Restricted Diet? Mindfulness Lends a Helping Hand

Do you have a restricted diet for health reasons? Do the very words ‘restricted diet’ conjure a sense of deprivation for you? Mindfulness could be just what you need!

A crucial aspect of mindfulness is self-compassion and self-care. If you’re living with a limited diet, as I do, then you need to feel nurtured on every level, rather than deprived. Mindfulness will help you self-nurture, encouraging any sense of lack to turn into a feeling of abundance.

My own journey has involved becoming dairy, gluten, sugar and yeast-free, forced on me because gluten and dairy simply don’t agree with me and because I struggle with candida overgrowth which means that sugar is a no-no.

I’ve had to acknowledge, with compassion, that what I was dealing with was a sugar addiction. It takes the tiniest bit of sugar for me to be right back there, hooked and craving. It won’t surprise you to hear that mindfulness is being used increasingly to help those struggling with addiction. Of the two books I’ve written for the Sheldon Press Mindfulness Series, one is on addiction recovery.

A breakthrough came for me when I realised it wasn’t about depriving myself of anything but rather nourishing and nurturing myself with all sorts of delicious, healthy alternatives. If we feel at all deprived, the journey is simply an uphill struggle and we won’t achieve what we’re hoping to.

For every food I needed to cut out, in time I’ve worked out wonderful substitutes. From being someone who had never so much as baked a cake, I’ve gone to being known amongst friends for my various tasty breads, cakes and puddings, all totally gluten, dairy, sugar and yeast-free.

The one thing that can still trip me up though is if my stress levels peak. Luckily, mindfulness is a wonderful stress-buster. Research has shown that mindfulness helps us cope with stress, leading to ‘a 58% reduction in anxiety levels and 40% reduction in stress’ according to the Mental Health Foundation.

The awareness that comes with mindfulness helps us spot early when our stress levels are starting to build so that we can take action to stop them escalating. It also helps us become more aware of the kind of situations that are likely to be difficult for us, times when we might not manage to stick to our regime.

On the rare occasions when I do slip up and eat something that makes me feel unwell, the self-compassion element of mindfulness steps in. Rather than beating myself up, I explore what the circumstances were, use it as a learning opportunity and nurture myself in some way. The result is that I get back on track much more quickly and easily. Often the circumstances involve something difficult or painful that I was dealing with, in other words, I need to acknowledge the suffering and be kind to myself.

To summarise then, there are several ways in which mindfulness helps us live with our restricted diet:

• Through the self-compassion and self-care that are inherent in mindfulness we can feel nurtured on every level rather than deprived of the food groups that are off bounds.
• Mindfulness is the ultimate stress-buster. Stress can derail us if we don’t catch it early.
• The awareness that comes with mindfulness helps us understand the kinds of situation when we might not manage to adhere to our regime.
• Mindfulness is being used successfully for those struggling with addiction, so if there is an element of addiction in our patterns around food, the research shows mindfulness helps.