gnyaaah.

[egypturnash]

Okay, that's it. No more damn candy bars at work, Peggy. Buy some bags of trail mix or something for that oral fixation.

I just had a Butterfinger and a Snickers and was feeling kinda icky by the time I was done with the latter. All those fatty calories aren't doing anything good for my waistline, either... and don't forget that all-too-soon sugar crash! One candy bar and I'm on the Sugar Rollercoaster all day.

I don't even like chocolate that much. Why do I keep going to the corner store for some? I think it's because it's a good excuse to get up and stop staring at the monitor for a few minutes, to do something a little more active than pressing keys and moving around a Wacom stylus. Maybe I should go jog around the block instead every couple hours.

Comments

For the munchies..

[maui.livejournal.com]

Peanuts are good. Keep you busy, fill you up, and they metabolize more slowly than carbs or sugars do, so you don't crash. Trail mix might be good, unless you've got low blood sugar or the like. The sugars and whatnot in the fruit in trail mix can exacerbate the problem if you're crashing - especially the processed kind. Up here we're lucky enough to be able to find the organic hippie stuff almost everywhere. ;p

Re: For the munchies..

[martes.livejournal.com]

I'll second that. I gnosh on lo-salt cashews at work.

[(Anonymous)]

That reminds me of my uncle's job. "We sit in front of a computer all day and type in data. The boss'll come in and say, ' We need more data!!' so we type faster and fill up the disks. That's our job, filling up disks. 'There's too much space on this one!,'' So mb you should thank John you don't have to work like that.

[(Anonymous)]

sugar highs/crashes are mostly completely psychological :P baww I'm commenting to a stranger on a totally random subject. apologies.

(I've been reading your blog since stumbling across your überawesome comic Absinthe. it is, as pointed out previously, überawesome.)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I feel like they're pretty physical. YMMV.

And yay for people enjoying the comic!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Also, wow, you're digging way back into the archives. 2002.

tl;dr

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I usually take the beginning and work my way back to the present when I find a new journal... makes it MUCH more clear what's going on.

Oh, and about the physicality: of course sugar gives you SOME energy, but I've noticed people talking about sugar highs&crashes only in more Western societies than mine. For example, I never hear someone complaining about sugar highs and lows in my country. Literally never, though people eat sugary stuff and chocolate before tests, for workouts, stuff like that, since it does give your brain and body small amounts of energy.

I also read a study that in (American) children, at least, the sugar high is mostly psychological - since moms have been told, a lot, that this is what happens, they unconsciously tense up and start enabling this myth. The child picks this up, again unconsciously, and behaves wildly/energetically - because the mom expects this of him after giving him a lot of sugar. Can't remember all the details, but it pretty much gave me the impression that it's something that's cultural (as in American, perhaps British too, dunno). I haven't encountered this belief in my country, and it's a pretty small country :P

But maybe I'm way off track, I admit to NOT being an expert on this :)

Re: tl;dr

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Hm. I dunno; I'm pretty aware of how chemistry affects my moods, and there's a sugar up and down even if I'm not looking for it, especially now that I don't eat quite as much of it as I used to. (It is nearly impossible to be an American and cut added sugar and/or corn syrup - mostly the latter, these days - out of your diet, unless you grow your own stuff and make everything from scratch.)

On the other hand, like any high, there's a physical component and an expectational component to the experience. Perhaps we do have a cultural expectation of "I had sugar and I am feeling the energy boost, therefore I should run around and exhaust myself." But we also have much bigger doses of the stuff routinely; everything is sweetened. Most of it is more precisely a "corn syrup rush" as corn subsidies mean we have tons more corn than we can use, and cheaply sweeten everything with the stuff.