Nutrition and Physical Health in Addiction Recovery: A Holistic Guide

At Carrara, we believe in a holistic approach to recovery from addiction to drugs and alcohol. Your medical detox and therapy are foundational to your recovery, but they aren’t the only tools available to you during your time with us. Our inpatient AUD and SUD program includes wellness strategies designed to support your recovery and give you the best chance of living a life of lasting sobriety.

Nutrition and exercise in addiction recovery are critical cornerstones of your treatment. Almost everyone who walks through our doors and commits to a recovery program is dealing with underlying health issues.

Abusing drugs like benzodiazepines, sedatives, depressants, opioids, or alcohol can make you gain weight as your metabolism slows and your appetite increases. Abusing stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine will suppress your appetite and lead to severe weight loss.

Your weight isn’t the sole problem. Chances are you’ve neglected your health, and you’re either making bad food choices or you’re not eating enough, meaning you have a slew of macronutrient deficiencies we’ll need to address during your stay with us.

Then there’s the issue of your physical strength and cardiovascular fitness. If you’ve been lost in addiction for months or years, you probably have a sedentary lifestyle, and you can’t remember the last time you exercised. Either way, your muscular system is likely atrophied, and you’ll need to rebuild your strength and endurance.

At Carrara, we address these physical health issues with a comprehensive wellness program designed to bring your physiology back from teetering on the edge of self-destruction.

Food and Exercise – A Winning Combination in Addiction Recovery

Optimizing your nutrition and exercise for addiction recovery involves introducing you to your private chef, who prepares your meals at our facility. They’ll work with the medical team and your personal trainer, using your bloodwork results to identify any nutritional deficiencies you have. The chef tailors your diet plan to eliminate these deficiencies, giving your body the raw materials it needs to carry out the healing process.

You’ll also meet your personal trainer, who will guide you through an exercise program at our private gym during your stay with us. We aim to bring your body back from the brink, strengthening not only your mind but your physiology as well.

Why Exercise Matters in Addiction Recovery

After spending some time leading a sedentary lifestyle, it’s time to get your body moving again. Exercise is paramount to restoring your health and plays a big role in the efficacy of your therapy program. Exercise releases neurotransmitters like dopamine, endorphins, endocannabinoids, and serotonin.

These naturally occurring compounds improve your mood and give you additional support to make it through the challenging times when you feel like relapsing into your old behavior. Nutrition, exercise, and addiction recovery go hand-in-hand and are one of the foundational aspects of your treatment.

The benefits of exercise in addiction recovery are backed by science, and there are thousands of studies supporting the idea that addicts have a better chance of making a recovery if they take a holistic approach to their treatment.

Unpacking The Types of Exercise for Addiction Recovery

Cardio: Running, jogging, walking, and aerobics are all examples of cardiovascular training that increase your endurance and optimize your physiology. You’ll strengthen your heart and lungs, lose unwanted body fat, and experience better energy levels during the day while finding it easier to fall asleep at night.

Pilates: This strength training program tones your muscular system and stops muscular atrophy from eating away at the muscular system. You’ll gain strength in the muscular system, improve your flexibility, and enhance your endurance and balance.

Resistance Training: Lifting weights or working out on machines rebuilds the muscular system, helping you put on healthy weight. It ramps up your metabolism and improves the flow of oxygen through the organs and blood.

Yoga and Stretching: These wellness practices sort out muscular imbalances and prepare you for exercise. A yoga session can feel like a workout in itself, and it’s an incredibly effective tool for balancing the body and mind.

Fast-Track Your Progress with Personal Training

At Carrara, you have access to a personal trainer, and their goal is to get you as fit and strong as possible before you leave our facility. They work with you to understand your physical strengths and weaknesses and what you need to work on during your training sessions. Your trainer guides you through your workouts, inspiring and motivating you to perform at your peak.

Understanding the Gut Microbiome and The Gut-Brain Connection

Substance abuse and AUD have a tremendously bad impact on your gut health, and that’s a big problem. Our GI tract is home to trillions of microbiomes that assimilate nutrition from food, sending it into the bloodstream, where the nutrients in the food fuel our biological processes.

A bad gut biome environment has a huge effect on our health that’s only really been understood by medical science in the last decade. According to science, the gut acts like a “second brain,” and it’s an independent branch of the nervous system. So, when you hear the saying, “think with your gut,” there’s actually something to that.

