At 04:00 PM 5/15/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm going to start my Elimination Diet this weekend, but I wanted to get
>some feedback you, since it seems that a lot of you have done this or
>something similar.  While I have found that a lot books agree on which
>foods are most likely to cause an allergic reaction (wheat, milk, eggs,
>peanuts, etc.), I have also found that they don't necessarily agree on what
>can or should be eaten during the cleansing phase.  Some say it's okay to
>eat garlic or onions, some say not to.  I don't want to screw this up and
>have to start over, but I am way too active to do a water fast (I have
>three kids to take care of-by myself).  Any comments or suggestions?

Well, actually, yes I do have a suggestion.  But it may not be right for
you.  Eating a raw food diet will cause a former Standard American Diet
(SAD) eater to cleanse or detoxify.  This cleansing comes naturally as a
result of eating the raw foods.  Now I must admit that I am not familiar
with the "Elimination Diet" so I can't compare another diet to it.

Given that you prefer not to do a water fast (and I am in agreement with
that) you may wish to join and read through another e-mail group that is
devoted to eating in a Paleolithic, albeit raw manner.  I realize that
there seems to be disagreement on exactly what that
constitutes.  Nevertheless, it may be helpful to see another side - another
similar diet.

There are a few lists that I would recommend you read through.  The
"archives" of these lists have several years' worth of personal experiences
and details of diets, the cleansing experiences, the foods that help or
block, etc. There is also a web site link that should be helpful to you in
making your decision about how to approach this.  First the web
link:  http://www.rawpaleodiet.org/

The e-mail lists are both on "Yahoo Groups" at this link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/    Their names are "live-food" and "paleodiet"

You must first register as a new user before you can subscribe to the lists
and see the archives (on those same pages).

In a nutshell (pardon the intentional pun) the diet consists of only (or
mostly) raw foods (meats and dairy included) with no grains and curtailed
use of nuts and root vegetables (carbos).  I have followed this diet about
80% of the time with very good to excellent results.  The more raw food
that is eaten (as a percentage of all foods eaten) the more cleansing will
occur.  Now you may have planned on a short-term cleansing - and for that
this diet may not be the right choice.  For it may take several weeks or
months of working up to an all raw food diet - letting the body adjust to
the new foods and new bacteria.  Then the cleansing begins.  The "throttle"
for this diet, i.e., a way to keep from too much cleansing - is to eat some
cooked foods.  This is a long-term, deep cleansing and not a weekend
event.  Caveat emptor.

Best Regards,

-=mark=-