Tips To Rebuild Food Tolerance

Get a New Tip Each Week.

Rebuild Food Tolerance is an eight-week, self-reflection journey to make meaningful changes in how your mind and body react to food. The course guides participants through two phases – 1) fostering body and food trust and 2) food reintroduction.

Fostering Body and Food Trust

In the Rebuild Food Tolerance course, you can choose from 14 strategies (Weeks 1 and 2) to create an individualized plan to foster food and body trust (i.e., soften hypervigilance). I’ve summarized six of the strategies below.

It is challenging to apply critical thinking during a symptom flare (or shortly after). When you feel desperate for answers, misleading/sensational messages sound believable, and you are more likely to make impulsive changes. If you want to research, wait until your mindset has settled, and intentionally choose your next steps.

When stuck in the C-FAST cycle, your life can be consumed by deciding what to eat. Ironically, these thoughts keep you stuck. Interrupt this cycle by writing a trusted food list. Follow the list for a set time (e.g. 1 – 2 weeks), then evaluate/adjust your list. If your mind starts its typical commentary (e.g., Maybe I should try carrots again?), say, “STOP; I am following my trusted food list without second guessing it.”

If you suspect a food trigger, do not automatically eliminate it. Instead:

  • Record your suspicion on scrap paper. Include the day, food, suspected symptoms and time interval between food and symptoms.
  • Put the paper in an envelope and try to let go of the suspicion.
  • Keep eating the food (unless it was a severe reaction).
  • When you have several scraps of paper, review your suspicions to see if there is a pattern. Your symptoms are probably unrelated to specific foods if they are random.

If you write in a journal (versus a scrap of paper), you will reread and reinforce your previous suspicions every time you open the journal.

Food is the only trigger we can monitor and control. Therefore, we tend to over-focus on food when searching for symptom triggers. Food may be the cause, but stepping back and considering other triggers is helpful. Food should be innocent until proven guilty!

Many people get stuck in the avoidance trap and restrict their diet for years – without reflecting and questioning if the restrictions are still necessary. Our bodies and food tolerances continuously change. Be curious!

Neuroplasticity is the ability to modify your automatic nervous system pathways (i.e., changing the unconscious pathways that lead to conditioned food avoidance and sensitivity).

Give this a try! Choose a food(s) that you would like to better tolerate. Relax with a few gentle, slow breaths. Imagine yourself in a happy environment (e.g., a relaxed picnic) and eating the food(s) as part of a delicious meal. Experience how the food tastes and feels in your mouth. Use all your senses. You may feel some anxiety when your hypervigilant nervous system presses the panic button, but take some gentle breaths and remind yourself that these foods are safe.

Food Reintroduction

Before expanding your diet, talk with your doctor about safety precautions. Do not reintroduce medically diagnosed restrictions (e.g., those related to celiac disease, anaphylaxis, etc.).   

When caught in the C-FAST Cycle, people usually reintroduce food haphazardly – which can reinforce and intensify food sensitivity. An intentional plan with gradual and systematic exposure is a better approach.  

The Rebuild Food Tolerance course provides expert guidance for developing a practical, individualized diet expansion plan. Here are a few of our strategies from Weeks 4 and 5.

Gradual reintroduction helps your mind and body develop tolerance.

Conditioned food sensitivity happens when our mind and body perceive food as a threat. Environmental reintroduction (such as looking at or touching the food) is a gentle way to start and can help reassure your nervous system that the food is safe.

Mix a small amount of new food into something you already tolerate (e.g., smoothie). Your nervous system may associate the new food with the tolerated one and see that it is not a threat.

Perceptions impact how we react to food, and blinding eliminates this bias. Blinded challenges can be a lot of work, but the clarity is worth it.

Give this a try! Ask a helper to prepare two recipes, one with the food you are testing and one without, labelling them as A or B. Eat “A” for one week, wait a few days, and eat “B” for one week. When you are finished, ask your helper which was the test food and compare your symptoms.

Previous Lesson
Back to Course
Next Lesson