The health behavior I wish to change is my addiction to sugar. It sounds dramatic; at least I’m not smoking cigarettes, right? Sugar is addictive, just like a drug, and lights up reward centers in our brains (Macdonald 2015). Imagine a fresh, warm, gooey chocolate-chip cookie melting in your mouth. There’s no denying that sugar is often very tasty. The deliciousness that sugar offers to my taste buds is beneficial to me, even though the negatives outweigh the positive of taste. There are several reasons why I should kick my sugar habit. For one, I am constantly craving sugar. I hate to depend on sugar for the rest of my life. It seems as though every day I have to have sugar or I have a meltdown, which brings me to my next reason why I want to kick this habit: it puts me in a bad mood. In addition to mood swings, sugar also makes my skin breakout and makes it hard for me to sleep. In fact, even if I don’t have sugar before I go to bed, sometimes I will wake up in the middle of the night to find something sweet. Lastly, consuming so much sugar makes it nearly impossible for me to lose weight. According to Healthline, sugar stores fat in your body (Gunnars 2013). Over the course of a week, I consumed something sweet (a cookie, a piece of candy, etc.) every day. On three …show more content…
Boredom will be one of the biggest obstacles in changing my behavior. I will have to distract myself by reading a book, going on a walk, talking to a friend, or maybe picking up a hobby. Another obstacle is lack of time. To change my behavior, I will have to plan a lot more. This will mean getting up thirty minutes earlier to make a healthy breakfast and pack a healthy lunch without a sweet treat in it. It will also be very hard to resist sugar if it is right in front of my face, which it more than likely will be, considering I live with three other people. With these obstacles, it will take a lot of willpower to change this
According to the article, Too Much Can Make Us Sick (http://www.sugarscience.org/too-much-can-make-us-sick/), “Heart disease. Diabetes. These chronic conditions are among the leading causes of death worldwide. Increasingly, scientists are focusing on a common set of underlying metabolic issues that raise people's risk for chronic disease. It turns out that the long-term overconsumption of added sugars is linked to many of these dysfunctions.” This means that people living today, have a lot more trouble with diseases because of our unhealthy sugar intake compared to the
Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist. 4 Ways Sugar Could Be Harming Your Mental Health | Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/where-science-meets-the-steps/201309/4-ways-sugar-could-be-harming-your-mental-health
After a full week (7 days) I can conclude that my baseline data is as exactly as I sadly expected it to be. I started recording my baseline starting on Monday and ended my week on Sunday. Throughout that week I ate alarmingly unhealthy and made many unsound food decisions. There wasn’t much change from day to day in terms of eating healthier on any day. Throughout the work week (Monday-Thursday) I ate a rather low calorie nutritional breakfast of oatmeal which is what I always eat for breakfast at work. The weekend is where I normally eat out for breakfast. On Friday I ate Shipley’s Donuts and Home cooked Biscuits and Gravy on Saturday. Sunday I skipped breakfast and had lunch which consisted of a Taco Bell Quesorito and a soda. I know, I’m horrible! Lunch and Dinner throughout the entire week was an unhealthy mess that varied from Burgers, Pasta, Fast Food Meals, Taco’s, and Hamburger Helpers. * Insert Sad Face*
Robert Lustig wrote a journal saying that sugar is addictive and a toxin. It says that it poisons the liver and it suppresses the dopamine Alcohol and tobacco are a little different. They affect the lives of not only the individual, but others around them. Drunk driving and abuse, as well as secondhand smoke, affects the lives of non drinkers and non smokers. The amount of sugar a person consumers, well, that’s a personal problem.”
Pinker, Steven. "The Sugary Secret of Self-Control." NY Times. Sept.-Oct. 2011. Web. 4 Mar. 2012.
HFCS can be habit forming since it is a sweet replacement for sugar and in his article Peretti mentions that David Kessler said “sugar, through its metabolisation by the gut and hence the brain, is extremely addictive, just like cigarettes or alcohol.” People enjoy the taste and because of this they consume large quantities, which lead to health factors such as: obesity, diabetes, heart problems, infertility, liver problems, and so on. Our limited perspective may cause us to lose sight of how much of a risk HFCS possesses.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Before I knew it, I was on my eighth cookie, but decided that it still wasn't enough. I knew that it was a bad idea to have some more, but I went for it anyway. By the time that I was on my eleventh cookie, I could feel myself getting sick because of all that sugar. The worse part was that I also had a sugar rush, which was an awful experience because I ended up crashing from all that
Children are particularly attracted to higher levels of junk food consumption and cannot resist beverages that contain high levels of sugar, in their daily lives. Although the popularity of refined sugar has lessened due to an increased understanding of health risks, children still consume far more amounts than is healthy. Children are drawn and addicted to sugar because of the flavour and parents cannot resist providing these snacks for their kids because they are affordable.
