Feeling guilty because you can’t resist a sugary confection that’s as pretty as a Christmas tree and as sweet as a new puppy?
Well, don’t because it’s not all your fault. There are a lot of food manufacturers making money from knowing exactly how much sugar and other chemicals to add to their products, so you’ll become addicted and come back for more. Food junkies line the pockets of manufacturers with gold and their own bodies with a host of disease vulnerabilities.
When you consume sugar, the same areas of your brain light up as they do for cocaine. It causes a massive dopamine hit - the reward centre of the brain. The problem is, the more we have, the more we need to get that dopamine hit. A teaspoon of sugar here and here just doesn’t cut it after a while and the body yells out for more to feed the dopamine dependency.
It’s known as dopamine resistance, where the body becomes resistant to the same levels of sugar providing the same high. As it needs more, the cycle expands, causing ever more dangerous health issues.
That’s why I can’t see any way out of this cycle other than going cold turkey completely. You need three weeks to wean off the addiction. The moment you relapse with some chocolate frogs at 3pm, is the moment you set off the whole vicious cycle again.
But there are ways to ease yourself through the process. Our gut and brain are in constant conversation so, just as you’re banning sugar, if you instead add wonderful gut loving nutrients such as vegetables and healthy fats, the burn of the sugar detox will diminish.
If, however, your gut balance is poor, you have little chance of being able to produce sufficient serotonin which is the opposite to dopamine and is manufactured from gut bacteria.
Most people who do the Aston RX program will be surprised how much their palate changes and how rapidly it happens. If you normally add four teaspoons of sugar to your coffee, you’ll need a sugar laden diet to be satisfied. If you don’t take any sugar in your coffee, trying to drink it with four teaspoons will be impossibly sweet for you.
For me, a carrot tastes sweet because my palate is so sensitive to any glucose hit. Fine tune your body, quit being a junkie and you’ll taste a whole new world of flavours.
