Why is eating more whole food and gut health important for recovery?

Why is eating more whole food and gut health important for recovery?

Healthy eating habits are essential for everyone but vital for people recovering from substance abuse or alcoholism. Even if you have been under addiction for a shorter span, your body gets affected to a considerable extent while eliminating the toxic substances from your body. Having a healthy eating habit is essential for repairing the damages caused to the body.

Healthy eating habits are beneficial for better working and healing of your mind and body. Healthy eating can convert your body odds to help you achieve a successful recovery. Healthy eating has several benefits in your body, such as improving moods, increasing energy and stamina, aids in resisting cravings, enhances concentration, etc. Eating a nutrient-deficit diet will make your recovery challenging. You might also suffer depression, fatigue, anxiety, loss of appetite and energy, and several other behavioral and biological changes.

What does whole food + gut health mean?

Healthy eating means intaking everything in the correct quantity, proper nutrition, and good calories. Healthy eating means getting enough calories to help you perform better physical activities and maintain your body health. Whole food means eating healthy to keep your body functioning well, but not in excessive amounts; otherwise, it will be harmful. Whole food also means taking enough calories to keep yourself active and also maintaining your body weight. Gut health refers to maintaining the balance with the microorganisms present in the digestive tract. Keeping the right balance of microorganisms is essential for maintaining your physical health, mental health, immunity, etc.

These gut microorganisms are beneficial and essential for human health, but they might be unhealthy when taken in excess amounts.

Effect of addiction on wholefood + gut health

Like most things during active addiction, whole food and gut health often fall wayside. A person under addiction keeps neglecting the entire food, nutrients, etc., required by the body, thus affecting the overall functioning of mind and body. They need to start spending money on a healthy diet and lifestyle instead of resources to carry on drugs and alcohol use.

Addictive substances make healthy eating difficult in several ways. These substances can prevent you from getting enough nutrients even if you are on a healthy diet. Addictive substances leave a significant impact on whole food and gut health which further causes nutrient deficiency in the following ways:

• Loss of appetite: when you have a loss of appetite, your diet gets drastically affected. This prevents you from taking enough nutrients and from the whole food you are taking.
• Increases the cravings for poor eating choices: you intake lots of unhealthy foods when you have desires. Since unhealthy foods are already low in nutrition, it will be challenging to intake all the vital nutrients required to keep your mind and body active.
• Reduces your capacity to absorb nutrients: getting enough nutrients means absorbing nutrients from food from your digestive tracts. Addictive substances reduce your ability to absorb essential nutrients even if you are consuming whole food.
• Depleting your nutrient requirements: getting sufficient nutrients means your body uses an equal amount of nutrients in the body. There are addictive substances that take up a more significant amount of nutrients and destroy the nutrients in your digestive tract. Either of these situations represents an insufficient amount of nutrients in your body.
• Decreased motivation to eat whole food: being motivated while eating healthy gives positive outcomes. It gives you the confidence to succeed by eating healthy food to get long positive results as substance abuse can make it impossible to keep a positive outlook about things.
• Nutrient deficiencies: people recovering from addiction often do not intake whole food and hence cannot fulfill their body requirements for nutrition and calories. While recovering from addiction, you might suffer nutrition deficiencies that are harmful to your body, making it difficult for you to stay sober.

Continuous intake of alcohol or any other substance abuse leads to malnutrition, which indicates in several ways:

• Depression and anxiety
• Low body temperature and chills
• Impaired heart rate
• Nutrients and vitamins deficiencies
• Drop-in muscle health
• Squashed immunity system

Effect of whole food and gut health in addiction recovery

Several factors make your addiction recovery successful and long-lasting. These factors are positively affected by adopting a healthy lifestyle and negatively affected if you have nutrition deficiency. Here is how whole food and gut health positively affects your body and mind:

• Improves mood and builds confidence: a positive outlook towards recovery can help you overcome challenges with confidence. Consuming whole food stabilizes your positive attitude and prevents you from anxiety and depression. Intaking a combination of vitamin B9 and vitamin B1 will help you deal with depression and its symptoms efficiently and build confidence inside you.
• Better focus: focusing on your goal is significant in addiction recovery. Environmental awareness also has a positive impact on your recovery process. Intake of whole food will help you focus and get aware of nutritional deficiencies to avoid distractions.
• Keeps you motivated: being motivated consistently is the key to recovery from addiction. Eating healthy keeps you inspired and energized throughout your recovery processes, as nutrition deficiencies might cause severe ups and downs in your mental and physical health during recovery.
• Ability to resist cravings: feelings cravings and being capable of fighting them is most important for addiction recovery. Taking whole food might make you crave addictive substances with reduced behavioral intensity. Eating healthy also builds your willpower to resist those cravings.

This is why it is advised to eat healthy while recovering from addiction. It also helps you understand what addiction is like? Eating whole food might be challenging for you, but if you plan to adopt a healthy lifestyle now, it will continue for the rest of your life. Here is a list that could give you a good start point for whole food and gut health:

• Eating multiple varieties of food will increase the intake of diverse microbes in your body. Diest from rural regions are rich in nutrition, hence are beneficial for your health.
• Fruits and vegetables are high in fibers. Bacterias in your gut digest high fiber food to maintain gut health. Foods such as beans, legumes, raspberries, legumes, lentils, whole grains, etc., help promote the growth of gut bacteria.
• Fermented foods: fermented foods are rich in mainly broken yeast or bacteria. Some fermented foods are kimchi, yogurt, tempeh, etc. these are beneficial in reducing the diseases caused by bacteria in the intestine.
• Intaking meat, fish that are organic is beneficial in providing the essential nutrients to the body.
• If your body tolerates them, consuming dairy products will help you maintain calcium and iron balance in your body.

To sum it up

Whole food and gut health are essential while recovering from addiction. It can prevent many chronic diseases and help you stay motivated, active, and energized throughout your recovery process.

By Patricia Bright

Patricia Bright is a passionate blogger who explores the field of addiction recovery and domestic violence. With the help of her blogs, She provides information and knowledge about various types of recovery options.

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