The Habits That Help Me Feel Like Myself Again
Celiac Wellness · Postpartum Recovery · Daily Routine|May 2026
There's a particular kind of lost you feel when your body is changing on multiple fronts at once. For me, that meant navigating postpartum recovery while also managing Celiac disease - two things that don't exist in neat, separate boxes, but overlap in almost every meal, every craving, every moment of fatigue.
For a long time, "feeling like myself" seemed like a destination I couldn't quite reach. I had a newborn, a gut that didn't forgive mistakes, and a mind that was too tired to hold all the threads together. But slowly, in the most unglamorous and undramatic way possible, I found a handful of habits that genuinely helped. Not hacks. Not overhauls. Just small, repeatable practices that gave my body what it needed to come back to center.
"Nourishment isn't just what you eat. It's what you protect yourself from, what you make space for, and what you choose not to skip."
01 Eating for Gut Safety First, Aesthetics Never
When you have Celiac Disease, every single meal is a decision with consequences. In the postpartum fog, it became so tempting to grab whatever was easiest which often meant non-nutritious GF options or just skipping meals altogether.
The habit that changed everything: I started batch-prepping three or four safe, nourishing staples at the start of each week. This was a BIG part of my labor prep. My mom and I made all my favorite freezer friendly so when I realized I had gone all day without eating I had someting to grab that was going to fill my cup and energy levels. Not elaborate, not Instagram-worthy. Just things like her chicke and rice recipe, vegan-egg bites and GF lacation muffins. Having those ready meant that when I had 90 seconds and a hungry baby in one arm, I could still eat something that wouldn't wreck me for the next three days.
The Weekly Anchor Prep
Every Sunday (or whenever you have 45 minutes): roast a sheet pan of root vegetables, cook a large batch of rice or GF grain, and prep two proteins. This one habit removes the most dangerous decision point of the week eating while exhausted and desperate.
02 Rebuilding from the Inside Out Literally
Postpartum depletion and Celiac malabsorption are a genuinely brutal combination. Even when I was eating well and staying gluten-free, my body had been running at a deficit. Iron, B12, folate, magnesium the usual suspects, all quietly low.
What helped wasn't adding more supplements and hoping for the best. It was working with my naturpathic doctor to test, then target. I also started incorporating more naturally absorption-friendly foods: cooked leafy greens with lemon (vitamin C helps absorb iron), bone broth, and fatty fish a few times a week. Nothing dramatic, but cumulative.
The shift I noticed wasn't sudden it was the slow return of a steadiness I hadn't felt in months. The ability to walk into a room and remember why I went there. That kind of thing.
03 A Morning Anchor That Costs Almost Nothing
I resisted the "morning routine" thing for a long time because with a newborn, mornings are chaos by definition. But eventually I realized I didn't need a tiktok perfect routine, I needed an anchor. One thing that was mine, that happened before the day started happening to me.
Mine became this: wake up, drink a full glass of bone broth before anything else, then five minutes of quiet no phone, no newsfeed, no podcast. Just me, the kitchen light, whatever the baby's status was in those few minutes. Sometimes I added a short walk outside. Sometimes I didn't. The anchor was the fun drink I got to look forward to and the quiet. Everything else was optional.
The Non-Negotiable Five
Water before coffee. Five minutes without a screen. That's it. It sounds too small to matter, and then one day you realize it's the thread the whole morning hangs on.
04 Protecting My Body from Accidental Exposure
Managing Celiac postpartum meant having some honest conversations I'd been putting off with my own tendency to just not want to be the complicated one at the table.
I started carrying two or three safe snacks everywhere. I stopped apologizing for asking about ingredients. This isn't perfectionism it's the baseline that lets everything else work. Gluten exposure sets me back days, and in the postpartum season, I couldn't afford to lose days.
05 Letting Rest Be a Practice, Not a Reward
This one is still a work in progress, honestly. But I've gotten better at treating rest as something I do before I collapse, not after. That means sitting down to eat instead of eating standing. It means saying no to one social thing when I know I'm running low. It means taking the nap if the nap is available.
For someone healing from both the physical demands of new motherhood and the chronic inflammation that Celiac can create, rest isn't laziness. It's metabolic. It's when the body does the work of repair. I had to unlearn the idea that I needed to earn it.
None of these habits are remarkable on their own. They don't make for a viral post or a before-and-after photo. But together, over time, they've added up to something that feels like coming home to myself slowly, imperfectly, on my own terms. If you're somewhere in the middle of this, with a body that needs more than you feel like you have to give it right now: that's exactly when the small things matter most.