Emotional hijackings

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How to cut sugar without stress

Business Insider recently showed how sugar is becoming the #1 culprit (ahead of fatty foods) behind the current weight gain epidemic. Naturally.

So concerned diet experts are targeting sugar consumption. Unfortunately sugar already has been targeting you — usually with great success.

If you feel your own powerlessness, you’re not alone. Like starting a fitness routine, there are right ways and wrong ways to start a sugar-reduction plan.

Today. Right now.

Ready?

Here’s seven tips to slay sugar:

1. Your stomach doesn’t really care. Your brain does. Find alternative rewards for your brain: Sugar fires off dopamine production in your brain, a key component of addiction. Unlike a balanced meal (which can also trigger dopamine but tapers off if repeated), sugar keeps flooding the brain with warm fuzzies. It is this overactive reward system that creates craving.

Suggestion: Source the pleasure hormone elsewhere:

• Consume large quantities of meat and other proteins, specifically Tyrosine which can be found in almonds, avocados, bananas, chocolate, coffee, eggs, green tea and watermelon.
• Eat yogurt, kimchee, pickles, some cheeses or other foods rich in probiotics.
• Get enough sleep.
• Enjoy music.
• Meditate.
• Get sunlight.
• Consider supplements as curcumin, ginkgo biloba, L-theanine, acetyl-l-tyrosine
• Get a massage. Hug your family. Get a pet.
• Learn something new. Make new discoveries. Develop and satisfy your curiosity.
• Divide your duties into small tasks and check them off as you go. A sense of accomplishment releases dopamine.

Other reward hormones: Other feel-good hormones also provide potent sugar substitutes:

• Endorphins — from significant exercise. Go to the gym.
• Serotonin — from feeling significant or important. Socialize.
• Oxytocin — from feeling cherished, cuddled, intimate or trusted. Get support from family and friends. Cultivate relationships.
• Adrenaline — from fear or competition. Ride a roller coaster, make a high risk investment, or watch a horror movie.

2. Rewire your brain. Neurobiologists are changing the way we see human weakness (addiction). A bad habit is not simply dusted away — or ridiculed by the strong. It’s actually rooted in your brain. It turns out that there are neural highways in your gray matter. The more you reinforce any behavior, the more electro-chemical pulses are fired along certain pathways. Dendrites are even added to the most used thoroughfares, and pulses are sped up.

Yikes! your brain literally aids and abets your addiction.

To forge a new path is to head off through brambles and crawlers; it will be slow go. You’re off the beaten path, so the walking is not easy. This is not only bad news because it’s not impossible, just hard. You can “re-wire” your brain, but you need to be realistic. It might takes weeks, months, even years.

Suggestion: Journal your progress. Set small goals towards a larger objective. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks. If you “fall off the wagon,” get back immediately. Get a empathetic support group or accountability partner. Repetition is the key to forming both bad and good habits, so try to steer clear of sugar over and over.

3. Identify negative emotions. There’s a reason why they’re called “comfort foods.” The are a happy-reset button. What are the emotional storm clouds you escape from? Here are a few common factors inducing sugar addiction:

• Stress — The inability to handle stress well is ripe fruit for escapism.
• Fear/ anxiety — Ditto above.
• Boredom — The dull lulls of life make you want to zest up your life with some tasty morsels.
• Loneliness — Social isolation, anxiety and rejection bring a heavy emotional cost.
• Frustration — Failure and setbacks bring depression, from which you naturally want to take a break.

Suggestions: Developing strategies for these and other negative emotions may require some outside help from a trusted counselor. You might get inspiration from a good book or some motivational videos on YouTube. Journaling can help you analyze, dissect and give you the objectivity to overcome these. Get a hobby, take up gaming, learn a new language or play the guitar. Read the four other tips for cutting sugar without stress.

Mr. Mustard Seed is selling 10″ bamboo steamers on Amazon as a way to help the health habit. Profits go to his ministry.

I asked you to pray for me…

Would that the church would follow 1 John’s admonition to love more closely than it follows America’s spirit of competition…

… and I would have missed the blessing

Founding a Christian school in Guatemala was soooooooo hard. Frequently, I muttered: Had I known at the start, I would never have tried. And sometimes I thought: God, you tricked me into this. I thought it would be easier.

But once it was started, it wasn´t easy to end. So on I went, dealing with grief from the Education Department, grief from ungrateful parents, grief from false accusations. Ugh!

Then God brusquely moved me out of Guatemala. I handed off leadership baton. Since, I have visited, and NOW my greatest joy is to see all the kids who have a strong Christian school, a hope to escape the hopelessness. Had I never tried, I would have missed one of the greatest blessings of my life.

Maybe you´re going through it today in ministry. Don´t hand the mantle back to Elijah. Stick with it. If you give up today, you´ll opt for an easy out of the grief of difficulties. At the same time, you may deprive yourself of your life´s great satisfaction.

Gone fishing

Hosea

When the going gets tough, the tough go fishing. JK.

No, what I really want to talk about is CATCHING fish. I took my kids fishing for the first time at June Lake in the Eastern Sierras of California. They learned what fishing truly is: we didn’t catch a thing. I think they thought it was like in the cartoons: as soon as put the baited hook in the water, you pull out a beauty.

Robert

My kids got frustrated. Hosea said he never wanted to fish again in his life. Robert prayed and made vows to God. Rebekah was bored out of her mind and complained.

I laughed. Admittedly, I’m not the ace angler. But I know that fishing sometimes can be like that. You just enjoy the splendor of the surroundings and tranquility of the lake. You eat tuna back at camp (because you didn’t catch trout).

Rebekah

There’s a lesson for ministry in this. Sometimes you’re not catching (Remember the “fishers of men” parable?). Even in times of dryness, of frustration, of apparent stagnation, it’s still more glorious than secular work. So don’t throw your bait into the lake. Don’t drive down the mountain cursing. Hang in there. The more you fish, the better you get. Sooner or later, you’ll not be just enjoying the scenery.