Elimination Diets
Find the Right Elimination Diet
Discover the Power of an Elimination Diet.
Elimination diets are one of the most powerful tools in functional medicine for identifying hidden food sensitivities, calming chronic inflammation, and restoring gut and immune health. This page outlines the most effective elimination protocols—each designed to support different needs, symptoms, and healing goals. Scroll down to explore each plan and click through to find the one that best aligns with your needs.
“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” ~Lao Tzu
Why Elimination Diets Matter
Food Affects More Than Just Digestion
Food is far more than fuel—it influences everything from your energy and mood to immune function and inflammation. But certain foods, even those considered healthy, can quietly disrupt your system if your body reacts to them. When symptoms like bloating, fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, or skin issues appear, food sensitivities are often at the root.
A Structured Path to Clarity
An Elimination Diet offers a clear, science-based method for uncovering which foods may be triggering your symptoms. By removing common inflammatory foods for a set period, then carefully reintroducing them one at a time, you create space for your body to reset. This pause reveals what truly nourishes you—and what doesn't.
Understanding Food Sensitivities
Unlike allergies, which cause immediate reactions, food sensitivities trigger delayed immune responses, often mediated by IgG antibodies. These reactions can take hours or days to manifest, making them difficult to detect without a structured approach. They quietly inflame the gut and immune system, contributing to chronic health issues over time. When triggered, food sensitivities stimulate the release of inflammatory cytokines, which act like alarm signals to the immune system. These cytokines can disrupt gut barrier function, amplify systemic inflammation, and contribute to symptoms like fatigue, mood swings, skin flare-ups, and joint pain.
How Inflammation Begins—and Heals
The Hidden Role of Cytokines
When the immune system perceives certain foods as threats, it releases pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β. These messengers disrupt the gut lining, increase intestinal permeability, and drive systemic inflammation—leading to symptoms that ripple throughout the body, from joint pain to brain fog.
Every Body Reacts Differently
Food sensitivities reflect immune dysregulation—not that a food is inherently bad. What causes inflammation in one person may be perfectly tolerated by another. Your microbiome, nutrient levels, digestion, detox pathways, and stress levels all influence how your body responds, which is why personalized nutrition matters so deeply.
The Gift of Food Freedom
The goal of elimination isn't restriction—it’s healing. By removing what inflames and focusing on nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory foods, you create the foundation for resilience. Certain healing foods—rich in phytonutrients, antioxidants, and essential fats—can actively turn down inflammatory pathways at the genetic level, quench cytokine storms, and help restore the integrity of the gut lining. With a nutrient-dense diet and the removal of food sensitivities, you'll discover that over time your body often becomes less reactive, and you can allow more foods back in. This is the path to long-term nourishment and food freedom.
“In any given moment we have two options: To step forward into growth or step back into safety.” ~Abraham Maslow
Basic Elimination Diet
Are you or your child experiencing eczema, digestive upset, headaches, fatigue, or brain fog that won’t resolve—no matter what you try? These symptoms may be connected to food sensitivities. The Basic Elimination Diet is a gentle yet effective starting point for discovering hidden food triggers, calming inflammation, and resetting your immune system. This approach removes the most common reactive foods, gives your body space to heal, and then guides you through a structured reintroduction phase to help identify what works for your body—and what doesn’t. It’s based on the principle that by reducing immune activation and restoring gut barrier function, you can dramatically improve symptoms and build a more resilient foundation for long-term health.
Full Elimination Diet
Could the toast you ate for breakfast bring on your afternoon headache? Could the milk in your coffee cause joint pain and brain fog? Could your healthy tofu stir-fry slow your metabolism? Yes—there is an age-old, powerful connection between what you eat and how you feel. Just as no two bodies are the same, no two diets work for everyone. The only way to discover your ideal diet is to follow an Elimination Diet that will help you link foods to symptoms and customize a diet that works for you. The Full Elimination Diet is a deeper, more comprehensive diet designed for those with complex, chronic, or unresolved symptoms. It removes a wider range of foods that may be contributing to inflammation, immune dysregulation, digestive dysfunction, or neurological symptoms.
