Nourish Your Body - When You Are Grieving
When we lose a loved one, it can be extremely challenging to find the energy or motivation to look after our basic needs. Eating and drinking can become a chore and we often don’t feel like food shopping, let alone cooking a meal from scratch.
Unhealthy eating habits start to creep in, such as skipping meals, simply warming up a ready-made meal, or eating lots of comfort food to fill the huge void in our lives.
Without intervention, eating mainly processed convenience foods will turn initial ‘grief symptoms’ into long-term physical or mental health issues. Why? Because these foods lack vital nutrients and fibre which are crucial for our health.
And when our diet lacks fibre we end up with frequent blood sugar roller coasters making it so much harder for us to cope with the emotional ups and downs of grief.
Start Eating a Rainbow!
To avoid such a double whammy, we need to include lots of fibre in our diet. The easiest way to do this is by ‘eating a rainbow’ and adding different-coloured vegetables to every meal we eat. Colours are a great way to lift our mood and can inspire us to get creative with soups, stews, stir-fries or even a Sunday roast.
Nourishing our body with high-fibre meals is one thing. Another is to make sure that what we eat can also be digested.
Grief triggers a massive stress response which hugely affects our ability to digest our food. Poor digestion is another reason why we can end up lacking important nutrients.
Simple Tips on How to Improve Your Digestive Strength
Sip warm water or herbal tea from a flask throughout the day. Our body needs sufficient fluids to process food properly.
Breathe deep into your belly before and after a meal. This will increase your digestive power by up to 25%!
Eat in a stress-free environment, ideally away from any screens, and chew your food well.
Chew a handful of fennel seeds if you have any difficulty swallowing or a heavy feeling / any discomfort in your stomach. This helps relax the smooth muscles that propel food along your digestive tract.
Eat no more than three meals at about the same time each day. Routine is key for good digestion.
Only eat when you are truly hungry. We often confuse thirst, discomfort, or our need for comfort with hunger.
Gradually reduce eating processed foods such as sandwiches, sausages, pizza, or sugary cereals. Not only are they difficult to digest; they also make you crave more food because your body is not getting what it truly needs.
Favour easy-to-digest meals such as stewed apples with fresh ginger, carrot soup with basmati rice, blended vegetable & red lentil soups, or any kind of slow-cooked stew.
Spice things up with digestive herbs & spices such as fresh ginger, garlic, fennel or cumin seeds.
Remember: Tiny new habits add up over time and will give you the momentum you need to make some more changes that will help you feel more vibrant and alive again.
To help you get started, here is a link to Sabine's free guide and top 3 tips.
Interested to know more about nutrition and grief? Here are a couple more useful links;
Sabine Horner talks to Karen Sutton (The Widow Coach) - a podcast on how you can navigate grief with more ease.
You might be interested in this book. Far more than a recipe book, it is a personal handbook designed to help bereaved people navigate their personal pathway of grief: Cooking for One by Simon Beckett-Allen.
About the Author
Sabine Horner is an AtaLoss Subject Matter Expert and guest writer on nutrition for bereavement. She is a fully qualified nutritionist, Ayurvedic health coach and yoga therapist. Sabine aims to help bereaved people who lack the energy, knowledge or skills to look after themselves well so that they can regain their sparkle and start to truly ‘live’ again.
Her mission is to raise awareness of the huge impact that emotional stress has on the whole body, not just the mind. Understanding the link between grief and our gut is key to adequately addressing the root causes of the wide range of physical and mental health issues we can experience after the death of a loved one.
Sabine is also passionate about the massive difference good food can make to balancing our emotions and mood. She draws on her own experience when she shares simple tips on how we can make small, sustainable changes to our daily meal routine that can help us navigate the turbulent, unchartered waters of grief with more ease. As the saying goes ‘Pain is inevitable, suffering is not’.
Here is how you can connect with Sabine:
Email: info@sabinehorner.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HornerSabine
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sabine.horner/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabinehorner/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCiLP_F0BdoTJ5Of5KLOFJQ
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