We often talk about eating healthier, eating more nutritiously, and making healthy choices. Sometimes, we might even look at ingredients or calories in an attempt to be more conscious of portion size or the balance of our meals. But what if we were truly invested in our diet?
Investing in Your Research
There are a lot of generalized guidelines about what constitutes a healthy diet and daily caloric intake. However, we may have specific needs that are different than what is generally suggested.
We may have food allergies or sensitivities. We may need more protein from non-meat sources if we adhere to a vegetarian or vegan or another specific diet.
We may have different deficiencies that show up in routine blood testing, or we may have other health considerations that diet could improve.
This is where taking the time to truly invest in research can pay dividends. We can also consider compensating for any damages done to our bodies during our alcohol or substance use.
Gathering the information to help us find what our unique body needs will help us to restore health or increase our level of health thus increasing our quality of life.
Growing Your Food
One of the most rewarding aspects of investing in our diet is when we grow our food. Whether we plant a tomato plant, grow an herb garden, or grow as much of our produce as possible, this is a powerful investment into our diet.
We can learn about what grows best in our area, and choose plants and foods that we want to eat. What would be the point of planting zucchini, for example, if we know that we do not like it?
Planting our food is exciting, whether we start with seeds or small seedlings, the anticipation of what is to come makes us that much more invested in the process.
After surviving substance use, we can see the value of digging in, digging deep, and planting seeds or seedlings. As we nurture the growing plants, watering them and pulling out the weeds, we are also able to see the parallels between working every day and watching ourselves grow as a person.
Watching the fruits of our labors, quite literally, ripen and be ready for harvest, parallels our success in treatment. As we prepare to eat the delicious food that we have grown, we can remember that we, too, have grown in our treatment.
The food that we have carefully nurtured might represent the gift that we have given ourselves by nurturing our recovery.
Making Things from Scratch
There is also a great level of satisfaction from making foods from scratch. Putting in the planning and effort to make homemade pasta and sauce, for example, from scratch, gives us the joy of hard work and effort, as well as food that usually tastes better, too.
We know that we have done something healthier for us than other, more processed foods. We can take pride in knowing that we are worth the time and effort we invested in us.
As we enjoy the delicious food, we enjoy it more knowing that we accomplished this and that we deserve to treat our bodies well today and always.
Learning Healthy Methods
Learning to prepare our food in healthier ways can be beneficial to our diets. Researching appropriate ways to cook, healthier options and replacements and simply becoming more knowledgable about food, in general, allows us to prepare meals and snacks that contain more of what we need and less of what we don’t. It’s all about investing in our health.
Enjoying Your Investment
Enjoying food is important in any diet and putting in the work to prepare a nutritious meal should also yield an enjoyable one. In recovery, it is especially important to give back to your body and respect it in ways that we did not when we were using.
We can honor ourselves with nutritious food and we can honor ourselves with enjoyable food. They are not exclusive.
We can do so much more than just make healthier choices in our diet. We can research and learn new methods and recipes, we can invest in ourselves and our earth by growing our food, and we can honor ourselves by preparing nutritious and enjoyable meals.
This type of investment is more than just taking an above-average interest in our physical health. Investing in our diet isn’t only about our bodies, we are also investing in our soul. This is part of recovery.
Become invested in your diet, become invested in you. Call AToN Center at (888) 535-1516 today. We can teach you how to invest in yourself.
