Woman who gained 25kg despite eating ‘healthily’ says she finally discovered why she felt exhausted every day

A woman who spent years battling constant exhaustion, painful bloating and unexplained weight gain says she finally feels like herself again after discovering several everyday foods she’d eaten for years weren’t agreeing with her.

Rebeca Rodriguez, 38, from Elephant and Castle, London, had gained around 25kg over the previous decade despite repeatedly trying to improve her health. 

She ate what she believed was a balanced diet, exercised regularly, worked with three different nutritionists and visited her GP on multiple occasions, desperate to understand why she constantly felt so unwell.

Instead, she was repeatedly reassured that her blood tests were normal.

“I knew something wasn’t right,” said Rebeca. “I was exhausted all the time, but every test kept coming back saying everything was fine.”

The sales director says her health reached its lowest point at the beginning of 2024, when even getting out of bed became a struggle.

She said: “There were days when I literally couldn’t move. I’d wake up feeling exhausted before the day had even started. Some weeks I barely left my flat because I simply didn’t have the energy.”

Rebeca said she had become so used to feeling tired that she almost accepted it as normal.

“I just thought this was adulthood. I thought maybe everyone felt like this.”

As well as the crippling fatigue, she lived with almost constant bloating and digestive discomfort, but never considered that anything she was eating could be responsible.

‘I thought it was normal to feel bloated’

She said: “I genuinely believed it was normal to feel bloated after every meal. I thought everybody passed gas after eating. It sounds ridiculous now, but because I’d lived with it for so long, I assumed that was just how digestion worked.”

Doctors carried out a number of investigations, including repeated blood tests.

“The only thing that ever really showed up was my white blood cell count,” Rebeca explained. “I was always told I was probably fighting off a virus or a cold because I seemed to pick up infections quite often, but nobody could explain why I constantly felt so drained.”

Despite her symptoms, Rebeca continued trying to improve her health.

She swapped takeaways for home-cooked meals, exercised more regularly and sought advice from three different nutritionists, but says nothing seemed to make any meaningful difference.

“I wasn’t looking for a quick fix or some miracle diet,” she said. “I genuinely wanted to understand what was going on with my body.”

Originally from Spain, Rebeca admits her growing weight also affected her confidence.

She said: “In Spain there’s a huge amount of pressure on women to look a certain way.

“I’ve felt like I needed to lose weight since I was about 16. Every time I went home I became so conscious of how I looked.”

She gradually stopped enjoying shopping for clothes, avoided having photographs taken and felt increasingly unlike the outgoing person she’d always been.

Healthy culprits

Everything changed when a friend suggested she try a food intolerance test through Supply Life.

Rebeca admits she was initially sceptical, but says the results came as a huge surprise.

“I honestly couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Some of the foods highlighted were things I’d been eating almost every day because I thought they were healthy.”

Among the foods she reacted to were egg whites, potatoes, rice and yeast - staples that had formed a big part of her everyday diet and many traditional Spanish meals.

“I remember looking at the results thinking, ‘Well, there goes Spanish omelette… there goes paella,’” she said.

Instead of eggs for breakfast, Rebeca now typically has avocado on sourdough toast with tomatoes. Lunch is usually a large salad with chicken, salmon or tuna, while dinner centres around lean protein with vegetables, using alternatives such as quinoa or couscous instead of rice when appropriate.

Within weeks of changing her diet, she noticed something she hadn’t experienced for years.

“My bloating almost disappeared,” she said. “I had my first meal and afterwards I remember thinking, ‘Is this what everyone else feels like?’. I felt comfortably full but I wasn’t swollen or uncomfortable.”

Increased energy and weight loss

As her digestion improved, her energy slowly began returning too.

She said: “I’ve gone from a size 18 to a size 16, and even those clothes are starting to feel loose now. But for me, the biggest change isn’t the weight - it’s having my energy back.”

Rebeca says friends and family have also noticed the difference.

“They keep saying I’ve got my sparkle back,” she said. “I’ve always been quite bubbly and positive, but I’d completely lost that version of myself. Now I feel like she’s coming back.”

Looking back, she only wishes she’d realised sooner that the symptoms she’d accepted for years weren’t something she simply had to live with.

“I spent such a long time thinking this was just my body,” she said. “Now I realise you shouldn’t ignore symptoms just because you’ve had them for years. I finally feel like myself again.”