The second pillar is diet. When people think of the word “diet,” they almost always associate it with “restrictive eating” and “weight loss.”

Real health and true gut healing never aim for weight loss. A gut-healing diet, I’d argue, is not a lifelong “diet” if any sort of restriction or elimination is involved. There is nothing about avoiding complete categories of food I want to do for the rest of my life. You shouldn’t either.

But if you want to heal for good, then that might mean some version of an elimination diet for a period of time while you repair and rebuild yo...