Helping Your Body Heal in Recovery Through Nutrition
Paying attention to nutrition in recovery is one of the keys to lasting success. Addiction recovery can be made a little easier if you tilt the odds in your favor by investing time and effort into optimizing your dietary choices.
The information below should help you build healthy eating habits. It’s easy to overlook poor eating habits while paying attention to the battle against substance use disorder, but all of these things are connected. Proper nutrition can leave you feeling good about yourself and will help your body heal itself over time.
If you are early on in your recovery journey, Ingrained Recovery is here to help you move forward. We offer professional detox and inpatient treatment services to guide you past drug and alcohol addiction and into a brighter future.
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The Connection Between Nutrition and Recovery
Addiction recovery nutrition is such an important topic because the body is typically not in good condition at the start of a recovery journey. Addiction is unforgiving on the body and it takes time to rebuild it back to health. Not only does the act of abusing substances take a toll on the body, but eating disorders are also common when an addiction is in place.
Whatever the specifics may be in your case, it can be stated with confidence that quality nutrition is critical in recovery. The process of recovery is all about healing both the body and mind. Giving your body a balanced diet that supports brain function, avoids blood sugar swings, and enables physical repair will go a long way in this battle.
Staying on track in recovery is about more than eating right, but this is an important foundational piece of the puzzle.
The Role of Nutrition in Addiction Treatment
There is so much to gain by eating well in addiction treatment. Balanced meals can stabilize mood and give you the energy needed to go through difficult therapy sessions. Also, exercise is important in recovery, and the role of nutrition when it comes to fueling exercise is well known.
A proper diet can also offer advantages like restoring immune system function, reducing cravings, and even preventing relapse.
Don’t look at a good diet as an optional part of the healing process. And don’t think that it’s only for weight loss. Having a nutritional plan in place, and then following that plan, are central to staying away from drug and alcohol use and making this recovery journey a successful one.
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Nutritional Deficiencies Are Common in Early Recovery
The use of addictive substances takes a toll on every part of your health, both physical and mental. Included in that are nutritional deficiencies that commonly come along with addiction. You probably haven’t been prioritizing healthy meals while battling addiction and mental health issues. Even if you haven’t experienced weight gain over these months or years, your body is probably particularly healthy.
Specifically, you may be low in key vitamins, such as B and D. B vitamins are key for energy and brain function, so it’s important to get them back up to a healthy level. With vitamin D, mood regulation and bone health can suffer when levels are low.
Balancing Out Your Nutritional Plan
Eating a balanced diet can help bring both of these levels back up where they need to be, and nutritional supplements can also be used to help with that goal.
Other deficiencies can include low levels of magnesium, which impact muscle function. You may also have low levels of amino acids, which are the building blocks of critical neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.
Across the board, addiction is bad for your physical health. As you turn an eye toward lasting recovery, rebuilding your physical health is just as important as your mental well being, and only when the two come together will you really be on your way.
Follow These Four Key Principles
Building healthy eating habits can be challenging. You might have a general idea of what you should be eating, but putting that idea into practice in the form of actual meals and snacks can be tricky. Whether it’s for weight loss or addiction recovery nutrition, having clarity in your plan can make all the difference.
Let’s start to find some clarity by offering four key principles below. You can use these principles as the foundation of the strategy you will use to address nutrient deficiencies and get your physical health back on track.
Eat Whole Foods
This is a great place to start. Try to eat as many of your foods as close to their natural state as possible. You can think of this part of your dietary plan as the foundation on top of which everything else is built. This means eating things like fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins.
This is an excellent way to meet your nutritional needs without the downsides that come with other forms of food.
If you are new to this type of eating, a good place to start is trying to avoid things that come in a package or that have a brand name. Those packaged, branded foods virtually always include added ingredients that aren’t beneficial for your health.
Also, they tend to be more expensive. Eating whole foods during drug detox and alcohol detox, when done properly, can be affordable while supporting good organ function and offering countless other physical and mental health benefits.
Build Balanced Plates
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you need to completely eliminate one category of foods to get healthy. Unless you have something like a diagnosed allergy that causes you to take that step, it’s best to simply aim for a balanced diet. And balance starts with creating one good plate at a time.
