If you’re interested in health and nutrition and want to fully optimise your overall health and performance, you may have come across the term “modified elimination”. It can be somewhat confusing as it is often used in relation to allergies and intolerances, so what is the modified elimination diet in relation to health and nutrition?
A modified elimination diet simply means that individuals eliminate pro-inflammatory foods from their diet alongside regularly eaten proteins. After some time, these proteins are reintroduced systematically. This process is done with the aim of reducing inflammation, improving the gut microbiome and improving overall digestion.
Read on to learn more about modified elimination diets and how it fits into our nutritional strategies at Human Health Hub.
What is Modified Elimination?
Modified elimination is sometimes talked about in terms of allergies and intolerances, however, that’s not what this blog is about. At Human Health Hub, modified elimination involves removing pro-inflammatory foods from your diet with the aim of reducing inflammation, improving the gut microbiome and improving overall digestion.
For us, modified elimination begins after The Clean Up; a simple nutritional strategy that takes food back to basics. We strip away ultra-processed, pro-inflammatory food and instead encourage you to eat whole, single-ingredient foods.
As part of modified elimination, we also recommend temporarily eliminating regularly eaten proteins, replacing them with less eaten proteins. After some time, these proteins will be reintroduced systematically.
The types of food that we often recommend eliminating include:
- Gluten
- Wheat
- Maize
- Barley
- Cows dairy
- Soy
- Alcohol
What is the Purpose of a Modified Elimination Diet?
Unfortunately, the modern western diet is not ideal for good health. Our diet is highly inflammatory and includes an overload of gluten, wheat, dairy and more. The idea of the elimination diet is to remove highly-inflammatory food and begin the process of restoring gut health and improving digestion.
In doing so, this rebalances the microbiome. The process starves the harmful bacteria in the gut of simple sugars and enables the good bacteria to repopulate.
Additionally, lowering how much inflammatory foods you eat down regulates the immune response and starts directing energy to detoxification and fat loss.
What Can I Eat on a Modified Elimination Diet?
We recommend sticking with whole, single-ingredient foods when on a modified elimination diet. This means cooking fresh food, from scratch with simple ingredients. As part of your plan with Human Health Hub, we’ll let you know what you should be eliminating and when. But, in the meantime, the below foods are always a good shout as part of a varied, healthy diet that limits highly inflammatory food.
- Fruit and vegetables
- High-fibre whole grains
- Legumes
- Monounsaturated fats (avocado, olive oil nuts)
- Polyunsaturated omega-3 fats (walnuts, chia seeds, salmon)
- Tea and coffee
- Herbs and spices (especially turmeric and ginger)
What Should I Avoid on a Modified Elimination Diet?
Likewise, we will advise you on what you shouldn’t be eating as part of a modified elimination plan. But, in general, we recommend avoiding, or limiting, the following foods:
- Sweetened beverages (soda, fruit juice drinks, sweet iced coffee)
- Alcohol
- Refined carbohydrates (white bread, pastries, cakes)
- Fried foods
- Processed high-fat meat (bacon, sausages, hot dogs)
- Saturated fats (full-fat dairy products from cream and butter, partially hydrogenated fats)
- Regularly eaten proteins (as advised)
What is an Example of a Modified Elimination Diet?
To help you get to grips with modified elimination, we’ve put together an example meal plan. Please note that this plan has not been tailored to an individual or specific goals. Additionally, this is just one of seven days – it will not work on its own. It is for example purposes only.
[Plan]
For tailored advice and an individual modified elimination plan, get in touch with us today for an initial consultation.
What’s Next After Modified Elimination?
The next step in The Clean Up at Human Health Hub is to take a deep dive into carbohydrate manipulation. Whilst some plans will have you completely eliminate carbohydrates, we understand that they are essential for achieving a number of health and performance goals.
As part of our plan, we tailor nutritional strategies so that there are high-, medium- and low-carbohydrate days in line with your goals. Note that this is typically more relevant to men than women, but there will be some level of carbohydrate manipulation in all nutritional plans.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about our services at Human Health Hub. We offer a free initial consultation where you can learn more about functional nutrition, sports nutrition, pricing, program structures and more.
