Adele Stratton wrote: >"Everything. You start out by eliminating EVERY SINGLE THING except water. >Then you eat one food and one food only. All of it you want but only that >exact food. For example beef, plain, unseasoned, unprocessed beef. you eat >ONLY beef for a few days. Do you lose weight and feel well? It's a safe >food, it you can keep. Do you not lose weight do you not feel well? You >PERMANENTLY eliminate it from your diet. Thank you for an informative post. Your are indeed correct that no food is guaranteed to be safe, and that allergies can influence weight. I can't tell whether Kathleen's version of the elimination diet begins with a water fast, or water plus one food. If the former, it is worth noting that fasting is *very* stressful for some people, notably hypoglycemics. Some people need more carbohydrates than are provided by an all-beef diet, though this is unlikely to be a serious problem for people subscribed to the Low-carb list. (Similarly, eating all-fruit or vegetable diet could be disastrous, but this is not an issue for low-carbers.) The elimination diet needn't be quite so severe. There is a short list of foods (available at the URL I posted earlier) to which people are rarely allergic. From this list, the dieter should eliminate any foods that he or she eats frequently. If the dieter doesn't notice any clearing of symptoms within several days, then it is possible that one of the "safe" foods actually isn't. Cheers, -- Aaron Wieland