09 Jan Learn How To Create A Framework for Healing Through Nutrition
Healing from substance abuse involves many facets. One of those facets is addressing your eating habits. You should create a framework for your healing by learning to eat healthily and regularly, including snacks. Eating consistently will contribute to your overall health and recovery. It’s best to focus on replacing empty calories with nutritious food. A proper intake of vitamins and minerals will subsequently help your body heal more effectively. Meal prepping will give you more control over what you put into your body.
Creating a Framework of Healthy Eating Habits
As your body begins to heal from substance abuse, you can focus on different aspects of your physical health. When it comes to eating habits, you should create a framework of healthy habits to improve your physical health. Overall, it will help maintain your sobriety.
Our society has developed an obsession with diet, nutrition, and exercise that quickly becomes unhealthy. Often, ruminating on exactly what you eat or how much you eat is less healthy than simply listening to your body. Rather than following a specific diet or worrying about what foods you are eating each day, you can build healthy eating habits simply by becoming in tune with your body once again.
The Importance of Eating Regularly
During active addiction, eating habits often become a lower priority than substance use. You may not have been eating three meals per day plus snacks. Some people may have even suffered from malnutrition. After addiction treatment, however, it is important that you not allow yourself to become hungry. Being hungry is one of the triggers for relapse.
The body needs to eat every four hours or less to maintain adequate energy and blood sugar levels. This means three solid meals per day, as well as snacks in between meals. Having snacks on hand in your car, at work, or wherever you are will help prevent you from being caught hungry. Making an appointment with yourself to eat regular meals each day is a gift. Acts of self-love like this will maintain your recovery and improve your overall health.
The Value of Replacing Empty Calories with Nutritious Foods
When coming out of starvation or malnutrition, eating anything is progress. However, as you begin to get in touch with your body again, you can take a closer look at what you are eating. You should make conscious decisions to eat food that your body needs.
Your body may initially crave foods that are sugary or fatty right after detox. This is especially true if alcohol was your primary substance because alcohol is very high in sugar and calories. When you stop drinking, your body will likely continue to crave those things.
Eventually, however, your body will reach homeostasis and will crave the nutrients that it needs to become more functional. Replacing empty calorie foods with foods that have more protein, fiber, and complex carbohydrates, for example, will help your body heal. The foods can even improve organ function.
Learning to Prepare Your Own Foods
One of the easiest ways to improve your diet is to learn to prepare your own meals. Preparing fresh foods can often cost less than eating out, even when it’s some type of fast food. Home-cooked meals can taste better and have better overall health benefits.
You do not have to live in the kitchen or become a master chef. However, by shopping for your groceries and preparing your meals and snacks, you learn valuable life skills, save money, and improve your eating habits. Plus, you never know—you may enjoy preparing your foods enough to make a career out of cooking.
Nutritious Eating: A Framework for Healing
Reevaluating your eating habits and making changes to align with your body’s needs can help improve your health short and long-term. Eating nutritious meals and snacks consistently can also help to prevent relapse. By learning to shop for and prepare your foods, you create further healthy habits and skills that improve your lifestyle and budget as well as contribute to your healing process.
Building a framework for healing begins by listening to your body and eating the foods that help you feel better every single day. Learn to eat regular, consistent meals and to always have healthy snacks. Don’t just eat empty calories. As you follow this plan, it will help keep hunger and triggers away. Ultimately, your choices do not need to be based on some diet, fad, set proportions, or controlled quantities. Your framework for healing through nutrition is based on your body’s unique needs.