Dieting when You Are Sick

Dieting is as difficult to stick to as it is to start. Once you get yourself on the right track, you may feel like sticking to your diet plan at all costs. While this determination is admirable, if you become ill, you should pause your diet in the best interest of your health. Dieting can not only slow the healing process, it can actually make you feel worse.

Strict diets are often based on depriving yourself of one thing or another. This can mean abstaining from carbs, fats, or sugars. Your body requires a balance of many dietary elements to function properly. This is especially true when you are sick.

When you become ill, especially a sickness that involves symptomatic vomiting and diarrhea, it is very important that you remain hydrated. This means that the fluids that you need to regain your health may not be included in your diet. Many products that contain vital electrolytes also contain sugar. You should keep your fluid intake up, even if it means ignoring your diet until you feel better.

Vitamin C is necessary for healing, growth, and repair in the body. This nutrient is also an essential anti-oxidant that helps to fight many diseases and illnesses. Vitamin C does not occur naturally in the body, so it is important that you consume foods that contain this dietary nutrient. Vitamin C is found in citrus fruits, vegetables, winter squash, and other fruits and vegetables that may not be allowed on certain low carbohydrate diets. For the sake of your health, it is important to include Vitamin C in your diet when you are ill.

Comfort foods like pot pies, soups, even meatloaf may be the only things that you have any appetite for when you are sick. Depriving yourself of food when you are sick because it is not included in your diet plan will do more harm than good. In order for your body to fight the illness, it requires the energy that food provides. Starving yourself will only make you feel worse and may extend the episode of illness.

Along the same lines, exercise while you are ill can prove to be dangerous. The chance for injury during exercise increases when you are ill. Someone that is weak, dizzy, or is dehydrated due to vomiting or diarrhea should be resting, not exerting themselves. When you are ill, your body requires rest to heal.

If you are on a diet under the advice and supervision of your physician, check with him or her regarding your diet plan when you become ill. Your doctor may advise you to follow, or stop your diet for the duration of your illness. In addition, he or she may feel that it is necessary to test you for other, more serious illnesses.

www.webmd.com
www.nih.nlm.gov