Our natural instincts drive us to crave sugar! When I discovered this, a lot started to make sense to me.
We come from hunter-gathering cave people, who were deeply programmed to hunt for sugar. Sugar gives as a quick fuel for our cells to perform well. When we over consume sugar, it gets converted into fat by our bodies.
In the past when humans experienced famine and limited food availability, this was needed. Back in the day when we only ate what we could locate locally, it made sense to stock up on fat, especially during the summer when fruit was available, so whatever fruit we could find we consumed for our survival.
Once the summer was over those fat reserves could sustain us through a fruitless winter. Basically our brains are hard wired to find, gorge and store sugar whenever possible. Sugar meant survival.
What is different now, is that come winter, we are still able to source fruit and of course other sugary foods throughout the winter; our system does not need that sugar overdose because many of us are not threatened with this survival, plus due to globalisation imported food is available all year round.
Besides that, we are living in a world, where food is literally designed to leave us wanting more. Food producers engineer food to be intensely addictive such as the combination of fat and sugar, which is only naturally found in breast milk! Our shops are full of hyper-palatable, highly processed, nutrient poor foods that are designed for us to want to eat more, disguised by stealth advertising leaving us disconnected from our real hunger needs.
Because our body converts starches into sugar, we can include starchy foods as part of the sugar group, such as bread, potatoes, rice and other sweet starchy veggies. They give us a brain boost of happy chemicals. This is why, if we eat non-whole foods, we are always going to be at the mercy of our primal instinct to overeat whenever we can.
So now its easier to understand why we end up addicted to wheat, bread, carbs and of course sugary desserts!
Knowing all this doesn’t mean we should give in to instinct, because we all know the short and long term impacts of too much sugar. Sugar being a big part of the world obesity, diabetes and heart disease issues. There is science that suggests the excessive consumption of sugar and over eating in general is causing many cancers and neurological diseases like Alzhiemer’s.
Some people feel really frustrated with their perceived inability to fight their cravings and weaknesses to certain foods. What we will invite through Sanya’s sugar detox, is how you can connect to your intuition and act from a deeper place. Rather than fighting with will power and cravings, you can learn how to tune into yourself and to intuit your need to eat, when to stop and what need you are trying to meet by craving sugar. Training yourself to respond with questions like “am I really hungry or wanting to distract myself?”, “What consequences will there be if I consume this?”. Allowing yourself to a deeper wisdom about what is really good for your body in this moment vs relying on intellect that is commonly influenced by dietary dogma.
In our 14 day detox, we will explore all these topics together and support each other to a cleaner and more nourishing diet.
Read more and sign up here.
Content creator at Sanya
