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I had three times the responses but I had to weed some out and condense
some of the responses below to avoid too much redundancy and make the
length manageable!
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To do an Elimination Diet you need to be very careful about ingredients.
For milk protein you will need to avoid all foods that contain cheese,
casein, lactose, whey, and milk solids. You need to even read ingredients
on the medications you take. Many have lactose, soy, or corn starch.
sigh...Corn is very tricky. It is found in almost everything. What doesn't
have a milk product has a corn product. Even salt contains corn starch to
keep it from caking. You can find Sea Salt that has no corn. Dextrose,
High Fructose Corn Syrup, Maltodextrin, corn starch are only a few. I
suggest you use Google to search for foods that contain hidden corn.
When it came to eating out, I decided to make and take my own dinners for
nights out with my husband and friends. The first few times were a bit
awkward but as you said, I valued myself enough to get past the
embarrasment. Most restaurants even heated my foods in the microwave. When
I cooked my meals, I double and tripled the recipes freezing meals for
later and take out. It is challenging when you make EVERY BITE that goes
in your mouth.
You are only allowed to eat the foods for 4 weeks. Usually there are no
spices allowed.  That is because some spices cause allergic reactions. I
was given permission to only use sea salt and black pepper. It was worth
the pain to me to do the elimination diet. Good luck and let me know how
you do.
I spent some time having a pitty party. Then, I realized that it was all a
choice. I choose to try the diet to find out if it would help me. The
longer I was on the diet, the better I felt so it energized me. Each
morning I woke and reminded myself I was choosing to eat a healthy diet
because I was worth it. I told myself it wasn't for the rest of my life,
just for a very short time. After the first 4 weeks, try the food you miss
the most first. That way if you can successfully eat it you can celebrate!
We just did food testing (RAST-blood) on my daughter. Before the testing
we knew she could not do milk or peanuts as they cause her to vomit. We
were almost sure that the wheat was causing problems to her but we would
never had figured the soy. 000000000000000000000000000000000000
I know that the most accurate testing method is still the elimination-
challenge test. Both the Rast and Elisa have false positives and false
negatives... but people are so emotionally attached to their diets that
most will not do an elimination-challenge unless there is some evidence
that they may have food allergy. That is the real value of the blood
tests...to motivate people to do the elimination-challenge test.
Blood food testing is much more accurate than the scratch or intradermal
because the skin tests just tell you what your skin is sensitive to... not
necessarily the same as what you eat. We would follow the testing with an
elimination challenge test (send patient home with the info on how to do
it).
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The blood testing is totally inaccurate as far as food allergies go with
my
experience and from what my allergist and my daughters pediatrician tell
me.
The only way to find out what food/s my daughter was allergic to was to
keep
a very detailed food diary for a few weeks until we could see what was
causing her hives and stomach distress. Turns out to be milk and peanuts.
Her blood tests, which I argued for and the doctor told me were a waste of
time and money, came back with a negative to all food allergies. Her total
IgE value (I think it was IgE) was only 6 (the lowest they had ever seen
on
a RAST test at the peds) suggesting no allergic reaction what so ever;
which
would be wrong because she did have a bad case of hives at the time of the
blood draw. The food diary was the only way to pinpoint. We almost went to
the elimination diet until all of a sudden we could see that she was
consuming milk in some form or other every time she would get hives within
20 minutes of ingesting. The peanuts came about a week later when she
continued to get hives after lunch or a snack when she had peanut butter.
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I was allergic to some of the foods in the elimination diet, so that never
worked for me. Similarly, I do not have enough foods that I am not
allergic to - to do any kind of rotation.

But here is what has worked for me: my allergist allowed me to bring to
her every food I wanted to be tested for (I brought about 60, including
herbs). She only had standard skin tests for about 15 foods. It took 4
hours and she had to serve as my "control", but I got my list of things I
was allergic to. The technician would scratch an area on
my back with a toothpick, then use a needle (like for shots) to scrape
some
of the vegetable, then rub the needle over the skin area; wait 10 or 15
min
and then read the reaction - ranged from redness to "pseudopods" (like a
swollen hive). The bill to the insurance company for this
4 hour festival was like $800.

She started me on allergy shots for grass (which is assoc. with the grain
allergies), cats (assoc. with pork allergy), ragweed (assoc. with some
fruits), as well as mold and dust mites. After over 2 years on the shots,
my corn allergy is so much better
I take 10mg Zyrtec and 150mg of Zantac twice a day for the chronic hives
that I still have (from eating a small but reasonable variety of foods).
They do not make me drowsy, and are extremely effective. You wouldn't
think Zantac would help, but it is a Histamine antagonist.

Some foods I have to religiously avoid because the hives and rapid heart
rate are bad enough to scare me a bit: shellfish, peanuts. For foods that
I remain quite allergic to (bean family, cabbage family) I'll have small
amounts once in a while in a soup or stew and just pay the price.
When my nasal allergies are worse (spring & summer) my fruit allergies get
worse. I just play it by ear on how much my body will tolerate.

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My nutritionist put me on a rotation diet when I was first diagnosed with
gluten intolerance because I was also showing some reaction to corn and
rice. The basic idea is to not overeat any one particular food by eating
it
every day. In my case, I was not to have any grain any more often than
once
every four days. This wipes out about all baked products because most of
the gluten-free formulations are combinations of different flours.

So, my week would go something like this:

Monday: Corn
Tuesday: Rice
Wednesday: Potatos or Quinoa or Amaranth or Buckwheat or no grain
Thursday: corn
Friday: Rice
Saturday: same as Wednesday
Sunday: something that I didn't eat on Saturday

This type of rotation should work for any food you're reacting somewhat
to.
I have found that when I do this I feel much better in general. I
discovered I was starting to react to onions, so I toned down my eating to
once every few days and that seems to have not gotten any worse.
Evidently,
the once every four days gives your body a chance to deal with the food
its
having trouble with, without being bombarded repeatedly (on consecutive
days) by it. My nutritionist said eat as much as you like of the food your
rotating on the day its allowed.

Nancy Appleton has written a book called "Lick the Sugar Habit." In it she
talks about how difficult sugars are to digest and it's her belief that
sugar causes many of the food intolerances that plague americans. You
become allergic to the foods that you eat regularly with sugar. She
believes that if you eliminate all forms
of sugar from your diet (including honey and fruit juices) that your
system
is better off. I believe there is some truth to this: I
felt the best I ever did when I successfully eliminated most sugars from
my
diet, I slimmed down, had energy, etc., but if I ever let it back in, then
I
crave it and I have a hard time eliminating it again even though my head
tells me I should.

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