The way that most people start an exclusion diet is by leaving a single food out of their diet totally. If you have an obvious suspect in mind -one that you think makes you ill, or one with which you have an addictive relationship, or which you particularly crave – start with that one.
The benefits of the single-food approach are that you are not excluding many foods at once, so that if there is absolutely no change, or if you feel substantially better straightaway, you know that you have a clear result from this food. If you go the single-food-exclusion route, choose your food and leave it out of your diet totally for a minimum of four days, and preferably for a week. This gives your system time to clear the food. If you are sensitive to that particular food, you may feel worse at first and get withdrawal symptoms, including cravings for that food. As your system clears the food, you should start to feel better and, by the fourth day, you should feel significantly improved if that food is the source of your problems.
If you feel a lot better, you may decide to leave the food out permanently, provided you can find ready substitutes in your diet. If the first food you exclude and test gets no result, then proceed on to another candidate and test that systematically, using the same total exclusion and reintroduction procedures.
There are drawbacks to the single-food approach, however. The first is that it is very difficult totally to exclude the common allergens, such as cow’s milk, eggs, wheat, yeast and corn, from your diet, unless you leave out virtually all processed foods. Cow’s milk products, for instance, are found not just in milk, yogurt, cheese and butter, but also in all sorts of processed foods like biscuits, pies, white sauces, even in pills, home medicines and margarine. You have to leave the food out totally to get results. If you get inconclusive results after testing one of the most common foods, look at the relevant box and check that you have excluded it totally. Retest a food, if necessary, before turning to another food. If you are in fact sensitive to more than one food, you may get only partial improvement in your symptoms on single-food exclusion and it can take a long time for you then to work through other suspects individually. If you suspect multiple sensitivity, you may be better starting off on a more stringent diet.
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