THE IPPF
CHALLENGE
Isolate Potentially Problematic Foods. Twenty-eight days. Take the usual suspects out, one deliberate week at a time — then bring each one back, alone, and watch what actually happens. Not a diet. Not a punishment. An honest experiment, run on a sample size of one, with the only subject who has ever really mattered to you: yourself.
Phase 2 · 21 Days
Elimination
Phase 3 · 7 Days
Reintroduction
A more focused cousin of Bite It, Write It — this one asks a specific question about five named foods, rather than an open-ended record of everything.
Section One
THE CASE
Five suspects, five honest pages. Read these before day one — not to be convinced, just to be informed.
Suspect 1 of 5
GLUTEN
The bread and pasta question
Modern wheat isn't the wheat your grandmother ate, and gluten itself is a genuinely difficult protein for a meaningful number of digestive systems to break down cleanly — even in people who'd never test positive for coeliac disease on a standard panel.
What I already suspect about this one — before I start
Suspect 2 of 5
INDUSTRIAL SEED OILS
The invisible ingredient in almost everything
Vegetable, sunflower, rapeseed, soybean — highly refined, high in omega-6, and prone to oxidising under heat in ways that fats your great-grandmother cooked with simply weren't. They're everywhere because they're cheap, not because they're kind to you.
What I already suspect about this one — before I start
Suspect 3 of 5
ADDED SUGAR
The one everybody already suspects
Not fruit, not the sugar that arrives packaged with fibre and water — the sugar added deliberately to make food more moreish. Repeated spikes, repeated crashes, and a sweetness threshold that keeps quietly climbing.
What I already suspect about this one — before I start
Suspect 4 of 5
CONVENTIONAL DAIRY
Standardised, pasteurised, homogenised
Not dairy itself — the industrial version of it. High-heat pasteurisation and homogenisation change the structure of the fat, and a meaningful number of people react to that processed version without reacting to raw or fermented dairy at all.
What I already suspect about this one — before I start
Suspect 5 of 5
ALCOHOL (Optional)
Include it if you're honest enough to
Already covered honestly elsewhere in this programme: no safe minimum, a direct burden on the liver, a reliable disruptor of sleep architecture. Most people already suspect what a month without it would show them. Few have actually let it show them.
What I already suspect about this one — before I start
You are not trying to prove these foods are bad. You are trying to find out — honestly, once, for yourself — whether any of them have been quietly costing you more than they were worth.
Being HAware — The IPPF Challenge
Section Two
ELIMINATION — DAYS 1 TO 21
All five suspects removed at once — not staggered, not gradual. A clean break is easier to sustain than a slow negotiation.
Section Three
REINTRODUCTION — DAYS 22 TO 28
One suspect returns per day, in a proper portion — not a taste, an actual serving — with the following day left clear to watch. This is the only way cause and effect stay legible.
Section Four
THE VERDICT
One plain question per suspect. Circle honestly — this page is the entire point of the exercise.
| Suspect | Verdict | What I Noticed |
|---|
| Gluten | KEEP · REDUCE · DONE WITH IT | |
| Industrial Seed Oils | KEEP · REDUCE · DONE WITH IT | |
| Added Sugar | KEEP · REDUCE · DONE WITH IT | |
| Conventional Dairy | KEEP · REDUCE · DONE WITH IT | |
| Alcohol | KEEP · REDUCE · DONE WITH IT | |
This page doesn't need to be dramatic to be useful. "Reduce" is a perfectly good verdict. So is "keep" — you're allowed to test something honestly and come out the other side still eating it, guilt-free, because now you actually know.
Being HAware — The IPPF ChallengeThe one thing I'd tell someone about to start this
SOME THINGS HAVE GOT TO GO — NOW YOU'VE SEEN IT FOR YOURSELF