I've been going through the elimination diet and wanted to summarize my experience for you.  I have been keeping a more or less detailed account of my journey on my blog, but thought it might help to condense it for anyone who may be interested in the elimination diet here. 

I was going to wait until I was a little further along, but I thought it might be better to give you my story now as January is here.  This is the second time I have done the elimination diet; the first time I started the elimination diet was in January right after the holidays, this second time, I started it Labor Day weekend.  It might seem a little cliché, but it was really easier to start the diet in January as opposed to Labor Day like this second time around. 

I would like to say up front that I believe the elimination diet is the best way to identify if you have a food trigger or if you don't have any.  Not everyone has food triggers and it can take up to 48 hours before a food can trigger you. 

Although January might have been the better month for me to start the elimination diet, I wouldn't change my Labor Day start time because this is when I came to the realization that I needed to try something different to help myself with my Migraines and I needed to do something as soon as possible.  I also felt that if I had developed some additional food triggers that I would need to try to identify them instead of to keep increasing or changing my Migraine medications.  I also needed to feel like I was doing everything I could do to help with my Migraines and trigger identification is a big step toward that.

I already knew I had food triggers as my first elimination diet was very successful.  Back then, I tried to do it as diligently as I could because I knew I would never want to go through it again.  However, since I had developed other triggers, I might have acquired new food triggers over this time as well and this was the best way to find out. 

When I started the elimination diet, I decided to do a full diet where I went down to a basic diet with foods that are not known to be big food triggers instead of eliminating one food group at a time and then adding back one food in that group at a time before moving onto another food group.  I ate the same basic diet for six weeks before adding back in any new foods.  I have to tell you that it helped a lot having the support of friends and also of my on-line friends to make it through this time.  After a while, it became real tough eating the same thing every day even if I had something different for the three meals of each day and a snack that I could have in between. 

The first four weeks I was on this elimination diet, I didn't see much of a difference in the reduction of my Migraines, but I had other signs that let me know I was doing the right thing.  During each of these weeks, I was faced with unavoidable triggers, but I did notice other symptoms had gone away. I wasn't as dizzy, light headed and my face was only numb once during that first week.  These were great improvements from where I was before I cut back my diet.  By the fifth and sixth weeks, my Migraines were greatly reduced and I was ready to start adding one new food a week back into my diet.