After spending 2 weeks reading The Immune System Recovery Plan by Susan Blum MD, I have decided to officially start my elimination diet.

Saturday I made an outline of what I am going to eliminate, foods I can eat, and possible recipes to make for the week.

From the recipes, I created my shopping list and headed to whole foods. 

They didn't have the brown rice wraps I wanted, so I also made a pit stop at Trader Joes.

I started my meal prep Saturday night with beef bone broth, a green detox soup, sautéed zucchini, shiitake mushrooms, and 1/2 sweet onion for a hummus wrap, 

and soaking mung dal beans and buckwheat groats.

Sunday morning I woke up and had brown rice farina, created a buckwheat porridge, 

mung dal kitchari, sautéed kale and asparagus, and made wild rice blend.

Per the book, the elimination diet should last 3 weeks.

I have already gone 2 weeks without oats and chicken, so I may add those back in sooner than later. 

We will see.

I personally decided to eliminate oats and chicken because I have been eating so much of them 

in the past year during my competition prep. 

I felt like my body needed a break.

Now that I found brown rice farina, I have something to look forward to for breakfast.

It was starting to become a challenge without eggs, gluten, oats, dairy, and limited sugar.

There is always the option of eating non-breakfast food as breakfast ... I'm not ready for that yet.

At least not full time.

Diet has a huge impact on our gut microbiome.

We can have crazy thoughts, feel depressed, moody, tired, or wake up congested and more just because we are eating certain foods or foods that don't work for our body.

The elimination diet is designed to help people figure out what foods they are sensitive to.

You do an elimination diet for 3 weeks and then gradually introduce one food 

at a time to see if you have any reactions.

If no symptoms occur during the reintroduction phase, then it is safe to 

say you are good to consume that food.

As of now I just plan on doing the elimination part of the diet.

I recently had some tests done to learn what foods I am allergic to.

On July 1st I see a functional medicine doctor who will provide me with my test results 

and I will have a new game plan on achieving optimal health.

I am really excited!

One idea that my accountability partner recently shared with me is that

Food serves me.

I love this idea and I am going to continue to eat in a way that is serving my body.