Ok, so besides both being white, they can both have serious effects on our emotional and physical well being! If you live in the Northeast you are very familiar with the cold, gray, snowy winter months and what I've found with myself and what I've heard from my clients is after being cooped up in the house for a while cravings for warm and sunny weather are equally as strong as cravings for sugar. In my opinion this can happen for a few reasons, first, starting in October we are bombarded with sugary options, usually due to the celebration of Halloween (I'm not a "Halloween hater", I'm just saying it usually starts a chain of unhealthy food events). And then we usually ride the sugar train until we coast into January, in a partial sugar coma and start to think about how the heck we are going to dig ourselves out of this hole before spring...... Or, second, as humans we want and need sunshine, it lightens our moods and helps us produce Vitamin D, which has been shown to have a positive effect on our moods. When it snows or rains for say, a week straight, like it has this month, things just tend to feel off. We begin to fee gray, like the sky and a lot of us turn to food, mainly sugar, to give us that "feel good" feeling.
Here's how sugar provides us with "happy vibes", when sugar is consumed it sets off a chemical reaction in the brain and we want more and more sugar so we can get that "sugar high". You know what I mean that surge of energy bliss that occurs about 15-20 minutes after you overindulge in your sweet treat of choice. And inevitably what follows is the crash...about a few hours later, you get physical feelings from the sugar leaving your blood stream. These feelings can range from a sight headache, to crankiness, to full on exhaustion!
And that's just what we can physically feel, let me give you a quick at what's going on in the cells of your body. When we eat we chew, swallow, the foods travels down our esophagus (or throat), into the stomach and the small intestine where it is absorbed into our blood stream as BLOOD SUGAR and travels into our cells. Your body then sends out the hormone called insulin ( insulin is secreted by the pancreas) that carries the blood sugar through our bodies and allows it to enter our cells.
Here’s an example of how this works:
Take Christmas dinner, about 1/2-1 hr after you eat all that blood sugar from the food you ate is coursing through your body. And this “rush” is seen almost as an emergency by your body it says: “Whoa, where did this all come from. I NEED to use this and put it where it needs to go because I CANNOT have my blood sugar levels this high!!!! And this process happens pretty quickly in a healthy body (if your body is compromised by diabetes then that's a whole different story to be covered a in another blog). The sugar is whisked out of the blood stream to be stored in the liver, muscles or fat cells. Blood sugar levels then drop, either back to "normal" or possibly to low.......
What do you think your body would crave at this point? SUGAR!
Why would it crave SUGAR? Because at that point to YOUR BODY sugar IS NOT THE PROBLEM, it’s the SOLUTION to your low blood sugar!
Your body says: “My blood sugar is to low, need to bring it up FAST!”
But the problem is when we give in and eat something sugary that bring the blood sugar back up too QUICKLY, you’re right back where you started! Your blood sugar shoots back up and you’re on a roller coaster all DAY! And this "roller coaster" is occurring on an emotional and physical level.
Ok, so now what can you do to balance this?
You can start by adding more sweet winter vegetables to your diet. Things like butternut or buttercup squash, onions, beets, carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes to name a few. Also, try heading outside for a walk, even when it's cold. It changes your perspective and you may even see a thing or two that helps you appreciate the winter landscape. My husband, dog and I went snowshoeing this past weekend and I was amazed at how beautiful the snow covered trees were, why hadn't I noticed them before?.....
And finally, try increasing the amount of water you drink a day. We often forget to drink water in the winter because we are colde and not outside "sweating it out" in the summer heat. But lack of water in the winter can contribute to dry skin, a decreased immune sytem and dare I say it, constipaiton! Who wants that, not me. So the next time you reach for the juice or soda bottle, just drink a glass of water first, you can always have a "refill" of the other stuff.
For more information on healhty eating and for great winter recipes check out my website:
www.hastingshealthyliving.com
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