One thing we don’t frequently talk about as part of eating disorder recovery is the stomach issues that tend to go along with it. For many people, this can lead to a struggle to identify if cutting out a food is an eating disorder behavior, or something that truly makes their stomach feel better. (Falling in the category of “listening to our body”). Truth be told, it can be very difficult to distinguish between the two. So how do we begin the process of trying to distinguish between the two?

First thing it can be helpful to keep in mind is that often, it takes time, quite a bit of time, for our bodies to adjust to being feed properly if we have a history of restricting. That means, stomach issues can in fact, be part of the process of our body adjusting to being fed consistently. Additionally, if any of our dieting efforts involved eliminating food groups (as so many of them do), our bodies may take a long time to be able to be able to handle digesting the food groups we had eliminated without causing stomach upset.

This is not to say that there are never foods that just don’t work well for our bodies, but so often we are so quick to jump to that conclusion that we abandon eating the food/foods that with time, we may actually be able to enjoy. Eating a variety of foods is so important for the health of our bodies! Also, if we can be patient with the process, the end result is ultimately a less restricted diet, which makes for a much happier, healthier life!