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Interesting. McDougall does list citrus as one of the most common allergy causing fruit along with tomatoes and strawberries. I think I read a post somewhere that someone else had bad reactions to oranges and grapefruit, but tolerates tangerines and clementines, which is what my experience has been.

I haven't tested pecans but other nuts seem to be ok for me.

Please everyone continue to post your reactions when introducing a new food, it helps to know what to look out for!

It's taken me a long time, but my baseline are potatoes (all kinds but I have to peel russets), most veggies except tomatoes, white or sushi rice, water, and plain black decaf coffee.

I cannot have fruit (allergy symptoms and acid reflux), oats or wheat (make me achy/tired/generally feeling icky).

At first it felt really limited but I feel awesome and am getting the hang of cooking really tasty food. This morning I peeled and chopped russets, and added to a pot of water with garlic, onion, leeks, and carrots. Kind of a thick soup/stew. I will have a bowl now and then.

Good luck to everyone!

Day nine of the elimination diet. All was going well until today. Most of my pain had decreased dramatically except for the hip which only inproved a little.

I could not find clear guidelines anywhere on when to switch from cooked fruit (or veggies) so yesterday and today I switched to raw.

That is the only change I have made, I have not started introducing new foods yet. I am in so much pain today with my hip and my foot and knee are hurting again.

Back to cooked fruit tomorrow, but if I react so strongly to raw, should I even be eating cooked? I notice in Neal Barnard's book he says to avoid apples, so I will start leaving them out too.

Does anyone else have problems with fruit?

I ended up doing a variation of Dr. McDougall's elimination diet with some info from PCRM's (i.e. Barnard's) info on pain-safe foods and foods to avoid for arthritis. I don't remember apples being on the list. They are one of the foods that don't seem to bother me. Citrus is one of the trigger foods for arthritis according to Dr. Barnard, but of course it is different for everyone. Listen to your body - it will tell you what to do!

Silver....Thanks for your post on adding raw foods to your diet. Have not done that yet, and was surprised to read the reaction you had; wish I knew enough to offer advice.

I know that some fruits and veggies are problems for me (like squash family, tomatoes, onions, pears, onions), so would not have them either raw or cooked. But there are others I wonder about......like lettuce and carrots and red peppers.

Am also experiencing puzzling problems at the moment: Had small amounts of unusual foods (for me) two days ago....Made a 5 hour road, and had a few sips of coffee to help with alertness. Also had small amounts of beets that day .....which Barnard includes in the OK-to-eat-on-an-Elimination-Diet group. I developed hand and finger joint pain, and now would like to go back and test those 2 things separately.

Uff da. Looking forward to food being easy.

Working at it, coffee is a definite trigger for me, but so is the stress of doing something out of the ordinary, like going on a 5-hour road trip.

When I test a food, I with three days before testing the next one, and if I have a reaction, I test it twice more to see if it was the food or something else. Tedious, yes, but I have found that some foods I thought were "bad" are fine for me, after the second or third test.

Also - when beans are under-cooked I get pain, no matter what my reaction to them when they are cooked well.

Nicoles -
Thank you! The road trip itself could have been the cause! And, sure see the wisdom of your testing foods 3 times. I am still wrapping my mind around how to do this testing. Finding that I was naive, thinking that one test would be enough. It's clearly not.

My husband is getting tired of how much energy I put into this. He really wants me to go see an expert, and get clear answers fast. Actually that sounds pretty good to me too, just don't think it's possible.

Anyway, thank you for the helpful comments!

You're Welcome, Working at it! And, don't forget - we are forging new ground here, fully on our own - it makes sense that you won't think of everything right away. I did not come upon the idea of triple testing until I was a good 4-5 months into the elimination diet.



Most of the food tests out there are for strict allergies- if you have a sensitivity instead of an allergy they are useless, so you are right; there are no quick answers. Most "experts" at this are glorified snake oil salespeople who recommend expensive, not-covered-by-insurance tests and treatments like chelation, which are at best useless and at worst, harmful and costly.

Here is a copy of the way I track my food and symptoms. I print out a bunch and use one page a day, dated of course. Then my kind and slightly compulsive husband loads the info in a spreadsheet he then converts into graphs, so I can see trends

This is my journal, you might find it helpful as you work through stuff.


Hope you feel better soon!

