Diet plays a vital role in a patient’s recovery alongside treatment and therapies. At Ananda Care, we make sure our clients follow a strict and healthy diet during and throughout their recovery phase. We have a specific recovery diet allotted differently to each patient after their complete health check-up in the presence of expert medical professionals. Moreover, patients are made to undergo adequate testing before they are prescribed a diet by our expert dietitian.
About the diet provided: –
- Recovering from substance abuse is a gradual process and it could be of longer durations, while nutrition being at utmost priority in the duration. Food is vital in helping the body rebuild itself.
- During recovery phase, we make sure to provide a diet, which would balance the levels of serotonin (a hormone that helps with relaxation) in the brain. To add, this involves eating food rich in carbohydrates, especially the complex form of carbohydrates found in food rich in starch such as legumes-beans, lentils and peas-, root vegetables-potatoes and carrots-, pastas and breads. Consuming these type of food items in combination with protein in a meal helps to keep a person pace of recovery.
- Deficiencies in B-complex vitamins such as thiamine, folate or folic acid, and B12 are common with alcoholism, and inadequate stores of other B vitamins and vitamin C frequently occur. It also increases the loss of minerals namely, zinc, magnesium and calcium from the body.
- At our centre we make sure during the first year after you stop using alcohol or drugs, the nutrition is higher than normal.
- In the early stages of detoxification and recovery, we plan to introduce you to meals slowly, since your body might not be used to digesting food, it’s the best to start off with small and frequent meals.
A tentative and suggestive plan is as follows: –
- Complex carbohydrates (50% to 55% of the calories one consumes), which means plenty of grains, fruits and vegetable
- Dairy products or other foods rich in calcium (calcium-fortified beverages, tofu, kale)
- Moderate protein (15% to 20% of calories) and two to four ounces twice a day of meat or fish (or another high-protein food such as tofu)
- Fat choices (30% of calories), preferably cooked in good oil such as canola, olive, flaxseed and those found in fish.
At our centre, the dietician is designated to monitor the physical wellbeing of the patients on daily basis. We make sure an approved diet plan for every patient is followed here. The weight scale of the patients will also be monitored in record on a daily basis and underweight patients are made to follow a separate diet chart.
“Your health is Ananda Care’s priority”