Here’s what to include in your post-COVID-19 diet

Once you’ve recovered from COVID-19 and are out of quarantine, your body needs strengthening for quick healing

Ask anybody who has gone through the suffering and stress of COVID infection in the last 18 months; the common thread of complaints that emerges from their post-recovery experience is all about fatigue, weakness, and the loss of energy, appetite, strength, muscle mass and weight. The road to complete recovery from COVID-19 is tiring. Besides sleep and rest, eating healthy is an essential now to aid in healing. “Good nutrition helps your battered body build up its energy levels as fast as possible,” says Dr Kavitha Fenn Arunkumar, Madurai-based psychiatrist, referring not just to those who have suffered the sickness, but also those who have seen adversity through the pandemic. In fact, she recommends the intake of easy-to-digest food in frequent and small measures because the body and mind are both vulnerable and not in a condition to labour hard over three big elaborate meals. Dr Arunkumar receives three or four calls a day from those who have seen a COVID-19 death in their families and now during their own recuperation are finding it difficult to eat. “The food we eat should be easy and comforting to chew and swallow,” she says. She also cautions against emotional eating (feeding on convenience foods to satiate cravings). “It’s best to eat food that does not cause distress to the digestive system or any other part of the body,” she says.