Hello everyone, I just wanted to write a short piece about emotions and mental well being and being sugar-free, here is some of my story.
In 2009 I had a horrible year, it was two years after my husband died a year after his cancer diagnosis. I was beginning to feel that life was a little easier, my two young lads were settling and we were finding our rhythm as 'just three'.
After having a brief moment of hope I started to slide into a pit of awful darkness interspersed by patches of extreme anxiety and panic attacks.
It felt that finally the stress I had been under was all vibrating to the surface, leaving me shaking and feeling retched. This intense phase lasted about 9 months, after this I felt less anxious but experienced anxiety everyday doing simple small things that previously I had not even thought about, anxiety in some form became just part of how I felt. A large part of this change for the better came about because I reduced the sugar in my diet, I did however continue to eat flour-based products, blended fruit in smoothies and dried fruit.
Fast forward to early 2017 and life is sweet, the overwhelming anxiety has mostly gone but events that stretch me a little would still make me disproportionately anxious.
So then I began #mysugarfreejourney, which having read a lot about the brain/body reaction to sugar now included no flour, no sugar, no blended fruit and no dried fruit. After about 6 weeks I began to notice a difference in my reaction to stress and it became much easier to step out of my comfort zone.
Just this past weekend I met old friends in Bristol, this meant a packed, loud solo train journey, finding my way alone across an unknown city on foot to our render-vous, staying in a high rise Premier Inn (14th floor) and numerous other things and what was wonderful is that I felt not a single touch of anxiety, it was amazing and liberating.
My experience with clients, and research that I have read, continually confirms that fluctuating and dropping blood sugar levels tie-in with anxiety attacks and if we are eating sugar and simple carbs this fluctuation will be very frequent throughout the day.
So keep going everyone this journey is worth it on so many levels, would love to hear if anyone else has experienced better mental health through being sugar-free, much love Carol xx