Your AIP plan, step by step

How to Follow Your AIP Plan

Three phases: calm the immune response, find your triggers, then eat as broadly as you can.

The most important thing to know up front: AIP is not a forever diet. It's a short-term reset built for autoimmune conditions. You take out the foods most likely to provoke the immune system for a stretch, let your symptoms settle, then add those foods back one at a time to learn which ones actually bother you. Most people end up eating far more than the strict phase suggests. Your meal plan gives you the AIP recipes for that first phase, and this guide walks you through all three. Because AIP is demanding, it's best done with your doctor and a registered dietitian alongside you.

Phase 1 · Your meal plan

Elimination

At least 30 days, usually 30 to 90, and it ends when you feel better rather than on a date

Why your plan comes four weeks at a time. Every other program on this site has a length you can put on a calendar. This one doesn't, and pretending otherwise would mean either stopping your food while you still needed it or charging you for weeks you didn't. So it arrives in four-week cycles. About three weeks into each one I'll email and ask you the only question that matters here: another four weeks, or are you ready to start putting foods back? On the third cycle you're at the ninety-day mark, and that email says the program stops at the end of that cycle unless you tell me otherwise. The renewal is switched off the moment it's sent, so nothing is charged while you think about it.

For this stretch you eat only AIP foods, and your recipes and grocery list are built to make that doable. Thirty days is the minimum needed to see clear shifts in symptoms like pain, digestion, fatigue or skin, and many people do better closer to sixty, particularly with more than one thing going on. What tells you the phase is over is not the calendar, it is steady, measurable improvement. If ninety days have gone by and nothing has changed, that is the point to stop and work out why with your doctor and dietitian, rather than to keep eliminating. You remove the foods that most often feed an overactive immune response, and you lean on the ones that don't.

What comes out

Grains, legumes, dairy, eggs, nightshade vegetables (tomato, peppers, potato, eggplant), nuts, seeds, coffee, alcohol, refined sugar, and processed additives. If your doctor agrees, NSAID pain relievers come out too, since they can irritate the gut.

What stays on the plate

Meat, poultry, fish and seafood, non-nightshade vegetables, fruit in moderation, healthy fats like olive, avocado, and coconut oil, bone broth, and non-dairy fermented foods. It's more than it sounds like, and your recipes are built entirely from it.

What to do

Stick to the plan and try not to let hidden non-AIP ingredients sneak in. The usual culprits are seed-based spices (pepper, paprika, cumin), soy, and additives in sauces and broths.
Keep a simple symptom diary. A note on your phone is fine. Jot down your energy, digestion, joints, skin, and sleep each day. You'll want that record for Phase 2.
Mind the lifestyle side too. AIP works best when sleep, stress, and gentle movement are part of it, not just the food.

What to expect

Many people notice improvement within the first few weeks. If you've been strict for six weeks and truly nothing has changed, that's worth discussing with your dietitian or doctor before going any longer.

Recipes vs. weeks: the elimination timeline is about how long you eat AIP, not how many recipes you have to buy. Order what you'll actually cook, then batch and repeat to cover the weeks.

Phase 2 · The detective work

Reintroduction

One food at a time, at your own pace

This is the phase that gives you your answers, and it's the one people are tempted to skip. Please don't. Feeling better in Phase 1 tells you food is involved. It doesn't tell you which foods. Reintroduction is how you find out, so you can stop avoiding foods that were never a problem.

How one food is tested

Your meals stay AIP the whole way through. That's the background you're testing against, so nothing about your plan changes: what changes is that you add one food on top of it, in a measured way, and write down what happens.

Start with half a teaspoon and wait a quarter of an hour. If nothing happens, have a teaspoon and wait again. If you're still fine, have a tablespoon or so, then watch for two or three hours. After that, eat none of it for three to seven days while you see whether anything turns up late, because reactions often take a day or two to surface. Then, and only then, try the next food.

The four stages

The foods are grouped by how likely they are to cause trouble, gentlest first. Work through a stage before you start the next one, and only test the foods you actually want back.

Stage	Foods
Stage 1	Egg yolks. Legumes with edible pods: green beans, snap peas, snow peas. Fruit and berry spices. Seed-based spices. Seed and nut oils. Cocoa, chocolate and coffee. Ghee.
Stage 2	Nuts and seeds, other than cashews and pistachios. Egg whites. Butter. Alcohol in small amounts.
Stage 3	Cashews and pistachios. Peeled potatoes and paprika. Fermented dairy and cream. Chickpeas and lentils.
Stage 4	The rest of the nightshades: tomato, eggplant, peppers, chili. Other dairy. Gluten-free grains. Other legumes. Alcohol in moderate amounts.

Go one food at a time. The whole method depends on testing a single food in isolation. Piling on two new foods at once is the fastest way to end up unsure what caused what.

Phase 3 · The payoff

Personalization

Your long-term, least-restrictive way of eating

Now you put it together. Using what you learned, you eat as broadly as you comfortably can and only limit the specific foods that actually set off your symptoms. For most people that ends up being a short list, and it often comes down to amount and frequency rather than cutting a food out completely.

Living here

Keep your diet as varied as your body allows. Variety supports a healthier gut, which can improve your tolerance over time.
Tolerances change, especially as an autoimmune condition shifts. A food that bothered you this year might be fine later, so it's worth re-testing now and then.
Stress, sleep, illness, and flares all affect how you react. If a "safe" food suddenly bugs you, it isn't always the food.

If you'd like meals for this phase, just start a new plan and tell us which foods you're keeping out. We'll build around your personal trigger list instead of the full AIP restriction.

Please keep your care team in the loop

AIP is a way to support an autoimmune condition through food, not a treatment or a replacement for one. Keep taking any medication your doctor has prescribed, and don't change it based on how you feel on the diet without talking to them first. Because the elimination phase removes so many foods at once, there's a real risk of coming up short on nutrients, which is exactly why this is best done with a registered dietitian guiding you. And if your history with food has ever tipped into restriction or an eating disorder, a diet this strict may not be the right move, so please raise that with your provider before starting.

A dietitian's note

This is a demanding plan, but it's a purposeful one, and it ends with more foods on your plate, not fewer. Take Phase 1 seriously, don't skip the reintroduction, and keep that symptom diary going. It's where the real answers live. If your symptoms don't settle or the results get confusing, that's a good moment to check in with your own doctor or a registered dietitian who can look at your specific situation.