How to Listen to Your Body to Discover Your Food Sensitivities

DiscoverYourfoodsensitivity

Brianne Williams, RD, LD

Is your body trying to tell you something?

Many of us have been living with food sensitivities unknowingly and suffering the uncomfortable or damaging effects. Food challenges are a great way to determine if a specific food is contributing to any of your symptoms or holding you back from optimal health. In our practice, we encourage all of our patients to get in tune with their bodies and restore health through eliminating and reintroducing common inflammatory foods, while incorporating healing foods packed with nutrition. Examples of these common inflammatory foods include: gluten, dairy, eggs, corn and soy.

Then, after 10-14 days of elimination, it’s time to experiment! After you have eliminated a food for at least 10 days, I recommend ‘bombarding your system’ with it so you have the best chance to see what it may be doing to your body. Sometimes foods can be causing inflammation in the body, but not enough to see an obvious symptom. Eating that food three times a day for three days after a 10+ day elimination will give your body an opportunity to show you how that food is really affecting you.

It’s important to note that reactions to foods aren’t always immediate. You may get a headache from a food you ate two days ago, then struggle to determine what could have caused it. To avoid compounding variables, take it slow. If you are challenging more than one food, try one at a time and give yourself a few days between each reintroduction to avoid any overlap of symptoms. Of course, if you feel bad from a food, discontinue and go back to your baseline diet before challenging other foods. You may notice past symptoms return or even different symptoms emerge that you’ve never experienced. Keep a journal or record of this process and after your reintroductions, take an inventory of which foods compromised your health and which foods you can enjoy. I recommend avoiding the foods that you found to be your unique symptom triggers and focus on the foods that fuel your body towards optimal health!

If you are feeling overwhelmed, we have many supportive resources including wellness coaching that you can find on our website: www.amymyersmd.com.