Adverse food reactions (what people may call “food allergies”) can cause numerous symptoms and can be the underlying reason for challenges to optimal health. These negative reactions to specific foods are more common than you might expect, and they can be surprisingly difficult to pinpoint as contributing factors to health problems. Adverse food reactions can include food allergies that start in early childhood and continue on throughout life.
They can also involve more temporary reactions to food that occur when you are feeling particularly low in energy and when your physical health is especially compromised. But in either case, you will not always have an easy-to-spot symptom that tells you, Aha! My body is having a problem with something I ate. In the case of adverse food reactions it’s much more likely that you will feel bad in some way that could involve dozens of causes. All of the above symptoms, for example, could be caused by lack of sleep, or chronic stress, or a long list of psychological factors.
Elimination Diet
I have seen that adverse food reactions can be a barrier to losing weight. As such, when you embark on your Healthy Weight Loss, if you find that after three weeks of focusing your diet on enjoying the World’s Healthiest Foods you don’t lose any weight, you may want to investigate whether adverse food reactions may be the culprit.
What I would recommend in this situation is a modified elimination diet. One of the best tools to use for this is to keep a journal. Write down all the foods that eat each meal, and then when you reintroduce eliminated foods, write down whether or not you notice experiencing an adverse reaction to them.
on the above foods, you should consult with a healthcare practitioner rather than attempting these dietary changes on your own. You aren’t likely to see many changes in your health or well-being unless you stick with these food modifications for at least one week, so you need to feel comfortable in sticking to this restricted meal plan for that amount of time.
At the end of one week, you will want to start re-introducing old foods back into your meal plan. I recommend that you introduce only one food at a time, and that you wait at least two days before re-introducing another food.
I would also recommend that you start with asparagus, avocados, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cucumbers, blueberries, watermelon, flaxseeds, and quinoa when starting this food re-introduction process since they are not as commonly associated with adverse food reactions as some of the other foods you might have eliminated from your meal plan.
After that, you will want to continue re-introducing other foods back into your meal plan, on this same one-per-day basis and waiting at least two days before you add the next food. While you are re-introducing the foods that you avoided during your week on the modified elimination diet, try to notice any adverse reactions that you may have.
Try to pay special attention to any problems that prompted you to experiment with food elimination in the first place. If these problems return, it might be evidence that the newly re-introduced food is not well-matched for your body’s metabolism and might be worth avoiding in future meal planning.
