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Lowcarb Chatroom
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Lowcarb Chatroom
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From: KathleenBL@aol.com 7:42 AM Subject:Texas Lowcarb: Repost: Elimination Diet, Yes You Can To: txlowcarb@painpals.com (Texas Lowcarb Mailing List)The premise: if low carb is not working, or not working well enough, then it is logical to consider the possibility that food intolerances to otherwise lowcarb foods or even trace amounts oh high carb foods may be the root of the problem.
The disclaimer: When looked at over the whole process; the time on and the time off in between rounds; the time on lose weight/feel great foods vs. the time on what turned out to be intolerance foods I lost a net of only about a pound and half a week. Yes, I was only 10 pounds overweight (after losing 60) when I started and you may lose more if you have more to lose, but if you're already losing 1 - 2 pounds a week, I would STRONGLY urge you not to do this now. Save the info in case you need it later, but do not do this and then be disappointed and disparaging if you're not losing any faster than a pound or two a week over the whole course. You will lose weight faster than that when you spend days on a great food. You will regain it overnight when you introduce a strong intolerance. It will creep back on with a subtle intolerance. It will creep back when you take the breaks back to "normal" low carb inbetween rounds. Unless you have intolerances to a majority of things, though, and if you stick with it for several rounds, you will see some net loss. At least so far everyone else has.
Also do not do this unless you are going to DO it. What I mean is if you privately want to try some variation, of course it's your body; do so; but DO NOT call it the elimination diet.
Understand that there are no exceptions. No just a bites, just a sips. You won't be able to get any kind of real reading if you don't have untainted data to work with.
I am not a doctor. I am not a nutritionist. This is something that proved effective and illuminating for me and for Lane and Adele and a few other people. It may not be good for you. I have no idea what it might or might not do in interaction with your medications or preexisting conditions. Don't do this if you are not willing to assume the possibility of risk. I felt great on this and as a result of implementing what I learned on this. You may not.
This is not a substitute for the inner resolve to change your life. Unless you have made the inner decision to do whatever it takes to become slim and healthy this will not work. (there is one exception; Lane and I did find that certain foods affected our mood and resolve, and if the only problem with your inner resolve is physiological and food related, you may find the culprit.)
Step 1. GETOFF CAFFEINE.
Step 2. GET INTO KETOSIS. I am presuming that you have cured yourself of your caffeine addiction. Caffeine withdrawal will skew your ability to evaluate your own reactions and should be accomplished before trying the elimination diet.
Step 3. 24 HOUR WATER FAST. Eat nothing and drink nothing but water for 24 hours. I recommend from noon to noon. Drink lots of water. This step, if you've never tried it, is easier than you think. You will lose weight doing this. It is not permanent weight loss. It will come back, fully if you go off plan or hit an intolerance food, partially just moving onto safe foods.
Step 4. JOURNAL EVERYTHING DAILY. Weight, measurements, especially your waist and abs (across the belly button). Your moods and attitudes. How hard or easy it was to stick to. Your exercise, or medications, if any. Any physical symptoms whether you think they are related or not. Be aware of the regular monthly cycle of weight loss and weight gain if you are a woman of child bearing age.
After 24 hours introduce ONE food. Preferably a meat. JUST ONE TYPE OF MEAT. Plain, unprocessed, unseasoned except salt. Eat it, eat it, and then eat some more.
Evaluate your reation over several days. Do you lose weight and/or inches and feel a real "high"; keep doing this one for at least two days to confirm the pattern. Still losing and feeling great? Log that food down as a feel great/lose weight food. You can switch to the next food now.
Do you maintain weight/inches but feel great? Stay on that food for at least 4 days to confirm that it is indeed a maintenance food (as opposed to a subtle weight loss or gain food). 4 days later if you still feel great and it truly was a maintenance food, then log it as a feel great/maintain weight food. This will be a food that you can eat only on maintenance, and you will get there someday!, or it will be a food that will do you no harm to be eaten a few times a month during the weight loss phase. You can switch to the next food now.
Do you maintain weight/inches but feel cranky? depressed? just slightly off? Do you have a mild flare up of symptoms. Stay on that food at least 4 days and monitor your reactions, do they get better or worse? If they get better, then hey, it was probably an anomoly and nobody's cheerful and patient all the time. If they get worse or just stay the same then it's possible that you have found a food to which you have a physiological/psychological reaction. I did. Soybean oil (check mayonaise jars and salad dressings) was mine. I just started looking at the world through less than rose colored glasses, that grew to impatient and discouraged, if I'd kept it up then it could have led to serious emotional lows. Now you have a maintain weight/feel lousy food. If you are like me you may later find that you can tolerate small portions of this occasionally without symptoms. (If my mother makes deviled eggs with commercial mayo I can eat a couple without getting symptoms. I can't use it even 4 times a week without observing the symptoms now. I make my own mayo at home and just use olive oil (proven safe for me) on salads.
