6 Tips To Survive + Thrive Week 1 Of Your Elimination Diet
Getting started on an elimination diet is exciting!
And overwhelming.
If you’re just getting curious I recommend reading my post about how to squeeze everything you possibly can out of this experience.
Learn how doing a gut reset can transform your health by healing your body, putting an autoimmune disease into remission, creating more energy and mental clarity, help with depression and anxiety, etc — and ALSO heal your relationship with yourself and with food. It can reconnect you to your zesty spark, put some fire back in your life, boost your motivation, and be a time of learning to love and accept yourself.
When I work with clients one on one this is the work we do.
https://gwenjohnson.ca/foodasmedicine/s0ais9k1ffcugnlcsfy09z9rvong33
But today let’s talk about the first week, and the 6 simple tips I’ve learned to make it through with success.
Keep It Simple
Often when we get started on something we come in with huge plans and grand ideas, and then we get overwhelmed and tired and want to give up. (Most of the time we do give up.)
For the first week I have found it incredibly helpful to keep things as simple as possible. When you progress through the experience and your energy starts to increase is when you get creative.
For more ideas on how to get ready and start your reset follow the link below.
https://gwenjohnson.ca/foodasmedicine/5-ways-to-prepare-for-your-healthy-eating-goals
In the beginning you’re just trying to figure it all out!
Your body is trying to adjust and that can be hard. There’s a good chance you feel a bit unwell, or maybe a lot unwell, and while that’s normal, life does not need the complication of you cooking crazy complex meals with unknown ingredients you’ve never used before.
In my experience, keeping it simple, letting my body adjust, and my mind create a new baseline or foundation of what tastes good to me in this new and potentially uncharted lands has been much more successful for me, and the clients I have worked with through the process.
So, what soup can you make that you will enjoy?
Batch Cook Some Things
After researching and gaining a very clear understanding of what’s a YES and what’s a NO on your gut reset, it’s time to get after it.
There’s no good time to do a gut reset, but there is right NOW – so just get going. YOU GOT THIS!
What can make this much less painful is having food around, even if it’s food you’re not excited about, you just need to have food that’s compliant with your new plan that you can shove in your face in a moment of ravenous hunger.
I like soups, roasted veggies, prepped salads and salad dressings, prepared snacks of some kind, and something grab and go.
Having these things ready and in place has saved my booty many times over.
Batch cooking will save your life. (And this is coming from a girl who doesn’t like leftovers or batch cooking!)
Eat Whatever Seems Good To You (that’s compliant with the reset)
Often people will head out to the grocery store and spend 500 dollars on food they have no idea how to use, what it is, or what it tastes like.
I don’t really recommend this – unless you have buckets of money, creativity, and time.
This first week I recommend making food you recognize, you know you’ll like, and that don’t create any unnecessary stress in an already hectic transition time.
Keep things simple! (Did I already say that?)
Buy a lot of veggies, clean proteins, and healthy fats – and keep it all simple.
Do you like chicken? Cook extra so you can eat it multiple times.
Ground meat? Make a big batch of burgers, or just cook it so you can use it in multiple meal options like: taco bowls, chili, emergency salad protein, pasta sauce to serve over oven fries (try it), and so on.
Eggs? Eat eggs all week long!
Make a couple salad dressings that will keep things interesting.
No, it’s not ideal to eat the same thing every day, but this week, it doesn’t matter.
This is about keeping things as simple and familiar as possible as you transition. Then as you finish up your first week take a day and get a little bit creative.
Eat AS MUCH As You Want
This might be alarming for some people, and some people might disagree with me here, but this isn’t the week to worry about weight loss. In my experience of doing countless gut resets and elimination diets, what I have learned is that the first week it’s a lot about survival.
Getting to the end of each day and not falling apart or off the wagon, actually getting to the end of the week successfully. So eat until you are actually full.
(As a coach, I would STRONGLY recommend building a celebration into each day you successfully complete, actually after each compliant choice that you make deserves a tiny mental celebration!)
