Why Do the AIP Elimination Diet for Autoimmunity?

There’s a good chance that you’re regularly eating something that doesn’t agree with your autoimmune disease. Certain foods might be making you tired, causing you to feel extra emotional, hurting your ability to concentrate, or causing pain in places like your digestive system, joints, and skin. Each time you put a particular food into your body, it has the potential to have a negative effect on your mind or body.

Everyone is different, so there are no hard and fast rules. Here’s the deal: You’ll need to become a bit of a detective to find the culprits.

Here’s the good news: there’s a protocol specifically for all of the above, and it’s called the Paleo AIP!

why do the aip elimination diet for autoimmunity

Who is an Elimination Diet For?

It’s my humble opinion that everyone, regardless of having an autoimmune diagnosis or not, should give an elimination diet a try at some point in their lives! Until we’ve eliminated (and then later, strategically reintroduced) certain foods and food groups, we may not realize how awful or bogged down we were actually feeling this whole time!

Think of elimination diets like the AIP as a “lifting of the fog of inflammation” for your food intolerances. Once you have been able to wave that proverbial fog away, you’ll have a level of clarity around foods and your symptoms that you never felt before!

You may realize in this new state of anti-inflammation that this whole time you’d been feeling a lot worse than you thought you were. If you’ve been eating the “wrong” foods for you your entire life, you didn’t know any differently until now.

What Can I Expect as a Result of an Elimination Diet like the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol?

Greater health, energy, and mental clarity might be as easy as eliminating a couple of foods from your diet. It’s definitely worth the time and effort!

Try these ideas to find the foods that are causing more harm than good:

1. Avoid the most common culprits for a minimum of four weeks.

These include dairy, soy, gluten, nuts, eggs, and others that you may not have thought of as “inflammation-instigators” like alcohol, seeds, nightshades, grains, beans, and calorie-free sweeteners.

Find out more about the elimination phase of the AIP in this post!

2. Add in nutrient-dense foods to fill in the new gaps.

If you’re wondering what you still CAN eat, there are plenty of options!

Grass fed meats
Wild-caught seafood
Pastured poultry
Pastured pork (hello, bacon!)
Organ meats
Most vegetables and fruits (except nightshades)
Bone broth
Healthy fats (like coconut oil, olives, and avocados)

3. Document, document, document

During the four weeks, document in a journal how you feel throughout the elimination process. It’s also good to take note of how you felt before you started and at the end of the elimination, then make that comparison as well.

About 30 days is the magic number. That’s how long it takes the antibodies your body has produced to initially “settle down,” and this is the point where many begin to feel a notable sense of clarity around symptoms and foods.

Some examples of clues you’ll want to note in your journal:

PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS. These can include, but are not limited to:
Headaches, stomach pain, fatigue, insomnia, restlessness, poor concentration, pallor, skin changes, digestive changes, or more
EMOTIONAL SYMPTOMS. While these may be little harder to notice, you may feel:
Anxious, bored, mad, sad, scattered, restless, irritable, agitated, or more
This process is not just about the negative, either! You’ll also want to note positive physical symptoms and positive emotional responses like:
Bright eyes, hunger, stamina, natural deep breathing, confidence, excitement, and energy or more

What Happens After the 30 Days?

This is when many people choose to begin the reintroduction process. This is when you add one food back into your diet at a time. For the Paleo AIP, there is a specific sequence of foods and food types that you follow for this process.

This is done in stages, starting with the foods which are the least likely to cause a an inflammatory response (like egg yolk, seed spices, and cocoa powder) and proceeding until you have attempted to reintroduce the foods most likely to cause an inflammatory response (like hot chili peppers, gluten-free grains, and beans).

*In the near future, I’ll write a follow up post with further details about how to reintroduce foods during the reintroduction process and link to it here as a resource for you!