In a message dated Wed, 15 May 2002  9:19:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Wendy Hubbard <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>I think I haven't made myself very clear.  I wrote:
>
>"I wanted to do this first to make sure I knew which PALEO foods I could eat."
>
>


If I understand you, then I am sorry to say that i don't think this can be done in that way.

The only reliable way i know to determine which foods are personal intolerances is to be able to see the negative effects of those foods.  The only way to do that is to first get your body functioning at as toxin free a level as possible.

It can take up to a month on paleo to clear your system of SAD.  You simply can't tell which foods are effecting you negatively until you have a great baseline to work from.  Perhaps a water fast of a week  would compare to a month of paleo but there are many many reasons not to do that (including the fact that extended water fasts almost always result, sooner or later, in rebound weight gain).

It gets worse.  If you have an overgrowth of candida albicans it can take up to 3 months on paleo and low carb and anticandida and supplements to clear your system well enough to get a starting point for an accurate self diagnosis of intolerance foods.

(And I'm not even bringing up the time it takes to get off of coffee/caffeine addictions.  The withdrawal symptoms would skew any results beyond readability)

Once that has been done, once your system is clear, then I believe it takes at least 24 hours of water fasting to further clear your system of any possible intolernace foods.  If you are not able to do that due to hypoglycemia or diabetes, then a week of eating only meat (seven different meats, one per day, do not mix or repeat) might be a sufficient substitute.

(If you went straight to that technique from SAD, or even from a low carb plan like Atkins, you would probably not get accurate results due to the carryover of toxins in your system.)

Once you have that level of cleansing, then you reintroduce one food for 4 days.  you eat only that food for 4 days and evaluate your symptoms.  Then you move on to another.  It would take 40 days to test 10 foods, over a year to test 100. (but nobody ever seems to need to do that).

You cannot undo years of SAD in a month.  You can't even find out how to undo years of SAD in a month.  But you can take the first step, which is all that 90% of people need to do, which is to go paleo for one month.

Of course if you have reason to suspect a personal intolerance to paleo foods, then don't have those foods in your diet until you can systematically test them.

And if you are doing this for weight loss, then your paleo diet should be low carb as well, limiting and/or completely eliminating fruit consumption until you can systematically test each fruit.

Kathleen