Hmmm. I never thought of a connection between stress and my type of inflammation. I wonder if it makes mine worse? On Tuesday I had a stress-filled day and I don't mean a normal stress filled day. I mean a EAT-ALL-THE-BAD-FOOD-YOU-CAN-THINK-OF-I-CAN'T-HANDLE-THIS-KIND-OF-STRESS-FILLED-DAY. At least it would have been in the past. I stayed on plan but I had the severe pain the next day that I blamed on the uncooked fruit.

Glad to get the info on testing multiple times. I will test the uncooked fruit again soon and see if it was that or if the stress played a role.

I stumbled upon the "Failsafe Diet" several years ago, and basically you just eat peeled pears, bamboo shoots, brussel sprouts, cabbage, celery, chives, garlic, leeks, iceberg lettuce, parsley, coriander, peeled russet potatoes, shallots, rutabagas, lentils, beans, green beans, cashews, poppy seeds, buckwheat, oats, rice (especially sushi rice), from a vegan perspective. It's weird as all these foods agree with me.

http://failsafediet.wordpress.com/

Lately I have been eating mostly just steamed veggies, rice, and peeled russet potatoes and seem to do best on just this (similar to what Pinkrose eats), and it's the easiest.

I broke down and had watermelon after my dinner of rice and veggies tonight, and got itchy, watery eyes and a headache. It seems that all fruit does that to me, except pears.

I been reading through this. How is everyone doing? I have pains. I never thought all these foods could be causing the problem. I see that you cut out alot of foods. So what do you eat in a day. Could you share a days menu ? Thanks,

I'm just catching up on this thread after a long time. So interesting. I feel like we're all super-responders! It's frustrating, but I am motivated because I feel so much better when I eat foods that agree with me. And it's so nice to know that I'm not alone.

I just checked out the Failsafe diet, and almost all of those foods work for me too. The only exception is that I had identified potatoes as causing problems, and I still miss them so much. So I think I will experiment by trying peeled potatoes and seeing if I can eat those without reacting. Thanks for posting that link, bluefizzure.

Flowerblue, I'm constantly adjusting my diet, and I don't think I have eliminated all the foods I react to yet, but here's a typical menu these days:

Breakfast - gluten free oats and steamed spinach
Lunch - hummus made from garbanzo and cannellini beans with lemon juice and zest, a small amount of tahini, and cumin powder (I don't like garlic or onions so I omit those, but I don't think I react to them), and raw celery stalks
Dinner varies - often plain brown rice and steamed kale

I started the elimination diet 2 weeks ago but keep on taking foods out so haven't really had a full week. I have joint problems. In a span of 6 months I lost the ability to fully bend my legs as my knees hurt too much. My hips hurt at times too and my shoulders have started to make clicking sounds with certain movements.
I started out eating rice, sweet potatoes (NZ Kumara) and yams (NZ) as my starches but when I noticed no change in my joints I cut out rice. I have eaten cooked apples with lunch and dinner but yesterday I had stomach pains after (I have had them on and off for over a year and always thought it was due to drinking tea). Now I wonder if I should cut out the applesauce too. During the last 3 days I also noticed times when I felt short of breath, inhaling deeply to try and get more air in even though I wasn't doing much physical. Then 2 days ago my middle joint on my ring finger hurt and got swollen overnight. That has never happened before. So I'm a bit puzzled as I seem to not get better on the limited food items and develop extra funny symptoms, although they have disappeared again now.
I have a question regarding testing foods: how much do you use to challenge your system? Say if I want to test rice. How much of it do I need to eat per meal to show a reaction (if any)? And what about something like vinegar?
Thanks for any help.

Erbse, I have a few suggestions based on personal experience, as noted above. First, if arthritis type pains are present they might be the result of decades of poor food choices. They might not go away or even diminish in merely a few weeks.

Second, for the question of how much of a test food to use, follow Dr. McDougall's advice here: http://www.drmcdougall.com/med_allergic.html

Eat one or two servings of the food at each meal, six meals in a row. E.g., starting at breakfast on Monday morning and ending with dinner on Tuesday evening. Then wait a few days to see if a reaction appears. Then coast on the ED until next Monday to give your system time to clear itself of the tested food.

In general, I would say test a new food, say vinegar, in the amount you would normally use, but use it at six meals in a row.

Thank you for your clarification, Burgess. I had read Dr Mc. guidelines and it says in there to eat a "large serving" and I wasn't sure.

It was your story and your amazing improvement that has motivated me to give the ED a try.