Your Specialty Diet Destination

With this tool, you can easily find the right items for you, including vegan products, allergy-friendly foods, non-GMO supplements and so much more. Your wellness journey is bound to have obstacles, but finding the right foods and supplements shouldn’t be one. On this page, you can also dive deeper into your healthy lifestyle by learning more about your specialty diet. Read recommended articles, find diet-specific recipes and view healthy meal plans on The Upside blog.

Why Try a Specialty Diet?

Many times, people will adopt a diet based on personal beliefs. This can be true for a vegan, organic or non-GMO diet (although these diets have merits for health as well). For others, a diet is adopted out of necessity based on an allergy, food sensitivity or other health condition. If you’re wondering whether you have a food allergy or sensitivity, consider the elimination diet.

How to Start an Elimination Diet

Food intolerances or sensitivities are common, and they can cause stomach trouble among other symptoms that take a toll on the body. If a food is the cause of your symptoms, this method can help pinpoint the culprit. Here are the basic steps to an elimination diet.

1. 1. Discuss your symptoms with a healthcare provider and ask if the elimination diet can help. Your provider may want to perform blood tests to see if you have deficiencies, and they may help narrow down the source of your issues.
2. 2. Based on the discussion with your provider, decide which foods you’ll be eliminating from your diet. An elimination diet should be tailored to your health history, symptoms, diagnoses and more.
3. 3. To get the most out of this process, it takes time. Follow the prescribed diet for one to two months.
4. 4. Starting on day one, keep a food journal. List what you’re eating and how you’re feeling.
5. 5. After all foods have been eliminated for the allotted time, slowly and methodically reintroduce the foods. You’ll choose one eliminated food to reintroduce three times a day for one day, then log any new symptoms into your food journal for the next 72 hours. Reintroduce your next food at least 72 hours later or when any new symptoms have cleared up. Repeat the process until all foods have been reintroduced, one at a time and in isolation.

The elimination diet takes patience and intention, but the rewards include becoming better acquainted with your body and your health. If you find that you’re sensitive to soy, gluten, dairy or nuts, the Product Finder can help you seamlessly adopt this new diet so you can start feeling your best.

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