Knowing what foods benefit your acne cond ition is a key step in
deciphering the messages of acne. The goal of doing an elimination
diet is to find out what foods your body can tolerate and how you
should organize your eating habits for optimum nutrition.

If your body does not tolerate a certain food, this does not necessarily
mean that you are allergic to it, it means that your body cannot be at its peak when you eat this food in excessive amounts.

Your body can givean indication of food intolerance with the following signs: gas andbloating, abdominal pain, headache (immediately, or even many daysafter eating the food), constipation, diarrhea, sweating, fever,
unexplained coldness, nervousness, excessive anger, fear, sadness,
pain in different parts of body, skin irritations, red or twitchy eyes,
muscle twitches, cramps, or tremor.

Basically, if you don’t like how
you feel after having eaten a certain food, you need to investigate
whether or not you can tolerate that food. Then you can choose to
eliminate it or only consume the food in moderate amounts.

You can found out which foods that you do and do not tolerate well by
using the following methods:

• Muscle response testing
• Intuitive choosing of food items
• Blood Type diet
• Elimination diet

Muscle Response Testing

Author Dona Edens, in her book Energy Medicine, provides an easy
muscle response test that you can perform practically anywhere. Just
stand as you normally would and lay your hands to your side. Hold
your hands firmly to the side as if to prevent someone from lifting
them.

Now, let someone try to lift your left hand. This will give you a
feeling of your normal muscle strength. Next, place a food in your
right hand. Again, hold your left hand to your side as if to prevent
someone from lifting it.

If you notice a significant difference in the
strength of your left hand, you may have intolerance for the food in
your right hand. Try this test on various foods so that you get a feel for how to use this method. It is fun to do while shopping for groceries as well.

Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating involves consuming what your body needs, when it
needs it. The aim of intuitive eating is to learn to listen to your body.
In this respect, you distinguish between feelings of thirst and hunger.

Also, if you have a craving for something sweet, you ask yourself do I
need a fruit instead or more carbohydrates (such as a bowl of bran
flakes). Essentially, you eat consciously, knowing that you are
nurturing a bodily need, not simply eating out of habit, stress or
boredom.

A person looks beyond the cravings with intuitive eating and
asks herself, “What nutrients does my body actually need right now
and what foods will provide these nutrients?”

Likewise, if you have a craving for potato chips, you may just need the
salt that comes from the chips. Your body needs minerals to perform at
its best.

You can get these minerals by using natural sea salts. So the
next time you crave chips, consider getting your dose of minerals by
sprinkling some sea salt on your favorite veggies or just drop a few
salts in some fresh water and drink up.

Keep in mind that an imbalance of the essential fatty acids omega 3 to
omega 6 can generate a craving for fats. So, if you eat a greasy burger
or another form of hydrogenated fat, you may feel hungry just an hour
or two later eventhough you have consumed hundreds if not thousands
of calories.

To avoid this excessive hunger, consume your essential
fatty acids in the form of salmon or veggies flavored with fresh olive
oil. This is an example of intuitive eating: it goes beyond the craving
to fulfill a dietary need.

Blood typing

The blood type diet works on the premise that people with same blood
type (O, A, B, AB) and same race (Asian, Caucasian, African, Native
American, etc.) respond to food in a similar fashion. If you wish to
further explore this method, I suggest reading The Eat Right for Your
Type Complete Blood Type Encyclopedia by Peter J. d’Adamo.

Elimination diet

The elimination diet reveals how your body responds to certain foods.
Using this diet, I discovered that I have an allergic type response to
bananas, and for years this was my favorite fruit.

To give an example of an elimination diet, I ate peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches for three days straight, along with various fruits and bread.
At the end of the three days, large bumps covered my entire face. All
of the bumps were inflamed, and appeared all at once.

So, I realized that I had an immune response to something. I had eaten the bread and fruits before with not acne outbreaks. The peanut butter was suspect because I had not eaten it in over four months. So, peanut butter is no longer one of my primary food sources. I may eat it once or twice a
month now.

Developers of the Protein Power Program, Michael R. and Mary Dan.
Eades, M.D.. estimate that most people only eat about 15 foods in their
diet.

Acknowledging that this number seems unbelievably small, the
doctors maintain that research and diet journals from their patients
attest to this figure. With this, it should be easy to perform an
elimination diet.

