Our society is obsessed with the latest diet craze, nutrition buzzwords, and current beauty and body image trends. What we deem as “healthy” changes more often than our elected officials do. Women will focus on these trends and fanatically shop only at certain stores, eat only at certain restaurants, and exercise religiously. Yet these same women will drink or use drugs, which are far more harmful to their bodies than poor dietary choices. What exactly are you putting into your body?
Putting the Time and Effort Into Your Body
You read up on all of the latest health and diet trends. You shop only at the stores that offer free-range and pasture-raised meat, locally grown fruits and vegetables, and whole-grain breads and pastas. You only eat at restaurants that have vegan and pescatarian options. You go to the gym daily and work out at home as well.
You have put all of this time and effort into your body, trying to be healthy, yet you also put substances into your body? Drugs and alcohol not only undo all of the positive, healthy things you have been doing for your body, but they can also cause short and long-term permanent damage to your health. Some substance use can actually endanger your life. Why put all of that time and effort into your body only to negate your efforts with substances?
Taking the Substances Out of Your Body
Choosing to seek treatment is worth more than a lifetime of diets and exercise. Detoxing your body from substances and ceasing to drink or use drugs is the healthiest choice you can make if you have an addiction. While there may be some permanent damage, some short-term effects of substances on your body are reversible over time with abstinence. Taking the substances out of your body demonstrates a genuine commitment to your body and health.
Replacing Substances With Food
There is a myth that if you give up substances, you will replace your addiction with food. Food is a life-sustaining substance that everyone needs and therefore cannot be addictive. Cravings for particular types of food happen when you deny or restrict yourself from eating certain types of food, such as starchy, sugary, or fatty foods. Those cravings will go away when you learn to listen to your body and allow yourself to eat what your body needs. Cravings for certain foods also happen as your body adjusts to the lack of substances when you become sober. Those cravings will improve overtime as your body reaches a homeostatic balance.
Many women are afraid of food and eating and may develop disordered eating or even an eating disorder because of their beliefs about food. However, when you are just coming out of addiction, eating food regularly is vitally important for your body to heal itself. It is crucial to replace substance abuse with healthy amounts of eating.
Eating to Be Healthy, Not Eating Healthy
Before treatment, your focus was on what you judged to be healthy. Forget about all of that because most of that information is just dietary trends. Our society tends to place moral judgments on the foods we eat, such as good or bad or healthy or unhealthy. The truth is that there is some nutrition in all food.
After addiction, your body simply needs food to be healthy; that is the most critical consideration. Whether or not you eat a certain number of servings from every food group every day, whether your produce is locally sourced, or whether your bread is whole grain is not as critical as just eating. You are no longer worrying about eating “healthy,” now you are simply eating to be healthy.
Healing Your Body Wholly
Focusing on the overall things you do for your body will help you heal. Ensuring that you have three meals and three snacks per day is essential, but obsessing over exactly what you eat is not. Making sure that you take a short walk or do some yoga on a regular basis will help in your healing, but you do not need to exercise for hours every day. Maintaining your daily recovery routines will be necessary for both your mind and your body—your emotional and physical health.
Most importantly, staying clean and sober will make the most impact on your health and your healing, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Your timely decision to enter into a new life of recovery will ensure holistic healing that will be complete and lasting.
What are you putting into your body? Focusing on the latest diet and exercise trends while using substances is not healthy or provides any benefit. When you take the substances out of your body and learn to focus more on overall healing than specific trends, your body will experience holistic healing. The Ho Tai Way – Recovery For Women offers detox and residential treatment for addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders. Our Costa Mesa, California facility is an intimate, peaceful refuge for you to begin your recovery journey. Our focus is on healing the mind, body, and spirit through both education about substance abuse and learning about yourself. We offer trauma-informed care for your comfort and safety and evidence-based practices to best promote your healing process. Our goal is to empower you to find strength and balance as you find your way again. Contact The Ho Tai Way by calling (714) 581-3974 today.
