BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has significantly impacted the health and well-being of individuals by influencing their diet and lifestyle. Therefore, this study was designed to compare the dietary and health practices pre- and post-COVID-19 infection and to study the association of changes in dietary and health practices with the change in food choice motives. METHODS: An online cross-sectional survey was conducted, and retrospective data was gathered from 259 recovered cases of COVID-19 aged 18-50 years in Pakistan. The survey questionnaire included socio-demographic information, adherence to Pakistan dietary guidelines, Breslow's health practices, and food choice motives. Shapiro-Wilk test was used to analyze the normality of data. McNemar's test and Wilcoxon sign ranked test were used to determine the change in the dietary practices, health practices, and food choice motives scores pre- and post-COVID-19 infection. Spearman correlation and multiple linear regression were used to study the relation between the changes in dietary practices, health practices, and food choice motives. RESULTS: Dietary practices improved (mean ± SD: 0.17 ± 1.56), and health practices deteriorated (mean ± SD: -0.18 ± 1.36) after COVID-19 infection. The importance of convenience, health, mood, natural content, weight control, familiarity, and ethical concerns while choosing food increased after suffering from COVID-19. Improvement in dietary practices was correlated with health practices (r = 0.32), convenience (r = 0.15), health concern (r = 0.16), mood (r = 0.18), and natural content of food (r = 0.15). Changes in dietary practices were found to be negatively associated (p = 0.043, B=-0.145) with the price of food. CONCLUSION: We conclude that the food choice motives of the Pakistani population changed during COVID-19. This change in food choice motives was found to be related to dietary and health practices.