It only gets difficult when you discover that one of
your food staples is a source of acne aggravation.
It was easy for me to lay off the peanut butter after seeing how it
ruined my face with bumps. I’ve began eating several of my past food
staples in moderation for the sake of sparing my body from acne.

Now I eat less yogurt, tomatoes and bananas than I did in the past.
Combining knowledge from the muscle type testing, intuitive eating
and blood type made the elimination diet easier.

For instance, I noticed at one point that I was beginning to dislike
tomatoes. As a child, I would eat 3-4 fresh tomatoes a day when they
were in season because we grew them in our back yard.

Then about a year ago, I did not want to eat, buy or touch this fruit any more. My actions surprised me and I wanted to know why my body suddenly
stopped enjoying or even desiring one of my favorite foods from the
past.

Then I glimpsed through Peter J. d’Adamo’s blood type book and
tomatoes are not recommended for my blood type. With the results
from intuitive eating and muscle response testing, I found enough
reasons to depart with my dietary obsession with tomatoes.
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If you had not eaten in three days
and someone gave you a bag of chips that gave you enough energy to
walk to a grocery store, would you say that the chips were “bad”? No.
The chips gave you energy.

Food is a source of energy. If your body
cannot appropriately assimilate this energy source, the food is not
appropriate for you. The elimination diet is geared to help you
delineate what foods work most harmoniously with your body.

More specifically, with the elimination diet, you want to expose what foods
are acne provoking for you and moderate your consumption of these
foods.

To prepare for your elimination diet, write down all of the foods and
beverages that you typically enjoy in a given week. Make this list
thorough. You can do this by taking the list with you everywhere you
go for the next two weeks and write down everything that you eat and
drink.

Even write down how often you drink water so that you will
know if you are consuming adequate amounts of this liquid daily. A
sample chart for recording the foods you eat is given in the
Foods that I regularly eat list.

To illustrate, if I enjoyed a peanut butter sandwich I would record
“peanut butter sandwich” under the Food, “peanuts and hydrogenised
oil” as the Main Ingredient(s), “10” as Times Per Week, and “one
tablespoon” as the Typical Serving Size. I would also record the type
of bread with which I made the sandwich.

I would record “peanut
butter sandwich” under the Food, wheat flour as the Main
Ingredient(s), “10” as Times Per Week, and “two slices” as the Typical
Serving Size. Noting the main ingredient in a list will help you
pinpoint what foods trigger acne for you. Use tally marks to make it
easier to keep up with the “Times per week” that you consume a given
food.

Foods that I regularly eat

Food _____________

Main Ingredient(s) ______________

Times per week _____________

Typical Serving Size _____________

Once you have compiled your food consumption list, you can begin
testing these foods for an acne response. Using your intuition, if you
suspect that a certain food is acne provoking for you, use this food first
on your elimination diet. We’ll call this food A.

Eat food A two to
three times a day for the next three to four days. During this period,
only eat small portions of a variety of other foods.

For example, while testing food A to examine its acne provoking potential, eating too much of food B could skew the results of your test. So, eat a lot of Food A for three to four days, and small portions of Foods B-Z (e.g. nuts, vegetables, small servings of meat, fish, poultry, etc) at the same time.

If you develop more aggravated acne after this three to four day
period of eating mostly Food A, note that this food is acne causing for
you. Use the Putting your ideal diet together section to record your
response to foods that you typically enjoy.

Next, test your tolerance to the food that you consume second most
often according to your Foods that I regularly eat list.

Record your response to this food in the Putting your ideal diet together chart.

Repeat this process with the rest of the foods that you regularly
consume, testing the foods in the order of most consumed to least
consumed.

Author and beauty expert Aida Grey recommends avoiding the
following foods when you attempting to free yourself of acne:

• Iodized table salt
• Shellfish and saltwater fish
• Nuts
• Sharp cheese
• Spices and seasoning
• Pork and pork products
• Lamb
• Sugar
• Fried foods
• Chocolate
• Excess fats
• Alcohol
• Soft drinks
• White bread
• Wheat germ

These foods typically irritate the digestive and/or immune systems of
many people. If these foods are on your test list, you may skip the
elimination test for these foods and just consume these foods in
moderation.

But, we humans are different; your source of acne
aggravation may soothe acne for another individual.
The elimination diet is a centerpiece of zeroing in on dietary sources of
acne aggravation.

I recommend that you give serious consideration to
performing this introspective test. The next section will help you
organize the information from your elimination diet.