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What Does Healthy Eating Have to Do with Recovery?

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Early recovery is about stepping into new habits and finding healthier ways of balancing your life. You don’t need to feel exhausted and out of control with food. When it comes to eating healthy, it is really simple when you get a focused routine. Learning to harness the power of food and exercise helps you enhance recovery and revolutionize your life enough to deal with eating disorders.

Holistic Eating

The problem with only treating parts of the body (mind and physical body) when it comes to drugs is that it is not sufficient. The brain that is addicted is already depleted of dopamine. That’s why people seek drugs in the first place (food, caffeine) to make them feel better in recovery. When you cannot stop eating certain foods, you could get exactly the same effects as drugs. The last few years, nearly every person seems to have some stance on food and what to eat when and wants body positive ways of staying healthy. When you misuse substances, you don’t care about your body. With sobriety, you get to choose how to care about yourself enough to stop self-harming with substances and become more positive about your body image.

Getting Started

To improve recovery with the power of food, it helps to focus on the following things:
  • Asking for help: when you ask for help, you are stepping outside yourself and seeking support from others. This can be of great help to you and others
  • Eat mindfully: not in front of the TV, but enjoying every last bite and choosing meals wisely
  • Stop eating junk food: eat meals full of nutrients, fruits, veggies, breads, and pasta that help fill you up
  • Start where you are: if you have lots of knowledge on healthy eating but don’t apply it, it does no good. Start eating once or twice a day with meals that are healthy and make slow, incremental changes that feel manageable
  • Find ways to enjoy life outside recovery. Make life bigger than about food rather than recovery, work, recovery, and work again. Get into a routine that supports enjoyment of life
  • Dabble into creative things that support your mind. Life can be boring, even when it is stressful. It may be rote and routine, which may cause stress because you are used to such extreme highs. Start with creative processes like writing, drawing, and making jewelry. Experiment with new recipes with food and take some classes to learn how to feed your body good things and it will support your journey of recovery
Losing weight is not the only reason to stay healthy in recovery. You will feel more full of energy and better about yourself if you are eating good food. You will have a better outlook on life and more capable of getting through hard stress in recovery if you are putting the right foods into your body.

Steps in the Right Direction offers structured, gender-specific sober living in the San Fernando Valley, with pet-friendly homes for women in Northridge and men in Winnetka. For more information, call (818) 231-1400.

Looking for a safe, structured place to live while you rebuild? Steps in the Right Direction offers gender-specific sober living in the San Fernando Valley: Aura House for women in Northridge and Arminta House for men in Winnetka. Both homes are pet friendly. Call (818) 231-1400 or apply online.

Linda Butler, founder of Steps in the Right Direction

About the author: Linda Butler
Founder, Steps in the Right Direction

Linda Butler founded Steps in the Right Direction in the spring of 2000 and has spent more than 25 years helping women and men find lasting recovery through structured, pet-friendly sober living in the San Fernando Valley. Learn more about Linda.

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