Sunday, July 7, 2013

Depression and Sugar Cravings: My Story Part 2

Our brains sole purpose is to keep us alive...to survive. When our bodies are depressed our brain will actually crave sugar to give us a "boost" because it doesn't like being depressed. This is also why we crave "comfort" foods because those are usually high in carbohydrates which rapidly turns into sugar in your body.

I love this blog called Whole Food Mommies. Here is an really good article they wrote on sugar and the negative effects on our bodies.

SUGAR: The Ultimate Addiction

This is why I like making recipes from Simple Healthy Tasty's blog because she uses sucanat (a less refined sugar), honey, agave and real maple syrup. These sweeteners have less of an affect on my mood than the highly processed white table sugar or high fructose corn syrup. I don't use artificial sweeteners because really they are just chemicals developed in a research lab, no thank you! 

I find that with Simple Healthy Tasty recipes I am fine eating just one cookie or having one treat and I don't feel like eating the whole batch if you know what I mean. Her dessert recipes are healthified and yet they are still yummy! I've made Tammy's (the author of SimpleHealthyTasty's blog) taffy that only uses honey and I loved it and so did my family!

Here's her recipe for the honey taffy http://www.simplehealthytasty.com/2010/12/honey-taffy_17.html

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Interesting facts here. I myself suffer from schizoaffective disorder depressive type (schizophrenia plus depression basically) and can TOTALLY see how this sugar high/crash played into my life.

Of course, it started off by being switched from Zyprexa (HUGE Weight Gain side effects) to Saphris to my saving grace, Abilify, and as the weight started to come off it snowballed when my cognitive distortions were changed, partly by talk therapy and partly because Abilify didn't want to make me eat compulsively.

Now I'm in the 150's from the high 180's.

Consider your blog FOLLOWED. ^.^

Unknown said...

I'm glad you're feeling better and lost weight! Bonus!