Rodney Zimmers was 21 years old and 135 pounds when he got off heroin and cocaine for good. Three years later, he was still drug free but had ballooned to 250. He blames his weight gain on the high-calorie, high-sugar food served in rehabilitation.
“Once I got sober, I continued to eat all this awful stuff,” said Mr. Zimmers, now 29 and the founder of Blueprints for Recovery, an all-male treatment facility near Prescott, Ariz. “I learned how to be sober, but I didn’t learn how to take care of all of me. I didn’t know how to cook or grocery shop because I’d never done it. I didn’t learn any life skills or how to live like an adult.”
His story is familiar to those in recovery, who often gain significant weight on their road to well-being. It’s not all their fault; most rehabilitation programs haven’t devoted much thought to nutrition.
“The main focus was just, ‘get them off their substance,’ and the rest will take care of itself,” said Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross, an eating disorder and addiction medicine specialist in Denver who has been a consultant to various rehab centers.
[For more of this story, written by Abby Ellin, go to http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/...ight-gain-nutrition/]
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