Just ahead of the holiday season and in time for Halloween! Have you ever had one of those instances where you ate too much birthday cake with some juice and maybe had a sugary latte earlier that morning? Your energy levels are going up and down as you're not sure if you want to run a mile or take an hour-long nap.
“The minute you put a sweet in your mouth, you get a surge of dopamine, a feel-good hormone with addictive properties,” says Amanda Bontempo, RD, a nutritionist at NYU Langone’s Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center.
According to The Healthy, there are a few things that you can do to "recover" from your sugar highs and lows.
- Realize that your glucose levels are off and you don't need more sugar. Your body will trick you into thinking you're ok to grab another sweet snack - but resist!
- Have a spoonful of peanut butter to help get rid of a "crash" due to quick digestion. If you're allergic to nuts, try hummus with vegetables.
- Get moving. Don't let your muscles store the sugar - make them use it!
- Drink tea with lemon because that will cause you to take more bathroom breaks, forcing the blood to pump through your kidneys faster
- Plan a healthy breakfast for the next day that's high in protein, low in carbs and somewhere in between in fat (maybe a veggie omelette!)
- Skip the condiments - which are FULL of sugar.
- DON'T MAKE YOURSELF FEEL GUILTY. It happens. It'll happen again. One sugar-rush isn't going to break you or make you gain ten pounds