Recovery Diets and Food Phobia: Is a Restrictive Diet Affecting your Relationship with Food?

When we are recovering from a chronic illness, our relationship with food can take a bit of a testing.

We often associate food with our symptoms, which can often be the case, particularly if digestive concerns are present. But it is important to recognise that this is just ONE part of the puzzle, and not the whole story.

Remember that illnesses like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and M.E are incredibly complex and multifaceted, and therefore we need to look at the diet using a personalised approach, because we are all so biochemically unique.

What resonates with me on my recovery journey from ME / CFS was not just battling the chronic symptoms on a daily basis, but about the times that I felt I missed out on socialising, not being able to eat ‘this or that’ and join in the party like everybody else.

I was following an autoimmune paleo protocol, which removed gluten, dairy, and at one stage, most grains, and I would feel endless paranoia at having a dish ‘contaminated’ at a restaurant with trace amounts of gluten or dairy, feeling that this was going to cause another crash or onset of symptom exacerbation, because that’s what I was told by naturopathic practitioners. I was miserable about my health but even more miserable about feeling so restricted.

But really, it was the stress and anxiety around food getting to me. My nervous system was chronically activated in fight or flight mode, with cortisol and adrenaline being triggered to no end. We now know how much the nervous system is compromised in ME / CFS and so I learned how my relationship with food was so important to rectify.

Having since restored a balanced approach to eating and recovering my health, I believe that we need to be mindful of the way recovery diets can affect our psychology. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that I am anti-paleo, anti-vegan, anti-keto, or anti-gluten-free for recovery etc, it just means that we need to look at recovery through a lens of functional medicine but also with a slice of common sense and balance.

Yes, there may be certain stages within the recovery journey that you may need to be a little stricter with your diet, and that’s okay too. But having the knowledge that this is not forever is a powerful thing and understanding how to have a sustainable and healthy relationship with food alongside this is crucial.

We need to be mindful of food thoughts and whether we are becoming obsessive or overly anxious or phobic of foods. 

Food is for the soul just as much as it is a part of keeping our bodies healthy, so remembering this aspect is a crucial key for a healthy body and mind.