GERD Elimination Diet

I managed to buy enough of the right food to begin this on Monday. We’ll see how it goes; grocery shopping is pretty difficult right now.

What is an Elimination Diet?

An elimination diet is a diet you go on to identify foods that don’t make you feel good. Typically, when you begin you will exclude dairy, gluten, soy, nuts, eggs and shellfish, as these are foods that people commonly have sensitivities to. After a few weeks, you can start reintroducing other food types to your diet, one at a time. I will be doing this by eating two servings of that food each day for two days in a row, then not eating it at all for the following two. During this time, you are meant to analyze how that food made you feel. If you felt fine then it’s safe to continue eating that food. If not, you should avoid it.

You can read more about the reintroduction phase here.

The GERD Diet

People who suffer from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) often find their symptoms are brought on by certain foods. A typical GERD diet advises you to avoid the following:

• Acidic foods such as citrus, onion and tomato
• Chocolate
• Coffee
• Alcohol
• Mint
• Fatty foods such as anything greasy or fried
• Spicy foods

Supposedly, avoiding the above will help reduce or even get rid of GERD symptoms.

However, after spending the last month reading the GERD subreddit, I have come across many accounts of GERD sufferers who can eat some or all of these foods without problems. They instead may be affected by dairy or gluten, or almost any other food you can think of.

This is what brought me to seek a GERD-specific elimination diet. I don’t want to cut out more foods than necessary, so I want to know exactly what foods make me feel bad so that I know what to avoid.

The GERD Elimination Diet

It wasn’t very easy to find this information. There are many websites out there that will sell you recipe books or give you access to meal plans for a price, but very little detailed information for free.

The best resource I found was from a fellow blogger. I will relay the information they posted, as they have not been active for a few years and I’m worried their blog may disappear (and with it, all the excellent information). The original post can be found here, and I encourage you to check it out if you want to read more about this.

This is a food chart provided by their doctor.

Foods to Include	Foods to Exclude
Fruits: whole fruits, unsweetened frozen fruits, canned fruits, diluted juices	Citrus (oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, etc.) and citrus juices
Vegetables: all raw, steamed, sautéed, juiced or roasted vegetables	Corn, nightshades (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, goji)
Animal Proteins: organic chicken, turkey, lamb, and duck; fresh or water-packed canned fish; wild game	Beef, veal, pork, sausage, canned meats, cold cuts, hot dogs, shellfish
Non-Gluten Grains and Starch: rice, quinoa, oats (if gluten-free), buckwheat, millet, amaranth, teff, tapioca	Grains: wheat, barley, rye, corn, spelt, kamut, triticale
Vegetable Protein: legumes (beans, lentils, peas), protein powders made from hemp, pea, and rice	Soybean products (soy sauce, soybean oil in processed foods, soy milk, soy yogurt, tofu, tempeh, etc.)
Nuts and Seeds: almonds, brazil nuts, cashews, coconut, hazelnuts, pecans, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, nut butters (e.g. almond or cashew butters)	Peanuts and peanut butter
Dairy Substitutes: nut milks (almond milk, coconut milk), rice milk, oat milk	Milk, all cheeses, all yogurts, butter, cream, ice cream, eggs and egg products (e.g. mayonnaise), foods prepared with eggs
Oils: cold pressed oils, including olive, canola, sunflower, safflower, sesame, almond, flax, pumpkin seed, walnut	Butter, margarine, shortening, processed oils, store-bought salad dressings
Drinks: filtered or distilled water, decaffeinated herbal teas (without citrus), seltzer or mineral water	Alcohol, coffee and other caffeinated beverages, soda and soft drinks
Sweeteners: agave nectar, brown rice syrup, blackstrap molasses fruit sweetener, stevia	Refined sugar (white and brown), honey, maple syrup, high fructose corn syrup, evaporated cane juice
Condiments: all spices	BBQ sauce, ketchup, chutney, relish, steak sauce, teriyaki, etc.

I’ll add that onions and garlic (and related vegetables) should be in the vegetables to exclude list. The original table also had chocolate listed at the bottom but it appeared incomplete; I’m sure it was supposed to be in the ‘foods to exclude’ section somewhere. As per usual GERD diet rules I’ll also omit anything spicy. Otherwise, this is a pretty comprehensive list and I’m really glad I found it. I will be using this table as a guideline for my GERD elimination diet.

My Diet Plan

I’ll preface this by saying that I am not a doctor, and what is appropriate for me may not work for you. This is what I am planning for my elimination diet, and I hope it helps someone out there, but you should always take into consideration your own needs. Ideally you would discuss any major diet change with your doctor. I had actually planned on doing this at my yearly checkup, but that got postponed due to COVID-19.

I’ll begin my elimination diet on Monday next week. Towards the end of that week is when I’m supposed to stop taking my proton pump inhibitors, and I’m hoping that after eating like this for a week, I won’t feel too bad coming off them. I plan on taking one every other day at first, as I have read that is better than just stopping completely. If I were taking two doses a day, I’d switch to one first.

I’m going to try and keep meals to around 400 calories and snacks to 150. This is because it’s best to eat smaller meals to lessen or prevent GERD symptoms. I’ll track my macros too, primarily to see if a higher or lower carbohydrate intake makes a difference.

I plan on eating like this for 3-4 weeks before beginning the next phase, where I start adding other foods.

Breakfast

I plan on eating a lot of oats to replace the eggs I usually eat. I could not get gluten free oats due to COVID-19 panic shopping, so I will have to settle with regular oats. Oats are naturally gluten free but they are often processed using equipment that processes other grains so, unless the box is labelled gluten free, there’s a chance there are trace amounts of gluten. I don’t think I have a problem with gluten (I’m more worried about dairy) so I am hoping this will not mess up my diet. I did, however, manage to get gluten free oat milk. I chose oat milk as a dairy substitute because I can’t have soy for a while, and almond milk uses a lot of water to produce. I also tasted it once and thought it tasted sweet even though it was the unsweetened kind. I may have considered cashew milk too, but I ultimately decided upon oat milk because I’ll be pairing it with oats, so surely that will taste good.

Anyway, breakfast most mornings will be either sweet or savory oats. Sweet will have oat milk, maybe a bit of cinnamon, and be topped with fruit and maybe some cashew butter. Savory will have chicken stock and vegetables.

Lunch

I often have leftovers for lunch, and I will continue doing so. I’ll also make sure I always have some canned tuna or cooked chicken breast on hand so that I have some protein for when there are no leftovers. Then I can just add that to a salad or roasted vegetables.

Dinner

I was hoping to buy some soba noodles, as they are made from buckwheat, but I had no luck. If I find some next time I go grocery shopping then I’ll probably use them in a lot of meals. I also couldn’t buy quinoa. I did, however, get a bag of brown rice, so that will be my primary carb aside from my breakfast oats.

I think I’ll be doing a lot of stir-fries (with minimal oil) and sheet pan dinners. For protein I have chicken breast, lean ground turkey and fish–I have both salmon and mahi mahi in the freezer. I do also have a few cans of cannellini beans. I don’t really like beans but the white ones are the least offensive to me so I told myself I’ll try and work out a way to enjoy them.

Snacks

If I’m hungry between meals, I’ll eat celery or carrot sticks with cashew butter. I like them with peanut butter, and I like cashews, so hopefully I will like this.

Other snacks will include nuts and fruit.

Progress Documentation

At this point I am planning on posting daily about my meals and how I feel, but I may skip days if they’re too boring. If I come up with any recipes that I think are great then I will post them too.