Your quick, post-too-much-sugar recovery plan
“Why do sour patch kids make my stomach hurt?”
That’s something a friend recently asked me. While thinking of the answer to this multifaceted question, I was inspired to preach gut health, especially after the candy holiday (ahem, Halloweenie!).
The TL;DR answer to that question simply lies in the health of our gut microbiome: If our gut microbiome is not populated with the bacteria it needs to digest properly, a multitude of things can happen in there, thus giving us tummy aches. In the same way that eating beans can give us gas, our tummy has certain enzymes to digest sugars. If our gut is lacking these due to imbalances from our bacteria being off (which is caused by a number of things), gas forms and gives us tummy aches.
Your recovery plan for after eating too much sugar:
Drink lots of water. Like way more than you usually do.
Drink fresh ginger and lemon tea daily. Simply chop up fresh ginger, boil it in water for around 10 minutes, squeeze the juice of half a lemon in, enjoy. Make extra to keep in the fridge to enjoy cold.
Add something fermented to your meals daily. Sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, kombucha (WITH LOW SUGAR), or invest in a quality probiotic.
Move a little more than usual. Take some brisk walks, do a cardio video, go for a swim daily, etc.
Eat lots of FIBER! Veggies, fruit, veggies, fruit, beans, veggies, fruit, veggies, fruit, beans.
Which brings me to shout out my mom for subconsciously knowing we should eat lots of fiber after sugar highs. Her tradition is to make chili on Halloween and have leftovers for a few days. Cop my chili recipe in my digital guide to eating well. Or, set up our free consultation to talk about how to add more fiber into your diet. It’s one of my favorite topics to talk about. Oh, fiber, the unsung hero!
One more note on this: Crowding out. This is a topic that we studied during my health coach education. This concept merely suggests by adding in new, healthier options to our diet we can “crowd out” the not-so-good things. By focusing our attention on drinking lots of water and eating super quality foods, maybe, just maybe we can curb our sugar cravings.
