5 Tips for Eating and Exercising During Recovery

A couple hiking a trail up in a mountain helps them maintain healthy eating and exercise during recovery.

Recovering from a drug or alcohol addiction can often be quite challenging. It will require a lot of patience, dedication, and self-care in order to successfully overcome your addiction and maintain recovery. Consider these five helpful tips throughout your recovery process to better nourish your body and help it overcome this addiction:

Drink Enough Water

It can often be easy to overlook the importance of drinking enough water each day. However, it is something that you should strive to do because it can have many positive benefits. For example, it helps to flush the body of waste, regulates body temperature, maintains blood pressure levels, and helps produce saliva and mucus. Dehydration, on the other hand, can cause a whole host of issues. For example, it can cause fatigue, dizziness, and headache.

Consume a Proper Number of Calories Each Day

It is also important to ensure that you are eating the proper number of calories each day. In order to determine how many calories you should be consuming, you can use a total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) calculator, which will factor in your current weight and height to determine how much you need to maintain your current weight. If you suspect that you are over or underweight, you might find using a BMI calculator helpful as well. This will let you know your ideal weight for your gender, height, and weight. Lastly, it can always be helpful to speak to your doctor in order to make sure you are on the right track regarding your food intake. Ensuring that you are eating the correct amount per day can help you to feel better during the recovery process and will help ensure that you are treating your body and mind well.

Incorporate More Fruits and Vegetables in Your Diet

Fruits and vegetables contain the vitamins and nutrients that your body needs in order to be healthy. It can be easy to turn to processed junk foods during recovery because these can sometimes be comforting. However, they are typically less nutritious and may contain questionable additives. Eating more fruits and vegetables will help you to sustain your physical and mental health, which can be beneficial when recovering from addiction.

Exercise Regularly

Exercising regularly can have numerous benefits. For example, it can help to improve your mood, aid in weight loss, increase energy levels, and help to prevent various conditions. All of this can be very helpful for anyone who is working hard to overcome an addiction. You will need all of your mental and physical energy to get through this process, and exercising can help you to feel better overall.

Avoid Junk Foods

As previously mentioned, many junk foods contain excessive amounts of sugars, additives, calories, and carbohydrates. They can contribute to obesity as well as many other health conditions. Not to mention, it has been associated with an increased risk of depression and attention disorders, which are issues you will want to avoid when trying to recover. This should be a time where you are focusing on regaining your health and strength, and, typically, junk food shouldn’t be a part of this process.

Go for Walks

Going for a walk is great for your cardiovascular health. Not only this, but it can also help you to get outside more and enjoy nature. Spending more time outdoors has numerous benefits, such as improved mood, increased energy, and decreased blood pressure. You might even be able to meet new people on your walks, and socializing can be beneficial to your recovery.

Overall, properly caring for your body during the recovery process is very important. Often, during addiction, many people can begin to neglect their overall health. Taking the time to properly care for yourself by exercising and eating correctly can help you to focus more on bettering your life and your future and can help to prevent many issues. The aforementioned tips make excellent points you should consider in order to ensure your recovery goes well and as planned.