By now, we’ve already hit a ton of stops on the bipolar express.
The next one, though, is stuff WE should stop. Bad habits. Ongoing vices. Things we trick ourselves into thinking are treats. (You can name at least one, don’t lie…) Yes, I’m coming for all of that. Granted, some of our “cheats” are okay – so long as we know how to (or can) moderate. But, for some of us, that’s tough. This site is called obsession of the mind. Sometimes that presents as OCD. Sometimes as addiction. And, in bipolar, it can be that period where our object of perpetual focus is the spiral we’re in. While we can’t help that we have an imbalance, we can help what we put into our bodies to avert making it worse.
And, this time, we don’t mean meds.
Today, rather, we’re covering one of the white devils called… sugar.
(Fun fact: you can’t suffer from bipolar if you’re dead from the cancer or heart attack.)
Another fun fact? I’ve long known sugar is bad for you…
But I didn’t realize I was consuming it every day for like a year plus.
That is, until I stopped drinking Starbucks. No, I wasn’t getting cafe mochas. No, I wasn’t getting fraps. None of it. I was on my holier-than-thou perch, sipping none other than matcha. Not the matcha I have now, mind you. It was the matcha infused with the premade powder at the infamous chain cafe. The way they trick you is insidious, too. What they say is “no added sugar”. Do you know what that means? Because I didn’t. All I knew was that my mania and my depression poles were getting as far apart as they were extreme. I’d go crackhead at lunch, after my latte. Then, I’d crash around 2:00. Barely functional. Falling asleep like a heroin addict on the job. It was awful. I also didn’t know this drink was to blame. Not until I quit it – in an effort to budget better.
Spoiler alert: my bank account wasn’t the only thing that got better. (So did my energy and mood.) Spoiler alert 2: “no added sugar” meant ” no additional sugar than the powder has in it”. Because this thing had TWICE the amount of MAX sugar you should have. Process that for a second. Refined sugar in any amount is no good. But there’s a max amount you should have on the rare days you do. I was exceeding it by two whole times. Every damned day. If it were the speed limit, I’d be in jail.
Okay, so why did I drink it every day? Do people like sugar because it’s sweet? No. Well, maybe in part. But, if ya didn’t know: sugar is addictive. I’d find that even on days I’d promised myself not to go (even before quitting cold turkey), my body would just drive to Starbucks anyway. Like a sailor to a siren. Like a dog to a whistle. Like a junkie to a dealer’s traphouse. (Less elegant of a metaphor, I appreciate, but work with me here.) Showing up like a mindless robot to receive my daily dose of collagen eating, inflammatory, sugar that (yes!) absolutely made my bipolar symptoms worse. Especially when coupled in a cup with caffeine.
So I cut out the Trojan horse sugar, bought my own matcha, and dolled it up with a better style of sweetness: stevia. I was introduced to stevia many many moons ago. The downside? It’s insanely sweet. The upside runs tandem to that, being that you don’t need nearly as much of it to sweeten your tea, coffee, or whatever else. (The next downside running tandem to that, is that it’s tough to figure out when you’re converting a recipe from sugar and flour into stevia and gluten free baking mixes for your now ex boyfriend who you NeVeR DiD aNyThIng FoR *insert eyeroll* ) I digress. The point is, for that daily mug of whatever I’m enjoying, stevia is an absolute go to for me. (I forgot to buy some this week to keep at work, and I’m having to choke down black coffee each morning. First world problems.)
And what brand do I use?
This one…
Honestly, I like Stevia in the Raw because… well, I’ve just always used it.
That, and it comes in these single serving packets so that I don’t accidentally overdo my daily dose of sweetness in my brew. That’s nada special though. Many brands do packets like these. The difference I’ll outline isn’t between one company’s stevia and another’s. At that point, it’d all be mostly price comparisons, seeing who packs more packets into their boxes, and noticing if one company’s packets are larger than the other’s. All things I’m not willing to do for myself, much less you guys. (Sorry, not sorry.) Instead, my comparison is gonna be between these stevia packets versus other non sugar sweeteners. In those boxes, ya get the same number of packets – but need more than one. Not the case with stevia. One’ll do just fine. And the rest of the box’ll last for a very long time – keeping you from falling off the latte wagon, and back into the lap of the cackling Starbucks siren. (It’s probably also why I keep forgetting to get more for work; it only ever is on my list every couple of months.)
Okay, now that we’ve got a sugar dupe, it’s time to find subs for “the sauce”.