Is Your Comfort Food Making you Sick?
You’re feeling “blech.” It’s just one of those days when you can’t tell if you’re hungry, sick or just plain bored. Your body is giving you a signal and it feels like hunger. What do you grab?
It’s that food choice that is our go-to that just makes us feel better. But does it? Is it comfortable because it’s familiar, or is it comforting because it’s truly nourishing? I’m going to be the bad guy here and present a theory that just might make you want to click, “exit” - but WAIT! Ask yourself some hard questions first. What do you have to lose? Maybe a bad habit, some unwanted weight or even some health complications! Read on…..
It is like staying in a bad relationship because it is familiar and it is all you know, and it may seem impossible to leave.
It’s like holding on to a bad job because you cannot imagine anything better for yourself.
It is that feeling of a few minutes of bliss in exchange for hours or possibly days and weeks of discomfort. But here’s the thing….sometimes you DON’T EVEN KNOW how lousy your comfort foods are making you feel!
If you have a noticeable food intolerance or allergy to things like nuts or shellfish and upon eating them you become obviously sick, you wouldn’t put yourself through the misery of immediate illness just to consume that food because it tastes great, right? You wouldn’t think, “Oh well, hives don’t last forever,” or “I have an epi pen…..I’m sure I will survive,” and then take your chances! I highly doubt it, but consider some of the foods that you eat on a daily basis that aren’t necessarily causing immediate and obvious illness, but they may be making you chronically sick without knowing it because you aren’t paying attention.
Been there, done that.
I’ll share an experience I had with a food intolerance and it’s one that I found by accident . Several years ago I noticed that I was able to pinch an inch (or two) around my mid-section, which was very unlike me. If I gained weight, it was typically on my legs and butt. I decided to do an experiment and see if sugar was the culprit. At the time there was a lot of talk in the health community regarding the correlation between abdominal fat and sugar (yes, I know…..it’s common knowledge now, but not so much then.) I wanted to see if that was the case for me, so I decided to knock out sugar for 2 weeks. You have no idea how carb-centric this girl used to be. My day would start with carbs, and every 2-3 hours throughout the day, I would carb it up with “healthy choices.” Fruit of all kinds (2-3 bananas a day, every day was just one habit) along with plenty of bread, pasta, more bread, crackers, protein bars that had more sugar in them than a standard candy bar, beer, wine, and the list went on.
When I decided to give up all excess, processed sugar and even fruit, I was just a couple of days into the experiment when I noticed that my all-too-familiar-end-of -the-day bloated stomach, WASN’T BLOATED! WHAAAAT? That was my signature look! That was my standard feeling at the end of the day that became such a part of my life that it wasn’t even weird to me! I hated it, but it was all that I knew, so I didn’t really think much of it! A few days later, I realized that I was sleeping like a rock! I didn’t wake up several times throughout the night like I usually did, which at the time, happened so regularly that it was also my normal! Fast-forward 12 days into the experiment and what seemed like a magical experiment started to go south. My legs started to cramp in a workout and I thought that physiologically, my body was depleted of sugar and I was going to crash. Picture a flower wilting without water. That was the image I had. I was going to wilt without sugar. Hmmmmmmm. I ended the experiment 2 days early because in my mind, I was saving my own life. (Dramatic, I know….but I’m health-conscious, so I had to do, what I had to do. Knowing what I know now, I was likely dehydrated and needed electrolytes.)
Back then food intolerance wasn’t talked about much, but I did know that the reintroduction phase was pretty important, so I started with berries. Yum. They never tasted so good. I felt great. Then other fruits. Okay so far. Then bread. Dang. I could use the bloated girth of my stomach to measure the sensitivity to the different types of bread, pasta and crackers that I ate. Along with the bloated feeling, after I ate grains of most types, I would feel the need to sleep. That was another sign and symptom for me. Basically, I realized that I was intolerant to gluten.
So, what did I learn from my experiment? I learned that the excess weight came indirectly from sugar. It came from the intolerance to the food that I considered to be “healthy” for me, but it took on a whole new meaning when I realized that my body was going to battle every time I ate my favorite comfort food or when I grabbed from that basket of bread that waiters politely place on our restaurant table to “comfort us” while we patiently wait for our meal. I actually experienced a low-level flu-like state when I ate things that my immune system had to battle.
Although it didn’t happen immediately, I can tell you that my relationship with bread, pasta, pastries and baked goods has changed completely and I can honestly say that it takes no willpower at all to forego those once-loved comfort foods. If someone had told me to stop eating those foods because they made me gain weight, well….quite frankly, I’m sure I would have tried to figure out another way to lose those extra pounds, but FEELING the effect and doing my own experiments with my tolerance for those foods, has turned it into gift in knowing the cause and effect, rather than a burden. I also know that the weight gain isn’t simply about extra pounds, but about inflammation that is caused by my body dealing with the constant assault that I was feeding it. Today in this COVID world, the word, “inflammation,” takes on more meaning than ever before. The stakes are high. It’s time to put the fire out on inflammation.
So fast forward to today. I am still gluten-free and due to a blistering skin rash I am also dairy-free. Do I miss those comfort foods? No. I honestly do not. I do not miss the bloating. I do not miss the HANGRY feeling of blood sugar dysregulation. I do not miss the energy swings and I certainly don’t miss the blisters and rash around my eyes that disappeared when I removed dairy. I had my answer. I knew that if there were visible symptoms, I could only guess what kind of chaos was happening internally!
Signs of a food intolerance do not always show up as gastrointestinal distress. It may present as a skin rash, like the effect that dairy has on me. It could manifest as joint pain, hair loss, anxiety, depression, ADHD, fatigue, acne and the list goes on and on. I think it’s important to add that I am a huge proponent of eating the widest variety of foods possible. I would love to get the point that I can reintroduce some of the foods that I have not allowed myself to eat in years by learning different ways that foods can be prepared to make them more bioavailable and easier to digest. Sometimes it could be about how food is grown or stored that can make us more reactive. I am open to all the possibilities that may provide me with the widest options of food choices!
Food intolerances and food allergies are not the same. In this article, Chris Kresser offers a clear explanation regarding the difference between the two.
What does your comfort food really give you?