One of the things I love about leading classes is seeing the relationships that develop between women there. After a recent class, one participant asked me to forward this note of encouragement to another. I thought it was so helpful, I asked both their permission to share it here.
If you’re unsure, reluctant, or downright rebellious about making changes, maybe these words of encouragement are meant for you, too. 🙂
As we were talking at our last meeting, I saw a very familiar look on your face when we were talking about [an elimination diet], and I wanted to tell you:
I recognize that look of reluctance! I’ve made that face many times as I contemplated further steps on my health journey. I’m still making that face about some next steps! But I want to encourage you: they are steps. They are not the 5K.
Doing an elimination diet doesn’t mean you’re committing to “never eating sugar again!” (for example), but it’s a step. I’ve done 4 or 5 elimination diets over the past 6 or 7 years, and my experience with each one has been a little different.
If you’d told me a handful of years ago I would completely eliminate diet pop and sweet-and-low from my diet, I would have been hard pressed to believe it. Cut back? Okay, yeah, I started there and then decided I only needed diet pop with tacos or pizza. But it was after one of my elimination diets that I decided to stay off pop all the time. I could tell the difference in how it made me feel.
And when I did try a diet pop months later, it was horrible tasting! I don’t drink pop anymore, and I don’t miss it.
I still have things in my diet I want to cut back or eliminate, but what I want to encourage you with is this: an elimination diet is a great tool to help you know how you feel when you get rid of something you know is harmful (sugar) or perhaps to figure out something is harmful that you didn’t suspect (corn, dairy, artificial sweeteners, etc.).
The other thing I want to tell you: once I was convinced I wanted to do this, I waited almost a YEAR! I was dealing with some time-consuming and soul-draining stuff, and I knew I’d need bandwidth and time to do it successfully. So for me, that meant waiting until my project was behind me and I was out of school for the summer.
Finally, it really does help to have someone doing it with you! I didn’t have anyone doing it with me, but had family and friends who’d already been through it. Cheerleaders and guides are helpful!
All the BEST to you!
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