So my Chief Medical Officer/Naturopath/BFF (the amazing Aoife), has recommended that I do an Elimination Diet (I prefer to call it a Challenge, you’ll see why in a minute). It’s going to help me identify my food sensitivities, something I’ve been curious about for a while. I don’t think I have any overt allergies, but there may be certain foods that I’m sensitive to/don’t digest well. This will help me to identify them, but it takes a lot of hard work to get there.

Basically what we do here is cut out all the major food allergens for two weeks. I won’t go into too much detail, but here are the biggies:

  • Wheat
  • Dairy
  • Eggs
  • Soy (not a big deal for me, I don’t eat any soy products)
  • Red Meat (also not a big deal, I barely eat any red meat), also no Pork
  • Caffeine (no coffee, no DIET PEPSI)
  • Sugar

There are also a few fruits (bananas, melon, kiwi, pineapple) and veggies (potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms) that aren’t allowed. After two weeks, you slowly start re-introducing these foods into your diet one at a time, to see what your bod reacts to. It kind of sounds awful, but I don’t think it’s actually going to be so bad. I think the best strategy is to focus on all the things you can have, and how you’ll feel amazing by the end of it all!

Of course I started preparing by looking at my favourite food blogs to see if there were any recipes that fit the bill. Smitten Kitchen has a bunch of great recipes like Warm Butternut Squash & Chickpea Salad, Spaghetti with Swiss Chard & Garlic Chips, and Pasta with Cauliflower, Walnuts & Feta (hold the feta). I also remembered that Tonya over on the What’s on My Plate blog did the same cleanse last year. I clicked through her recipes from that time, and got a lot of great ideas. The information packet Dr. Earls gave me also had a bunch of recipes included. So after approximately 528973 emails to Aoife (is mango a melon? is coconut milk considered dairy? can I eat grapes?) I started working on my grocery list, and armed myself for the challenge.

So while there won’t be much baking happening on Planet Byn over the next month, I’m going to try to blog my way through the Challenge to help me keep track of what I ate during this time.  Not sure how this is going go, but I kind of feel sorry for my co-workers already, in anticipation of some severe grumpiness next week!