What has helped me dramatically is giving myself permission to not stress about the details.
Things like:
caloric intake (actually that’s just a rule I always live by, but ESPECIALLY during this first week of an elimination diet. Possibly because I’m bad at math, but more likely because in general, as we eat healthy, clean ingredients in a diverse range, calories aren’t a problem).
Eating the same thing every day a million times,
If I’m hitting all the therapeutic aspects of the reset plan.
These things will come, (aside from the calorie counting) they’re just not my focus for this first week!
This week people often dip in and out of survival mode, and part of that is feeling HUNGRY.
Our body is in a bit of shock as we stop eating things we normally do, and our mind doesn’t like it. Our mind is telling us we are not full, we should keep eating, and in fact we won’t be full until we have a slice of toast or a bowl of pasta and a bucket of ice cream!
It’s ok, this is normal.
For me, the antidote to that is to just eat a lot. Eat until I feel full. Of course only compliant foods, but if I eat 5 meatballs when I normally eat 2, whatever. That’s what I’m doing. If I have 3 bowls of soup, so what.
EAT until you’re full, and then let it be.
Side note: I’ve found it very helpful to up my healthy fat intake during this time as it seems to create the satiation after a meal.
Drink More Liquid Than You Think Humanly Possible.
This can be a hard one, especially if you’re doing a gut reset in the winter, like I currently am and there’s not an abundance of heat around making you sweat and feel thirsty. Or maybe drinking buckets of water isn’t part of your jam. Yet.
Now is the time to make it part of your routine.
Drinking extra liquid this week will help your body flush out toxins and decrease the potential of feeling like a dumpster fire.
This first week there’s something called the “die off” stage that can make a person feel really crappy.
It usually lasts for about a day, but it can last for up to a couple of weeks. I know, yikes. It depends on many factors, but specifically on how much your body needs to detox.
Rest assured, it’s normal. You’re doing great.
What’s happening is some of the trillions of bacteria that make up your microbiome are dying out (often the most abundant ones), and while this sounds sad, it’s actually great news! Something to celebrate!
So have a glass of lemon water and a hot bath and then take a nap for your celebration party.
Hydration helps rid the body of toxins, builds resilience to stress, enhances metabolism, and promotes satiety. It is important to drink plenty of clean, filtered water throughout the day.
Yes you’ll need to go to the bathroom way more, but that’s a good thing as it’s one of the main ways our body rids itself of toxins. It also helps keep us regular, which is a great because as your body adjusts to this new way of eating, things can get a bit slower in the bowel movement department for a bit. (BMs are ESSENTIAL for detoxification).
Drink water, move your body, eat plants. It will help, and it will get better.
To determine an individual’s baseline hydration needs, divide the body weight in pounds in half. The resulting figure is the number of ounces of water to consume each day.
For example, an individual who weighs 150 pounds should consume around 9-10 cups (8oz) of of water each day.
Take It Easy
Some people feel GREAT this week, and that’s awesome, many people struggle, and that’s ok too.
I recommend taking it a bit easy on yourself this week. As your body is adjusting and detoxing, and you’re potentially experiencing higher stress due to not knowing what the hell to eat, it’s hardly fair to put your body through more stress of crushing out a big ski/bike, run, or epic weight session. Even if these are normally things you love and live for, give yourself a break this week. Do some yoga flow, go for a walk, stretch, take a hot shower or bath.
This is a week to reduce stress in your body. Stress that naturally occurs when we eat, exercise, and exist.
Slow down, make some soup, take a nap, and drink some water.
These are 6 tips I have developed over the many years of doing different gut resets and elimination diets. They have helped me and my family not only survive, but learn to thrive during the process!
If you are interested or curious about working with a health and life coach, please feel free to contact me via the contact page, or pop over the the Work With Me Page and fill out an appointment application.
You got this! And trust me, it will be worth it.
Kindness for a million days,
Gwen
