7 Things Everyone Should Know About The Elimination Diet + How It Can Help You Heal

William Cole, DC, a functional medicine practitioner, is an expert at identifying the underlying factors of chronic conditions and offering natural, holistic approaches to optimal health. In this piece, he shares what everyone needs to know about using the elimination diet to heal. To learn more, check out his new course, The Elimination Diet: A 60-Day Protocol to Uncover Food Intolerances, Heal the Gut, and Feel Amazing.

The elimination diet was instrumental in my own health journey.

This protocol—in which you eliminate certain foods for a period of time before reintroducing them one by one—helped me uncover hidden food intolerances, overcome chronic fatigue, heal my gut, and improve my digestive and skin problems. That's why I'm so eager to share it.

During the elimination diet, you'll focus on delicious foods that are also the least likely to irritate your immune system and trigger inflammation. In other words, you'll avoid the most common inflammatory foods for at least 60 days during the elimination phase.

The elimination diet focuses on the world's most nutrient-dense and healing foods. As Hippocrates, the father of medicine, once said, "let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." And that's exactly what the elimination diet allows us to do.

One concern that many people have about the idea of "eating healthy" is that they'll starve or be unsatisfied because all they can eat is mounds of unfilling grass. That may be true for some food plans, but not with the elimination diet.

Hearty, filling foods like grass-fed steak, sweet potato fries in coconut oil, and a coconut milk smoothie with greens and berries will satisfy the biggest of appetites. For proof, check out what a typical day on the elimination diet looks like.

Another common worry people have about healthy eating is that it'll be too difficult to cook the meals.

The word "diet," has been made synonymous with "dieting" in our culture, or restricting foods to lose weight instead of a rational, healthy way of eating. The elimination diet is not about dieting! It's a food plan, and you eat until you are full.

As Hippocrates also once said, "all disease begins in the gut." So whether you have digestive problems or not, your gut can also influence your hormones, brain, and immune system.

When you're finished with the elimination phase and start reintroducing foods, not only will you uncover your intolerances, but you'll also discover which foods work best for your body.

By definitively finding out exactly which foods your body thrives on, you can tailor a food plan just to you. In this way, the elimination diet serves as a sustainable, rational way of eating—instead of just another fad diet to add to the pile of things that have not worked for you in the past.