I’ve been following a paleo-esque diet for a while now. Regular readers know that my diet is the love child of the Jaminets’ PHD and Tim Ferriss’ SCD: I eat PHD most of the week, and once a week, I eat whatever I like.
This has been working very well for me, but I have been itching for a while to go basic and do an elimination diet to see if I notice any difference. Doing a Whole 30 or a 21-day sugar detox or a junk-free January might have been easy, but no, I have to complicate things. Instead, I’m going to do a Mat Lalonde-inspired approach for Lent.
Now, I’m not particularly religious (I think the official term is “lapsed”) and I gave up giving up things for Lent a long time ago. But since starting on January 1 didn’t work out (more about that some other time) using the 46 days of Lent just feels comfortable to me. And because I’m only planning to do what’s essentially an elimination diet once, doing it for a little longer than a month feels okay too.
Part of the motivation for doing this this way was watching Mat Lalonde’s Science of Nutrition - The Basics workshop over the last few weeks. And part has been just wanting to see if I actually noticed any difference (especially in my aching joints) if I really eliminated all NADs.
So, starting Wednesday, I’m doing my version of hard-core and will be eating meat, veggies, and tubers. No wheat, no rice, no dairy, no artificial sweeteners (I’ll miss you stevia!). For meat, my regular go-to’s during the week will be grass-fed beef and beef liver, tuna, salmon and turkey. I’m going to finish up the pastured eggs in the fridge this week and after that, I’m going egg-free too.
Veggie-wise I’m going to eat Dr. Wahl’s recommended veggies (greens, sulfur-containing veggies like broccoli and cauliflower, and lots of colors … especially nice orange sweet potatoes) as well as some cultured veggies. I plan to avoid nightshades (white potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers).
Lalonde is okay with some fruits, but since they aren’t in season and fruits have never been my thing, I probably won’t do much more than some frozen wild blueberries once in a while. But I am going to include a small number of supplements (two of which are really foods): magnesium, fermented cod liver oil and butter oil. And I’ll continue to use a little vinaigrette from macadamia nut oil and apple cider vinegar along with my regular go-to spices.
If I learn anything interesting, I’ll be sure to share!
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health & food policy. And cats! 
Looking forward to seeing what you find. I did a strict auto-immune diet for 30 days last year, pretty similar, meat, seafood, organ meats, veggies, tubers, and fruit only. I’m eating the veggies as per Wahls now.
I love experiments!
Hmm, you’re starting to inspire me to do something similar. I’d been doing really well, but now I’m getting back to aching feet, sore back and a bit of bloating. I need to drop the nightshades, I think - too much ‘slippage’ over the summer.