Addictive drugs like nicotine and cocaine and heroin, all can rewire the brain to crave the satisfaction that these agents produce. The desire becomes so strong that it starts to take over the body and it no longer becomes for pleasure and it becomes a need for your body. Now likewise, some people argue that some foods have the same power and effects on people that drugs do, where some of these foods can alter the brain in a way that is resets the appetite and satisfaction threshold in a way that it’s out of reach, meaning a person can never have enough. The obesity levels these days semi-dangerous, so some doctors have conducted an experiment that tested the effects of some foods on the brain, where they took 12 obese men after they consumed two milkshakes, whit the same amount of calories, protein, fat and carbohydrates, and they were equally sweet. (Sifferlin 2013) On the other hand one milkshake had much higher glycemic index from the carbohydrates. After the a few hours the blood sugar levels went down leaving the men hungry again. But after they ate the region of the brain that is related to addictive drugs and behaviors was triggered. In this paper food addiction is discussed and shown that it is a real problem that further critical analysis and experiments should be conducted on such issue.
What do the leading causes of death at the moment have in common? Not only are they chronic conditions for the most part, but they also have been linked to sugar consumption. Sugar has been around for a long time in history, needless to say it enhances the flavour of our foods. There are two main types of sugar that take part in our American diet today, natural sugars and added sugars. Natural sugars are those found naturally in foods such as fructose in fruit and lactose in milk (Heart.org). On the contrary, added sugars are any sugars or caloric sweeteners which are added onto foods and beverages during processing (Heart.org). Added sugars can also include natural sugars that are chemically manufactured. Examples of this include natural sugars such as white sugar, brown
When a person gains weight, they think the main cause is the fat that is included in the food they eat. They are terribly mistaken. According to the video Hungry for Change, they say, “ In the 1900’s, an average person only consumed about 15g of sugar a day. But in the present, modern adults consumes 70-80g of sugar a day, and teens consumes about 120-150g”. Sugar is not only a unhealthy diet and obesity, but it is the main cause of overweight. Sugar does not contain fat, but when people eat more calories than they burn, the remaining calories stays as fat. By being overweight, it can impact a person’s entire quality of life. In the physical health, the right kind of food gives you the strength and energy to make it through in your everyday lifestyle. In other words, by eating the wrong kind of foods, you won't get the energy you need in your life. In the mental/emotional health, a little stress is good for your body because it gives ...
The first step is to understand the effects of sugary drinks on the human body. Daines states that, “Many factors contribute to obesity, but there’s one pernicious one: added sugar” (632). Consumption of sugary drinks alone has held an increasing placement in our daily eating routine. As stated in A Tax That Invests in Our Health, “We consume about 300 calories more a day than we did 30 years ago, and most of those calories come from sugar-sweetened sodas, energy drinks or fruit-flavored drinks” (632).
Miller, Michael C. "Is It Possible To Become Addicted To Chocolate?." Harvard Mental Health Letter 28.5 (2011): 8.Academic Search Premier. Web. 08 Nov. 2013
Through various observations and assumptions, there have been conversations on whether or not overconsumption of food is an addiction. However, many have come to the conclusion that food is an addiction if it is overconsume excessively than it is necessary for an individual’s diet. Nevertheless, food addiction can create health issues that can affect an individual’s body. Even though, many individual may have such knowledge of overconsumption of food; however, many may choose to ignore the consequences that comes with food addiction. Becoming a food addict is harmful and dangerous to an individual’s health.
These sweets can direct our health to diabetes, heart disease, and cancers later in life. Many sweet desserts will increase our blood sugar and our triglycerides. Triglycerides are a type of fat in the blood. If someone who is diabetes or a diabetes-related condition, he or she will have a risk of heart disease due to the sugar. According to Rachel Johnson, a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont in Burlington, “What we know is that added sugars put you at a higher risk for a poor lipid profile . . . A poor lipid profiles increase your risk for coronary heart disease” (Cox). Diabetics need to avoid having lots of desserts. Besides being diabetic, most Americans are having long-term health issues because of too many calories through sugary foods. A person who is receiving the sweet is not getting any fiber, vitamins, or minerals. This cause crucial health development to him or