
This Saturday I am hosting a workshop on battling sugar addiction, something I have struggled with my whole life. A couple of years ago I spent an entire year being sick, my body sending me all sorts of warning signs I couldn't quite decipher (and neither could the Western medical community as it happened). Finally, I found a nutritionist who successfully managed her own lupus through diet alone. When she and I crafted a plan to strengthen my immune system and bring my body back to health, eliminating sugar was a huge part of that. That is not to say that I don't still enjoy the occasional piece of chocolate or bowl of frozen yogurt, but it does mean that processed sugar products are no longer part of my daily life and neither is napping for three hours in the afternoon and wondering what is wrong with me!
My brain freaked out a little bit at the thought of deleting sweets from my daily routine, and now I know why. It turns out that sugar is nine (9!) times more addictive than cocaine, a finding supported by separate studies done at Princeton University and the University of Bordeaux in France. My nutritionist suggested that if I need something a little sweet after dinner, that a date would be a great choice. They are loaded with anti-oxidants and other good for you vitamins and minerals, are considered low glycemic, and have a reputation for being the Viagra of Saudi Arabia (ahem and bada bing bada boom!). If you want more information about the health benefits of dates, check out this article, and this one, and also this one.
If you live in Ventura County, California and you're interested in learning more about successfully battling sugar addiction, I'd love to meet you at my Sugar Blues workshop this Saturday, April 18, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at the Dos Vientos Community Center in Newbury Park. Registration is open to everyone, even if you are not a resident of the Conejo Valley. Just go to their registration page, type Sugar Blues into the Keyword Search, and follow the prompts.
And for those of you wonderful people who read this blog from other parts of the world, I'll be offering this as a webinar come Fall 2015 so stay tuned!