Dealing with dieting when you’re sick.

When I’m sick, I want to do three things:

1) Sleep

2) Whine and feel sorry for myself

3) Feel Better.

Dieting is not on that list. So when my throat is on fire and the only thing I want is COLD, I’m not jumping for joy at getting up and blending a blueberry kale smoothie. Nope, I’m hittin’ the nearest 7-11 for a coke Slurpee. Can you even imagine how many calories are in one of those?

I’m also not all about cooking. But this weekend I did it anyways. I whipped up a chicken noodle soup with chicken broth and egg noodles, seen here:

Then, I whipped up a veggie beef soup which was pretty darn tasty. (Recipe coming soon). It was a miracle that I was able to chop 6,742 varieties of vegetables without collapsing.

The problem with being sick is that I get a big old case of the “Fu$* it’s”. Exercise didn’t happen. Sleep didn’t happen. Hell, even getting the mail didn’t happen. All I could do was chug dayquil and nyquil and hope that I’d wake up the next day feeling better. This caused me to have some issues in terms of eating. I had a slurpee, I had an extra piece of garlic bread, and at one point, all I wanted to eat on my throat was ice cream. Thankfully it was only a mini size, but still. Sometimes you get the type of sickness where you’re not hungry, but with this cold I wanted to EAT ALL THE THINGS. Something tells me that was more mental than physical… am I right?!

“Who cares,” I rationalized, “I DESERVE this.” I would say to myself, while pondering stopping for frozen yogurt or making popcorn. What I need to do is remind myself that I deserve to be healthy. I deserve to shop in whatever clothing department I want. I deserve to not worry about airplane seat belts, rude comments, and riding elephants. I deserve to eat well, and feel well, but I also deserve the grace and intelligence to realize deserving a happy, healthy life means accepting some discomfort.

One of the things I really like about my PCOS Diet Plan Book is that there’s a little blurb about how with any type of diet, you need to accept that there is some level of discomfort involved. So many healthy eating books make it sound like if you just follow their simple plan, you’ll never be hungry, your skin will clear up, you’ll drop all the weight and you’ll find a Unicorn with money tied around its horn in your backyard. This book straight up says that the plan won’t be easy, but neither is anything in life worth accomplishing. I like that. Honesty, yo.

Thankfully today I’m emerging from my exhausting sickness and I have less of the “EAT EVERYTHING” mindset, but I know that the battle with letting emotion dictate what goes in my mouth is far from over. It’s something I’ll have to work on nearly every day, reminding myself that what happened at work or if I’m feeling sick or if my cat’s meow is extra loud is NOT a suitable reason to eat. Truthfully, there’s only one reason to eat… and it’s if you’re hungry. Honesty. Accountability. I need it.

What do you do when you’re sick? Are you as much as a whiner as I am and want to medicate with food? Or do you lose your appetite?

*There’s an affiliate link in the PCOS Diet book link. If you were to happen to buy it from that link, I’d make like 3 cents. Blogging is very lucrative, folks. Just wanted you to know so I’m behing HONEST. 😉