamia and Brazil nuts; lentils, quinoa
• Non-Gluten Grains & Starch: brown rice, millet, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat
• Fermented foods (kimchi, sauerkraut)
• Unsweetened hemp and nut milks (almond, hazelnut, walnut, coconut)
• Fats and Oils: avocado, extra-virgin olive, flax, safflower, sesame, almond, sunflower, walnut, pumpkin, and coconut oils
• Sweeteners: raw honey, pure maple syrup, stevia, lucuma
• Drinks: filtered water, mineral water, green, white, and herbal teas, yerba mate

Hold Off on These Foods 

• Vegetables: corn, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers 
• Fruits: oranges, grapefruit, strawberries, grapes, bananas
• Animal Protein: eggs, raw fish, pork, sausage, cold cuts, canned meats, hot dogs, shellfish
• Vegetable Protein: soybean products (soy sauce, soybean oil, tempeh, tofu, soy milk, soy yogurt)
• Nuts & Seeds: peanuts, peanut butter, pistachios, macadamia nuts
• Dairy: milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, and non dairy creamers
• Sweeteners: refined sugar, white or brown sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, agave
• Drinks: alcohol, coffee, soda

It’s Been 23 Days: You Feel Awesome—Now What?

This is the best part! You are in the reintroduction phase and you have the unique opportunity to find out exactly which foods disturb your body. The key is to test each food individually and to pay attention to not just the obvious signs of discomfort, such as a stomachache, but to more subtle signs like brain fog or an energy slump. You want to reintroduce one type of food from the “hold off” list into your daily meals each day. If you are choosing to reintroduce a gluten grain the first day, try having toast at breakfast or a sandwich at lunch. If you prefer to start with dairy, have some yogurt or cheese. Next, you will want to observe what happens over the next twenty-four hours. It can be very helpful to use a food diary for this phase as you notice the following: 

• How do you feel immediately after eating it? Are there any sensations in your belly? 
• Does anything happen shortly after you eat it, such as a runny nose or mucus in the throat (typical of milk), or fatigue, bloating, or headache (typical of gluten)?
• How are your energy levels? 
• How is your poop the next day?
• How did you sleep? Was it a deep sleep or were you disturbed?
• How does your skin look? Any eruptions?
• How are your emotions the following day?

Any noticeable change in your physical or mental experience is an indication that you might be sensitive to that food. If you suspect this to be the case, eat that same food the next day and see if it provokes a reaction again. Just like the first day of reintroduction, notice what happens for a full day after eating the food, but note that the second-day reaction is likely to be less severe than the first. Repeat this same process with every food you wish to test from the “hold off” list. If you have a severe allergy to one of these foods, it will be quite obvious to you, but subtler reactions should not be dismissed. 

Rotate & Rethink 

If your reaction to any of the foods you test is mild but still noticeable (slight fatigue, constipation, mood swings), you don’t necessarily have to eliminate it forever, but you will still benefit from reducing the frequency of exposure to it. Following a rotation diet is a simple way of reducing the consequences of mild to moderate food sensitivities. This approach involves rotating your food choices so that you don’t eat the irritating ones more than once every four days or so. That’s a pretty easy tradeoff for feeling better overall.