You are not ready to switch foods. You need to cleanse your system in order to have a "clean slate" on which to evaluate the next food. It's time for another water fast; preferably 24 hours, especially if the symptoms are severe, but at least 18). Alka Selzer Gold IF you can find it may help the cleansing process for you.
Do you almost instantly have a reaction to the food? Stomach bloat, gas, other physical symptoms, racing pulse? Do you gain weight or inches, especially in the abs? Dramatic weight gain and/or ab bloating (2 pounds or an inch without any other discernable cause) are almost surely signs of a sensitivity/intolerance. Do you feel ok on the first serving but feel worse and worse as the day goes on? Get off this food as soon as you are sure it is an intolerance food. (I'm assuming that you realize that if it's gain accountable to TOM, or if you suddenly become depressed because your husband says he wants a divorce, or if you feel lousy and then your appendix ruptures, that it's NOT the food.). Go on a 24 hour water fast until your mood improves and weight/inches start going back down.
Now food number 2. Preferably another meat. Plain unseasoned unprocessed. Eat tons and tons of it.
We need to know that you are losing because it is a safe food, not just because of calorie deprivation. And we need to eat more than maintenance calories to make up for the calories lost on the water fast days. The whole premise here is that your obesity is at least in part a result of food intolerances. turning this into a 500 calorie a day diet will not teach anybody anything.
As long as you can get a lot of calories on the food being tested I think it is better to eat that food exclusively.
Repeat the evaluation process above. Move onto the third food. Once you have found two meats (I include eggs here) that are lose weight/feel great foods for you, then introduce another type of food. Assuming that your primary purpose is to lose weight and or alleviate other medical problems, please choose a low carb and paleolithically correct food. Those foods have the highest odds of being lose weight/feel great foods for you. And we want that list to be as long as possible for you. When you add a food other than a meat you will need to "feature" that food. I recommend large quantities of it at breakfast, and eat it again at every meal. But if you're testing romaine lettuce or olive oil, obviously you're not going to be able to eat ONLY that and maintain calorie count. Eat some of your previously proven safe as feel great/lose weight foods along with the food being tested.
Continue the evaluation process with each new food. If for any reason you introduce an unplanned food or substance of any kind (coffee counts, it has to be tested all on it's own and clearly you must eat other safe foods when you are testing coffee), (Alcohol counts), then you must cleanse your system again and start over testing whatever you were testing before the ingestion.
Now once you have determined a good size list of feel great/lose weight foods you might could go back on those for a period of time rather than water fasting to cleanse your system. In my own experience it takes nearly a week on my best foods to create the same cleansing as 24 hours on water only. But you could do it that way once you have a list of feel great/lose weight foods.
You must be brutally honest through the whole process. Do not say you are testing fish and have gained weight on it and think it's an intolerance food for you if you have had an Atkins bar one day and half a cup of coffee another and ......you get the picture.
Do this for about two weeks. Then take a break for a week. Go back on your normal low carb routine, minus of course any foods that you have identified as negatives. You will regain weight during this time. You may find your self legal treat bingeing. This seems to be a common reaction and I don't have an answer for it. But set yourself a committment to go back on it at a certain point and start over with the water fast and a new list of foods.
Keep doing this until you have a list of at least 8 feel great/lose weight foods. All along stick to low carb paleolithically correct foods. After 2 or 3 rounds you should have such a list. In the next round it may be time for you to test something low carb but paleo-illegal like cheese or diet cokes, or it may be time to test something paleo-legal but high carb like apples. I would not recommend mixing these two categories in a round. And I do not recommend testing two such suspect foods in a row. The idea is to build up a long long list of positive foods.
If you are like me, the longer your list of positive foods the less you will even care about whether or not saccharine or nutrasweet are better for you. Because the feel great/lose weight foods have incredible satiety value. You will not be hankering after just a little something sweet.
A side note, and maybe this is just me. I notice that when I am eating only my feel great foods (either loss or maintenance) that my son keeps his room cleaner, the men are handsomer and more attentive and it is easier to balance my checkbook. My hair holds a curl better and traffic on North Central Expressway is lighter and friendlier. This is a huge motivation to stay on those foods a long long time. So I need a long long list and I need my list of feel great foods to include a lot of maintenance foods, too, because I don't need to be a size 4. Size 8 is looking and feeling just great, thanks. Kathleen
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