Eating Well for Women with Autoimmune Diseases
This message is for those of you trying to heal your body from disease, improve your gut health, or boost your energy levels. If you’re worried about how you’re eating, particularly because you are highly aware of the potential for food to heal or harm, then keep reading.
As someone who has grappled with chronic illness, specifically an autoimmune disease for decades, I understand the complex relationship between food, healing, and body image. There’s more to food than the simple nutritional value.
Having used food as medicine, food for comfort, and everything in between, I want to share some insights from my journey that might help you navigate this challenging terrain.
- In this article -
The “romance and the fall”
The stress of food worry
The biopsychosocial approach to low-energy
Putting food in its proper place
Diversifying your diet and mindset
Practical steps forward
The “romance and the fall”
In my experience with Crohn's disease, eczema, and other chronic inflammatory and autoimmune conditions, I often found myself caught in a cycle I call "the romance and the fall." It would start with eliminating potentially problematic foods and embracing a diet rich in vegetables and other "healing" foods. Initially, I'd feel fantastic - even euphoric. But inevitably, whether a week or several months later, I'd "fall off the wagon."
Feeling terrible about my perceived lack of commitment, symptoms would return (if they hadn't already returned before falling off the wagon). How long I avoided foods was never clearly correlated with symptoms, although that initial romance period always had me coming back to elimination diets and avoiding certain things.
This pattern left me feeling like a failure, grappling with returned symptoms and a sense of lost control. What I didn't understand then was that this cycle was a natural response to restriction. Our bodies, fearing another "famine," trigger compensatory eating. Psychologically, the "what the hell" effect kicks in once we perceive we've failed, leading to emotional eating.
It's ironic I thought going on highly restrictive diets intended to heal my symptoms could ever be healing when it was so rough on my body and mind.
The stress of food worry
Ironically, my intense focus on food with both the ability to harm or heal me was adding fuel to the fire of my chronic illness. The stress of constantly analyzing and controlling my diet was likely contributing to my inflammatory state.
While it felt like something I could control amidst the chaos of chronic illness, I know it served as a coping mechanism. My thinking was that I couldn't trust my body, but I could at least control what I ate, and it served to help me feel safe.
Looking back, I realize this hyper-focus on food was a misallocation of energy. My time would have been better spent addressing other aspects of my life that were draining my energy and some of the underlying contributors to my disease state, such as the poor fit job that I stayed in far too long.
The biopsychosocial approach to low-energy
Low energy isn't just about what we eat. It's about how we allocate our resources across all aspects of our lives. By fixating on food, I was ignoring my emotions, beliefs, and relationships, and giving zero consideration to creating the conditions in my environment that could support me better. Our bodies respond not just to what we eat, but to our thoughts and the conditions we create in our lives.
From a manifestation perspective, being terrified of food’s potential to harm you is a distorted use of our ability to create. It's a misguided use of vision, intention, and directing the body to respond in the negative. Our vision needs to be redirected towards what we actually want to create in the positive, not overly focused on food as the thing that will save you or harm you.
From a clinical and conventional medicine perspective, social determinants of health provide evidence-based data to support that the creation of individual health is multifaceted and the complex interplay of individual behaviors, social circumstances, genetics and biology, medical care, and geography or environment. It goes way beyond just the food.
Putting food in its proper place
Eventually, I learned to stop restricting my diet in the name of health (and secretly hoping for weight loss). I realized that while nutrition is important, it's not the sole answer to complex health issues like Crohn's disease, Hashimoto's, or Rheumatoid arthritis. It's crucial to seek proper medical care and not shoulder the entire burden of healing yourself through diet alone.
Part of what kept me stuck in the pattern of turning to food, diet, and lifestyle as medicine for so long like I did is the fact that I couldn’t see the part that Western medicine could play in my healing because I felt so dismissed and there were very little answers for the autoimmune conditions that affect predominantly females and had less research and treatment options than the main diseases we always hear about like diabetes, heart disease, etc.
In my experience of spending years making my diet smaller and smaller, it never really helped. My story was one of taking something that could be potentially helpful, noticing how your body reacts to foods, to an unhealthy extreme. Each time I would have a flare, I felt stuck because I was eating very little variety of foods that I deemed safe and was afraid to add foods back in. My quality of life went down even further with the restrictions on top of my symptoms. For me, it really retriggered old disordered eating behaviors.
I have told every woman I know who tells me about terrible gut issues that they need to get this checked out legitimately by a doctor, get tested, and get meds or treatment to actually feel better in addition to whatever feels empowering to you to shift or change in your life from a holistic perspective.
Diversifying your diet and mindset
As I worked to expand my diet, I embraced some key perspectives:
People can get sick even with a "perfect" diet.
Health isn't entirely in our control.
Nutrition science is still evolving.
Our beliefs about food can impact our physiological responses.
Practical steps forward
If you're struggling with similar issues, consider:
1. Challenging your food beliefs through controlled experiments.
2. Aiming for the widest variety of foods that feels comfortable and safe for you.
3. Reframing necessary food restrictions (like having a nut allergy or Celiac disease) as self-care rather than fearing the consequences of eating that food.
4. Rediscovering the joy and satisfaction in eating.
Remember, while diet plays a role in health, it's not the only factor. Over-restricting can lead to a decreased quality of life and potentially disordered eating. It's crucial to look at the bigger picture, addressing all aspects of your health - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
As you navigate your healing journey, be kind to yourself. Your body is doing its best to support you, even when it feels like it's fighting against you.
Your body has your back. Focus on creating a life that nourishes you on all levels, not just nutritionally. With time and patience, you can find a balance that supports both your health and your happiness.
Jayne Anne Ammar
