Hi just wondered if anyone has heard of the Elimination Diet? A friend told me about it. Apparently it has been put together by a guy called Dax Moy in London. I just got a copy of the PDF and had a quick read through it. It promises great weight loss, but I'm always skeptical of diets that promise great weight loss.

from what I've read you basically cut out all dairy, sugars, wheat, alcohol, caffiene, processed foods and other stuff for 30 days. After that you reintroduce the food banned individually to see if you can tolerate them. Apparently our bodies find it hard to digest certain foods but we are unaware. It also says that you should drink 1L of water for every 50lbs of bodyweight.

Just wondering if anyone has tried this diet? How did it go? Was it as good as they seem to claim?

I haven't heard of this, but it seems very interesting and worth a try. There are some really harmful things we put in our body, and since everyone is different, this seems like a good plan to see what your body can take. My only fear is that if you do this, you may have to come to terms that your body can't handle certain things like sugar, booze, etc. which may not be welcome information.


Good luck!

It sounds similar to other low-carb plans, except they don't usually re-integrate

I would disagree. Most low-carb plans actually do re-integrate carbs, they just do it selectively - for example by avoiding processed carbs (Atkins and South Beach), or allowing carbs only at specific meals (Susan Sommers' plans, The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet).


As to elimination diets - the first was created by Dr. Albert Rowe in 1926 who eventually published a book Elimination Diets and the Patient's Allergies, published in 1941.

There are now countless variations of elimination diets (some more science and logic based than others). Before scratch-test and blood test allergy testing, elimination diets were the only way to diagnose allergies. Blood tests for allergies aren't very sensitive and are only available for a few allergies. Some medications interfere with the accuracy of scratch test allergy testing, and some make the test more dangerous (I'm on both kinds of medications, unfortunately - so elimination diets were the only way for me to discover my wheat allergy).

Just a point about the water this diet recommends. 1L for every 50 lbs of body weight, isn't necessarily safe, especially for people at the highest BMI's.

Water tolerance is largely determined by kidney size and function, and fatter people do not generally have larger and better functioning kidneys than thinner people. I learned this from a kidney specialist called in to treat my mother for water poisoning (because she was taking advice from her WW leader that dieters needed lots of water and that coffee and other non-pure sources of fluids "didn't count")

Among other things, the kidney specialist told us that fat people generally don't need much if any more water than thinner people. Smaller people might have smaller kidneys than larger people, but height would be better correlated with kidney size than weight. He also told us that "everything counts" except hard alcohol. Even coffee provides more liquid than it takes away (at worst, a cup of coffee is equal to a slightly smaller cup of water).

My mom (at about 210 - 220 lbs) was only drinking a little over a gallon of fluids.


Before drinking more than 3L/quarts of water on a regular basis, I'd recommend talking to your doctor about it. ESPECIALLY if you are on any medications or supplements at all particularly blood pressure medications and medications/supplements that might include or affect electrolytes (sodium, calcium, potassium) - or even if cardiovascular disease, kidney disease or high blood pressure run in your family. All of these can affect your fluid requirements and your risk for fluid-balance problems (including water intoxication which can be fatal by the time symptoms appear).