Think about a balanced plate as featuring half of the space dedicated to fruits and vegetables. One quarter of the plate can be reserved for lean protein, while the last quarter is saved for complex carbohydrates like whole grains.
You aren’t always going to hit these percentages perfectly, of course, but getting as close as possible is an excellent meal plan.
Along with these guidelines, also use healthy fats like olive oil to support your nutritional goals. Healthy fats play an important role in balancing blood sugar and regulating your mood and energy throughout the day.
Hydrate Consistently
Dehydration is common during addiction treatment, and beyond into the recovery process. Many people simply don’t drink enough water throughout the day. Drinking water might not be as exciting or tasty as other options, but it really is one of the most important things you can do for your health.
As a starting point, aim for drinking eight cups of water per day. At first, that is going to seem like a lot. Try to space your water consumption throughout the day, starting with plenty of water right when you first wake up in the morning. This will help everything about your body work better, including the nervous system.
Eat Regular Meals
As the last of our four key principles, do your best to maintain a steady schedule of eating throughout the day. Irregular eating makes it hard to maintain steady energy and your blood sugar may dip along the way. When that happens, irritability and cravings can go up.
The right eating schedule for you will depend on a number of factors, so you might need to experiment to get it just right. As a good guideline, eating three main meals and a couple of healthy snacks during the day should serve you well.
Rebuilding a Healthy Gut
Your gastrointestinal tract has likely suffered as a result of your substance use disorder. Issues that can arise in the gut as a result of substance use include bloating, poor digestion, and insufficient absorption of nutrients.
By rebuilding a healthy gut, you’ll make it easier for your body to absorb the nutrients you are consuming in this new, healthier diet.
Building Up to a Healthy Stomach Biome
Plenty of different foods can help you create a healthier gut over time. Start with options that are rich in probiotics like yogurt and sauerkraut. You may also want to prioritize a number of different types of vegetables and fruits that are high in fiber.
Those include leafy greens, apples, and bananas. Getting plenty of these healthy foods, and staying away from processed foods that are harder for your body to digest, can get your gut back on track surprisingly quickly.
Keeping Relapse Triggers At Bay
The primary goal of recovery is to avoid a relapse. You have worked hard to get through detox and into recovery, and you want to stay here for a lifetime. Unfortunately, if you have a poor diet in recovery, you might wind up putting yourself at an elevated risk of relapse.
Poor nutrition can increase relapse risk because of how it makes your body feel. When you don’t eat well, you might experience things like brain fog, fatigue, shakiness, and more. Those sensations could feel quite similar to drug cravings.
Recovery Nutrition as a Component of Aftercare Planning
Not knowing the difference between these triggers, you may feel like your body is begging for substance use again, and if other factors are in place – like mental well being concerns – it’s possible that a relapse will occur.
Recovery is all about stacking the odds in your favor. Nothing can completely eliminate the risk of a relapse, but you want to make it as unlikely as possible through strategic actions. One of those actions is eating well.
Picking the right foods to keep your body nourished and your blood sugar stable makes it less likely that any triggers will pull you back toward drugs or alcohol. When seen from this perspective, it’s obvious that nutrition plays a critical role in keeping you on track for the years ahead.
Use Food to Create a New Perspective
One of the common markers of substance use disorder is low self-esteem. People who are battling addiction typically don’t feel good about themselves, and they don’t feel like they are worth taking care of day after day. This is often how they wound up dealing with an addiction in the first place.
Food can play a role in rebuilding your sense of self. Eating better is a clear act of love and respect for yourself. You are valuing yourself enough to put the time and effort into eating foods that will help you feel better.
That’s a strong signal to your brain that you are worthy of care. You can lean into this pattern by learning how to cook tasty, healthy meals for yourself and loved ones. Suddenly, food will play a powerfully positive role in your life and can be one of your primary tools in the battle against addiction.
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Take a Stand Against Substance Abuse: Get Started Today
We know that overcoming alcohol abuse or chronic drug addiction can feel like an impossible challenge. The mountain seems too tall to climb. It can be done, however, and we are here to help.
Trying to develop healthy eating habits is a great way to approach the recovery process. Of course, you need to get into recovery first, so if you are still dealing with an active addiction and don’t know where to turn, call Ingrained Recovery now for help.
We can get you into a medical detox process right away and sustained recovery will suddenly be a possibility. Don’t wait another day to change your life.