Sugar Love

There are few physical comforts that I enjoy more than a clean face towel. Folded in half, rolled in a tube, flung in a pile on the countertop, I don't mind the form, it's just the pleasure of having what you love at your fingertips.  All the better for body and mind if that comfort happens to be healthy for you.  Sometimes it takes a bit of reconditioning to change what we see as "comfort".  My sugar love somehow died when I realized that the comfort factor was gone.  I would eat a little and just want more, the cravings would replace the comfort. 

When I was a child I used to wish I had one of those ice cream machines in my house, the kind that twirl around and around so the customers can see the ice cream thickness and hear that audible churn of the machine daring them to try and walk away.  Then, if you were lucky you would get a seasoned worker who knew how to make those swirls just perfect, wide and even enough to hold steady but thick enough to avoid the hollow center.  Two flavor swirl was even mesmerizing.  Chocolate and vanilla swirl for me please.
The absence of refined sugar seems to help me notice the simple pleasures in life so much more readily, and to have steady energy to create more of them. Instead of craving sugar after dinner to celebrate finishing a meal, having sugar for an afternoon snack just because I have been awake for 6 hours, or seeking out the nearest ice cream cone destination with my children regardless of how quickly their relatively calm temperaments will change to hyperactivity, I seem to have convinced my body that I am serious about not consuming the foods that once provided the endorphins rapidly released with sugar consumption.  I think this "cold turkey" thing may be working.  (By the way have you ever heard of anyone craving turkey that is cold?  I think I may know why they call it that.)

The problem with my old habit of sugar love is that I was defeating my body's main purpose, to maintain homeostasis. Instead I was working against it by creating a "high" with dopamine and serotonin stimulated with sugar consumption, and as we all know what goes up must come down.  You see, our body is at its peak when we choose foods that maintain balance, provinding constant nourishment instead of quick jolts. Refined sugar makes that balance very difficult.  Who would have know that a clean face towel could be just as satisfying to an adult as a twist cone could be to a young girl. 

Great article for reference:
http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/sugar-cravings.shtml