What do you do when you’re faced with a tough decision? If you tend to reach for the nearest sweet snack, you might actually be doing something right.
Recent research has found that to make good decisions, whether it’s something as simple as going to the gym or holding your tongue to avoid an argument, you have to feed your brain…and feed it something sweet! According to Health, your brain literally requires energy, which it gets from glucose.
“Self control is like a muscle,” Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, professor of social psychology at Florida State University tells Health. “After you do something—anything—that uses self-control, the muscle gets tired, and if a second task requiring self-control comes along, you’ll do worse on it. A dose of glucose seems to replenish people’s willpower.”
But that doesn’t mean you should binge on cupcakes when you get home because you don’t know what to make for dinner, or head to the vending machine every time you’re forced to make a tough decision at work. Not only are simple carbs terrible for your waistline, but they send you on a blood sugar roller coaster ride! Remember, a sugar rush is always followed by a crash – not exactly what you want happening at work in the middle of the afternoon.
Stick to natural sources of sugar that won’t cause a spike in blood pressure, like those found in fruit. “You want the kind of fuel that will burn over a longer period of time,” says Baumeister. “Protein combined with natural sugar is an excellent choice.”
A few good choices: Apples with peanut butter or almond butter, yogurt sprinkled with high-protein cereal or berries, pineapple and cottage cheese, etc.