When I Stopped Blaming the Food

There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately when it comes to gut health.

And it’s this:

We are often so quick to blame the food.

I know this because I’ve done it myself.

I have coeliac disease, and gut issues have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve spent years learning about digestion, gut health, nutrition and all the different factors that can contribute to gut discomfort.

I’m also a Master Holistic Health Coach.

So I know quite a lot about this stuff.

And yet, recently, I found myself in a place where I was experiencing some of the worst gut symptoms I’ve ever had.

I was completely gluten-free. I was eating whole, nutritious foods. I was being really conscious about what I was putting into my body.

And still, I was experiencing extreme stomach pain, bloating and discomfort from what felt like almost everything I ate.

My window of tolerance became incredibly small.

At one point, I was eating somewhere between five and ten different foods because I was genuinely afraid of what might happen if I ate something else.

I was constantly thinking:

Is it this food?

Is it that food?

Maybe I need to remove this.

Maybe it’s FODMAPs.

Maybe I’m eating too many carbohydrates.

Maybe I need to eliminate something else.

And slowly, I started to villainise food.

Which is a really easy thing to do when you’re in pain.

When you eat something and then experience bloating, cramping or discomfort, it makes sense that your brain starts making the connection:

Food = pain.

So you remove the food.

And sometimes that absolutely is the right thing to do.

But sometimes… it’s not the whole story.

Looking beyond the plate

One of the biggest things I eventually had to look at was how much my life had changed.

When I was a stay-at-home mum, and later working part-time, I was constantly moving.

I was running around after the kids.

Cleaning.

Washing.

Doing jobs around the house.

Getting up and down constantly.

I barely sat down.

Movement was just naturally built into my day.

But my life looks very different now.

I work full-time, and a significant part of my working day is spent sitting.

Yes, I still walk every day.

Yes, I still intentionally move my body.

But my overall daily movement had changed dramatically.

And that matters.

Because digestion isn't just about what you eat.

Your digestive system also needs to move.

In my case, I eventually realised that gut motility had become a really important piece of the puzzle.

I was going to the toilet regularly, so I assumed everything was moving through properly.

But regular bowel movements don't necessarily mean that your system is completely clearing itself.

My body wasn't evacuating everything as effectively as it needed to.

And suddenly, I had a very different perspective on what was happening.

Perhaps the food wasn't actually the problem.

Perhaps my gut wasn't processing and moving things through efficiently in the first place.

The fiber piece

This is where fiber became something I needed to look at more carefully.

During this period, I had moved towards a lower-carbohydrate way of eating.

Because I have coeliac disease, I already tend to be cautious about grains and gluten-containing foods, and because I was trying desperately to find foods that didn't cause symptoms, I had also eliminated a lot of other foods.

I had done the FODMAP approach.

I had tracked my food.

I had eliminated foods.

I had tried to identify patterns.

And in the process, I had unintentionally reduced a lot of the fiber-rich foods in my diet.

But here's something important:

More fiber isn't automatically better for everyone, particularly when your gut is struggling.

And fiber isn't one-size-fits-all.

Kiwifruit is a great example.

It's often talked about as a wonderful source of fiber and can be really helpful for many people.

But kiwifruit doesn't work particularly well for my gut.

So I had to look at fiber from a different perspective.

Instead of thinking, What is the one food I need to eat?, I had to ask:

What sources of fiber can my body actually tolerate?

For me, that has meant looking at foods like quinoa, buckwheat, lentils and beans, as well as things like psyllium husk — introduced thoughtfully and according to what my gut could tolerate.

And that has been a really important lesson for me.

Because there is so much advice out there telling us what we should eat.

But your body doesn't necessarily follow the same rulebook as everyone else's.

And then there's stress…

The other piece of this story was stress.

At the time, I was also experiencing a significant amount of stress.

And again, I knew this mattered.

I know about the gut-brain connection.

I know about the nervous system.

I know that digestion doesn't happen in isolation from the rest of our physiology.

But knowing something intellectually doesn't mean you're immune to experiencing it.

That was probably one of the humbling parts of this whole experience.

I could have all the knowledge in the world and still find myself sitting there thinking:

Why is my body doing this?

And that's something I think is important to acknowledge.

Sometimes we can become so focused on finding the perfect diet that we forget to look at the person eating the diet.

What is happening in their life?

How much are they moving?

How much are they sitting?

How stressed are they?

What is happening with their nervous system?

How well is their digestive system actually moving?

What has changed recently?

These questions can be just as important as:

What did you eat?

We need to stop making food the villain

I'm not saying food doesn't matter.

It absolutely does.

For someone with coeliac disease, gluten matters enormously.

Food intolerances and allergies are real.

Certain foods absolutely can trigger symptoms for certain people.

But I think we need to be careful about assuming that every digestive symptom automatically means:

“I can't tolerate that food.”

Because sometimes the food is simply the thing that gets the blame.

When actually, there may be a much bigger picture unfolding.

And in my own experience, I had become so focused on identifying the bad food that I wasn't looking closely enough at what was happening with my digestion as a whole.

My movement had changed.

My stress levels had changed.

My nervous system was under pressure.

My daily routine had changed.

My fiber intake had changed.

And my gut motility had changed.

It was all connected.

Your body is not a list of isolated systems

This experience has been a really powerful reminder of something I talk about all the time in my work:

Your body is a whole system.

We like to separate everything into neat little boxes.

Gut health.

Nutrition.

Movement.

Stress.

Sleep.

Hormones.

Nervous system.

But your body doesn't experience them as separate boxes.

They're constantly communicating with one another.

And sometimes the most useful thing we can do isn't remove another food.

Sometimes it's to zoom out.

Look at the bigger picture.

Ask what has changed.

And become curious about what your body is actually trying to tell you.

For me, that meant recognising that I didn't necessarily need to keep making my diet smaller and smaller.

I needed to understand what was happening underneath the symptoms.

I needed to support my digestion.

I needed to think about fiber differently.

I needed to move more throughout my day.

I needed to pay attention to stress and my nervous system.

And, most importantly, I needed to stop assuming that every symptom meant the food was the problem.

Because sometimes the answer isn't another elimination.

Sometimes the answer is looking at the whole picture.

And sometimes, instead of asking:

“What food is hurting me?”

the better question might be:

“What is my body needing from me right now?”

That shift in perspective made a huge difference for me.

And it's one I'm still learning from.