IFM Elimination Diet
Are you experiencing lingering fatigue, skin flare-ups, digestive discomfort, joint pain, or brain fog that haven’t resolved with conventional therapies? These symptoms may be signs of food sensitivities and chronic inflammation. The IFM Elimination Diet, developed by the Institute for Functional Medicine, offers a strategic approach to uncovering dietary triggers. By removing potentially inflammatory foods for a period of time and then carefully reintroducing them, this therapeutic process can help you identify what’s truly nourishing—and what may be keeping you stuck in a cycle of symptoms. The IFM Elimination Diet is less restrictive than the Full Elimination Diet but slightly more restrictive than the Basic Elimination Diet, providing a balanced middle ground.
Anti-Inflammatory Diet
Chronic inflammation is at the root of countless health challenges, and food is one of the most powerful influences on whether we fuel it—or calm it. Inflammation can arise when we consume pro-inflammatory ingredients like fried foods, refined oils, processed meats, and packaged snacks that burden the body with oxidative stress. It can also occur from chronically elevated blood sugar due, which triggers a hormonal cascade that keeps the body in a state of internal fire. Additionally, inflammation is often driven by hidden food sensitivities—when the immune system becomes reactive to certain foods and mounts a response that perpetuates systemic symptoms. An Anti-Inflammatory Diet works by removing these triggers while restoring the body with nutrient-rich foods that turn off inflammatory pathways and initiate healing from the inside out.
Autoimmune Protocol
The Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet is designed for individuals struggling with autoimmune diseases, chronic inflammation, and persistent, unexplained symptoms that have not improved with conventional approaches. If you suffer from conditions like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, or other autoimmune disorders, AIP may help identify food triggers and reduce immune system overactivity. The AIP diet has a very restrictive elimination phase, followed by a slow reintroduction phase. By removing inflammatory foods and potential allergens, AIP gives the immune system a chance to calm down, heal the gut, and restore balance, leading to profound improvements in energy, digestion, and overall well-being.
Six Food Elimination Diet
Eosinophilic esophagitis (or EoE) is an inflammatory allergic disease that is caused by an abnormally high level of white blood cells (eosinophils) in the esophagus. This can happen in response to a food or environmental allergen. This resulting inflammation in the esophagus can create constrictions, making it hard to swallow. A specific diet, called the Six Food Elimination Diet, has been shown to reduce or eliminate the symptoms of EoE. This approach removes the six most common food allergens—milk, wheat, soy, eggs, nuts, and seafood—offering a targeted way to lower inflammation and support healing of the esophageal tissue.
Low-FODMAP Diet
When your digestion feels unpredictable—bloating after meals, rushing to the bathroom, or simply feeling exhausted no matter what you eat—it’s easy to feel discouraged, or even defeated. But these symptoms are not your destiny. They are signals—signposts from your body asking for support, clarity, and healing. The Low-FODMAP Diet offers a structured and science-backed way to uncover what foods are triggering your symptoms. It’s a therapeutic approach designed to reduce digestive discomfort, calm inflammation, and restore balance to your gut microbiome. Whether you’re navigating IBS or simply feeling off in your gut, this journey can be the beginning of deep and lasting transformation—one that reconnects you to the joy of eating.
Low-Histamine Diet
Clusters of seemingly unrelated symptoms—such as migraines, hives, brain fog, nausea, and insomnia—may be connected by a common thread: histamine intolerance. Histamine is a naturally occurring compound found in some foods and produced by immune cells in the body. Normally, the enzyme diamine oxidase (DAO) helps break down excess histamine in the gut. But for those with low DAO activity—due to genetics, gut damage, or inflammation—histamine can build up and trigger widespread symptoms. A Low-Histamine Diet offers a therapeutic way to reduce symptoms and support healing. By focusing on fresh, unprocessed foods that are low in histamine and avoiding those that release or block DAO, many people notice improvement within days.
Join Nourishing Meals®
Get Elimination Diet Recipes and Meal Plans.
Starting an elimination diet requires careful planning and consistency. It can feel overwhelming at first, but with the right tools and guidance, it becomes so much easier to stay on track and enjoy the journey. With a Nourishing Meals® membership, you’ll gain access to hundreds of elimination diet-friendly recipes, pre-made meal plans, shopping lists, and meal planning tools designed to take the stress out of doing an elimination diet.