The game would need to be restructured a bit for the resting mechanic to work out. For now you can rest pretty much infinitely with zero repercussions other than losing some food.
Resting should allow you to eat more food, but it doesn't rid 100% of all ailments and only restores fractions of your abilities. Resting in dangerous areas should have a chance of you getting ambushed. Maybe make it that you need to rest 3 times to fully recover all ailments or make resting have like 35% chance of healing one debilitation out of many you can get, and 30% chance to regain 1 empower charges.
Make events that can interrupt resting like stray animals messing with you or getting ganged by wolfs, bandits, assassins, treasure seekers, or simply soldiers who want to loot you, etc. Make some companions events that can reduce the effectiveness of resting. Like if Aloth's awaken soul takes over him when he is sleeping and she messes around, or if your broken wrist made it difficult to rest without ale.
Maybe have areas regenerate some (not all) monsters or NPCs as time passes. The NPCs generated doesn't need to be same ones that was native to the area. It could be troops sent there to check who murdered everyone, looting bandits or mercenaries, scavenging carnivorous animals, or spirits from those slaughtered.