I managed to pick up some sort of stomach bug a week ago. Trust me to pick something up when I go out for dinner for a salad. It wasn’t even a particularly nice salad…
At first I thought I would be able to keep working from home, but that became impractical when I found that I couldn’t even sleep through a night and felt lousy by day. So I used the opportunity to try to practise listening to my body. I had no idea what was wrong with me and needed to listen to my body to get it to mend. It probably had a better idea of what it needed than I did.
Food
So, what was my body telling me?
- I still had an enormous appetite and being shut up at home with food cupboards when you feel sorry for yourself and are on a cutting diet is, believe me, a special kind of hell. So my body still wanted nutrition and calories. I just needed to find the right kind. In particular I found I was craving fibrous and fatty things (nut butters on toast became an obsession I had to beat down, due to the lack of toast).
- Food was passing straight through the system (I have no idea how much nutrition I was getting from the food as a result of this) so the gut flora was out of line and needed (a) some assistance to digest food for a few days; and (b) something to help heal the gut lining.
- Liquid was exiting the body faster than I could put it in and I was getting dry skin on my hands and face despite all the mugs of hot water I was consuming. I needed to add some sort of electrolytes to my water intake so that it could pass into the cells more easily.
To resolve these problems I increased my fibre through various vegetables to give the gut something to work with. I also made sure that I still got my supplements and slightly increased my yoghurt intake (I use a natural yoghurt that is full of live bacteria and probiotics) for a couple of days to help re-populate my gut with the right flora. Finally, I took my time chewing my food carefully and supplemented with HCl tablets when I had protein meals to help my stomach thoroughly digest everything.
Unfortunately I didn’t have much along the electrolyte lines, but a small pinch of salt with the right potassium-filled nuts and vegetables (a few nuts here, some seeds there) as well as fresh lemon in mugs of hot water (lemon juice contains sufficient potassium to serve the electrolyte purpose) seemed to do the trick.
Exercise
What I found harder to do was to listen to my body for exercise. The last thing it seemed to want was just to sit and stagnate. I eased off on the intensity slightly but made sure that I still did something for my workouts, resting thoroughly afterwards.
By picking my times of day carefully, I found I could still do my main weights workout. Normally I would do it in the evening but I was strongest mid-morning and early in the afternoon. So I cut down on my assistance exercises, kept in the big lifts to get plenty of bang for my buck in a short time period, sandwiched the workout between two meals, and then took plenty of sofa-bound rest with the cat curled up on my lap.
Jake - my faithful companion in sickness (and in health?)
I also made sure that I got outside to soak up some fresh air with a slow and gentle walk at the end of each day.
You may consider this to have been over-exerting myself, but I felt better for getting the blood flowing around my body and I think it probably helped me to recover faster by flushing the toxins through the body.
After three days I was back on my feet at full speed.
Do you think I overdid it? What would you do differently?
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