E= Eating Well
This post is part of the April 2024 A-Z Blogging Challenge.
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Today’s letter is the letter E
So many E’s Eating, Easy, Energy, Everything, Everyone, Exercise. All of those are words that come into my mind when I think of my journey with mental health issues and chronic invisible illnesses. Celiac, Colitis, and more.
Some will say “You just need to eat better” or someone else “You just need to get more exercise”. It all sounds so easy. Thankfully not everyone comments like that. When everything hurts and you have no energy you don’t need to be made to feel you aren’t trying hard enough. Days when you have a to do list an arms length long but wake up with barely any energy to get out of bed.
Then when you start looking at diets and nutrition everyone again has opinions. This one is better for you. Try this not that. It all just adds to the mental overwhelm. Just get up. Drink water, take your meds and wash your face. Don’t skip breakfast. With family history of diabetes I recently was enrolled in a group for prediabetics. It is called Nutrition as medicine. It starts with the basics, observing how much you are (or aren’t) moving around during the day. What are you putting into your body. How can you make better choices to give your body more fuel. Yeah its a good thing this is a year long program because I’ve got decades of bad eating habits to change.
I know in my head that if I cut back on the sugar, eat when I’m hungry not just because I’m emotional. Not giving in to feeling too tired, too much pain to try to do a few exercises approved by my physical therapist . And as I’m typing about sugar the lyric “Sugar Sugar Honey Honey” pops in my head. I don’t remember the song but its an oldie…
One of the lessons we had to do was learning to read food labels in making our food choices. Thankfully I already had this lesson due to my Celiac diagnosis. Its amazing how many foods have gluten hiding in them. Then there is the worry about cross contamination. Then I went on to develop colitis and well with these gut issues I really should be paying more attention and not letting my emotions rule my eating.
On this topic of eat better to feel better I need to take my own advice or words of wisdom. We all know that what we eat, affects our body via the gut and brain for better or worse. There are so many things that play into our eating. Accessibility, knowledge, habits and addictions. Both brain and gut health play a lot into our chronic pain, mental wellness and so much more.
The National Eating Disorders Association used the phrase “The Elephant In The Room” in a campaign to raise awareness. “The elephant was meant to represent the eating disorder, and the people in the room were meant to represent the people who are aware of the problem, but who are afraid to talk about it.”