If you mistreat your GI system and the gut microbiome, it causes health issues like leaky gut or Inflammatory Bowel Disease and could progress into a more severe condition like Crohn’s disease.

At Carrara, your nutrition and recovery plan are taken care of by professional nutritionists and wellness experts. By focusing on nutrition in addiction recovery, we’ll rebuild your gut biome environment, giving this beneficial bacteria the prebiotics and probiotics it needs to thrive. You don’t need to do any of the groundwork; it’s all done for you and personalized to your current health status.

The Value of Nutrition in Recovery – Overcoming the Addicts Diet Plan

Our gourmet nutrition for addiction recovery covers all the bases, giving your body the raw materials it needs to repair the damage months or years of abuse have done to your physiology.

Understanding Depletion – Why Micronutrients Matter

Poor nutrition and addiction will deplete micronutrients critical to maintaining physiological functions in your body.

Vitamins: These micronutrients are vital for many metabolic processes in your body. Vitamins are key materials used in energy production, cell formation, collagen and protein synthesis, and blood clotting. Vitamin deficiencies cause issues with the nervous system, skeletal system, and muscular system.

Minerals: Minerals like potassium, sodium, and magnesium regulate your muscle and nerve function and maintain the pH balance in your body. They regulate blood sugar levels and fluid balance and support immune function. When you’re deficient in minerals, you’ll experience health issues like anemia, irregular heartbeat, fatigue, and muscle weakness.

Macronutrient Optimization for Personalized Nutrition

Our wellness experts look at the type of diet you enjoy eating and optimize the micronutrient balance of your meals to ensure your body gets the fuel it needs to optimize metabolic efficiency. There are three types of macronutrients, carbohydrates, fat, and protein.

Some people do better on a high-fat, low-carb diet, while others will thrive on a high-carb or balanced diet. Everyone’s nutritional needs are different, and we’ll make sure you get the right diet with the right macronutrient split to help you recover from your workouts and feel great every minute of the day.

Why You Need a Nutritionist for Diet Planning in Recovery

At Carrara, we take nutrition and addiction recovery seriously. We also understand that you have a lot on your mind, and the last thing you’re thinking about is preparing healthy meals. Even if you did feel like cooking, you probably have no idea how to count calories in your food or how to design a diet with the right macronutrient profile to benefit your metabolic health.

That’s why we give you a tailored diet plan laid out by a professional nutritional expert. They work with your private chef to build your diet plan, giving your body the fuel it needs to eliminate any nutritional deficiencies and start the journey to rebuilding your body and fortifying your health. You don’t have to worry about a thing. There’s a team behind you preparing delicious meals bursting with color, flavor, and aroma. All you need to do is sit down in our luxury dining area and enjoy your food.

All Foods Aren’t Equal – Learning to Eat for Health, Not Comfort

At Carrara, we believe food is fuel, and the better its quality, the better your body performs during your recovery. It’s common for people to assume they can eat “comfort foods” during their recovery, but that’s a mistake. While there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the occasional treat as a way to change things up, eating fast food and snacks all day is detrimental to your gut health, your weight, and your energy levels.

Eating processed and ultra-processed foods undoes the work your nutritionist and trainers put into getting you well. These foods contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals that mess up your hormone and neurotransmitter production and activate the dopamine response in much the same way as drugs and alcohol do. You don’t need to develop a food addiction to replace your current affliction. Stick to your diet plan, and you’ll lose the urge to eat poor-quality foods.

Understanding Co-Occurring Eating Disorders and Addiction Recovery

Our dual diagnosis treatment programs show that around 50% of people dealing with an eating disorder use drugs. Around 35% of addicts also struggle with an eating disorder. During your assessment, a medical doctor analyzes your current health status and asks you if you have any eating disorders or mental health problems that might influence your recovery.

Our team works with you to overcome these issues, helping you develop a healthy appreciation for food. We want you to have a good relationship with your food so you can take your newfound nutritional awareness home with you and carry on eating the same way at home when you leave our facility.

Carrara Treatment – Personalized Nutrition and Training

The Carrara wellness team believes that nutrition, exercise, and recovery from addiction are all part of the same puzzle to getting you clean from AUD or SUD. Eating correctly is a fundamental part of your treatment and optimizing your nutrition for alcohol recovery or substance abuse recovery is absolutely essential to ensuring you stay on-track to meeting your goal of attaining lasting sobriety for the rest of your life.