Note: This account was written by one of our writers who tested a strict food elimination diet for 14 days. What follows is a firsthand account of the experience
My Experience With A Primal Food Elimination Diet
I decided that I wanted to try a food elimination diet to see if I could improve my mental focus, energy levels, and just overall quality of health.
Generally speaking, I usually feel pretty good.
With that being said, I have been known to suffer from some bouts of fatigue, brain fog, and a lack of energy.
I know—sounds pretty normal, right?
Who doesn’t suffer from some of these things?
Well, I decided to try a pretty extreme elimination diet.
I decided to try the primal diet for 14 days, which meant that I was going to cut out eating everything other than meat, eggs, fruit, honey, water, and salt.
When I started the diet, I pretty quickly realized that it had an overall positive effect on how I felt every day.
My body just felt better and healthier.
I had more energy, I felt less bloated, and I also began to notice some additional mental clarity.
It was obvious that something in my previous diet had really been playing havoc with these crucial systems in my life.
My typical day used to consist of foods like pizza, tacos, TV dinners, and some fast food here and there.
I also used to drink a lot of energy drinks and consume a moderate amount of alcohol.
Cutting these things out seems to make a pretty big difference in my energy levels every day.
I also noticed that I needed a lot less sleep while on the elimination diet.
Instead of naturally wanting to sleep 9 or 10 hours a night, I felt pretty good sleeping for 5 to 7 hours a night.
One really interesting thing about this experience was that I tried to reintroduce energy drinks back into my diet after the two weeks were done—and instantly recognized a drop in my energy levels and a resurgence of brain fog.
When I cut the energy drinks back out of the diet, these things disappeared.
The Conclusion
Performing this elimination diet really showed me that a lot of the foods I was eating just weren’t having a positive overall effect on my body and health.
Since then, I’ve decided to adopt the primal diet as a mainstay diet for the foreseeable future.
One of the downsides to this is that it’s a little bit boring.
You can only eat so much meat and fruit before those food items start to just get a little bit old and uninteresting.
With that being said, I’ve also lost a significant amount of weight while on this diet—without really engaging in any serious exercise, aside from taking a couple of walks during the day.
So all things considered, this has been a very positive experience—and one that I’m glad I tried.
