Adapted from episode 85 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Danielle Daem, Certified Holistic Nutrition Coach & Sugar Addiction Expert.
Lindsey Parsons:
Can you tell me a little bit more about your own journey with sugar addiction?
Danielle Daem:
I’ll try to keep it short. Obviously my journey stems back as for most of us to childhood. From the minute I was born, obviously things are impacting my gut and my dietary preferences. I grew up in a traditional household as many of us did. Sugar was just a really big part of our every day. I was a really picky eater growing up as well. I often joke that I only ate things that were white – white bread, bagels, white pasta and just white sugar. Those simple, processed carbs were my go to. My poor mom – she did get some vegetables in me at some point. Now obviously the start of this huge desire to have sugar as a big part of my life more than just the physical pieces. Looking back, sugar was such a part of how we celebrated. If I got a good grade or scored a goal at my soccer game, “Oh, let’s go and get some ice cream.” There was always that sugar being a huge part of how we celebrated, how we showed love and just all the pieces that we know now go into just our relationship with sugar.
About six years ago, I had my “sugar wake up call.” My husband and I quit our jobs in the finance industry and went traveling to South America for a year. That was really obviously a soul-searching journey. We did a lot of work on ourselves and really just rediscovered what mattered to us and what we wanted out of life. On that journey, I got to witness how people of such a different culture in South America live compared to here where I live in Canada. In a lot of these countries that we visited, people related to their food a lot differently. They went to the market and they actually cooked all their meals. It was very rare that people would go and eat out. Obviously, it’s becoming more and more prevalent with the fast food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King just getting into all these countries; however, it really showed me a lot of where I was getting sucked into this fast, convenient food sort of lifestyle that so many of us live in, and how that wasn’t going to serve me in the long run. I started really reflecting on my health and the way I was not actually nourishing myself. We didn’t eat well on that year-long trip – eating things that could survive on a 30-hour bus ride was pretty much just bread, cookies, cakes and things in packages. At the very end of our trip, we ended up actually living off the land in the middle of the Colombian jungle for a yoga retreat for two weeks. It was there that I say I went we went through our accidental sugar detox because I wasn’t really aware of what was going on. We were still having a little sugar because we were actually eating mangoes from the trees and we were eating off the land, but I went through my withdrawal symptoms there. I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I was sick. I also happened to get a parasite at the same time, which was absolutely horrible. Don’t drink the juice if it’s made with water from the land. I should have known that. It got me and it was horrible. That combination obviously made for a very interesting stay. It really was the catalyst for me to start reflecting on the changes that were happening in my tastebuds. As I was in that accidental detox, getting off of the processed food that I’ve been living on my whole life, I really started noticing my taste buds change. I noticed my cravings change and I noticed that I’m not really needing a cookie today like I used to. That really just started percolating those thoughts for me. “Oh, I think that there’s some sort of control that sugar has over me.”
Coming home from that trip, (about two weeks after that), we actually came to Canada and I started really diving into learning more about health and nutrition and just how to nourish my body in a better way. I started learning and studying at the same time as starting to get into my own spiritual and meditation practices. That’s when I really started discovering my passion for nutrition and for actually making these shifts. I started having some big light bulb moments – looking at my genetic lineage and the state of health of my mom’s side of the family and my dad’s side of the family riddled with every single chronic disease that you can think of. I started really understanding the role of what I put in my body and the stress in my life. That’s been a big, big inward journey as well, for me, and really realizing that if it wasn’t stress that was going to kill me, it was going to be sugar and these hugely toxic foods in my life. I just started noticing those patterns and really making that connection for myself that I didn’t want to live a life like my mom does. Her and my dad’s entire families are just being riddled with issues that have prevented them from fully living life. I’m someone who wants to just fully live like I want to be traveling and hiking and exploring when I’m 90. These light bulb moments really helped me understand that the way that I treat myself (and especially the food that I put in my body), my mindset and calming my nervous system, and all these important things have a direct link on turning those genes on and off. I do have a big say in what my future looks like when it comes to my body and its ability to actually do things like travel when I’m 90.
I feel very lucky and unique in my journey that nothing bad happened for me to shake me up. Obviously watching my grandparents pass away from various diseases; I never met my grandpa on my dad’s side because he died of a heart attack when he was 50. Nothing dramatic happened to me. I know a lot of people wait for something horrible to happen, especially when it comes to gut health. People wait until they get diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, SIBO or something really bad happens before they they start to make a change. For me, it was just a series of really deep understandings and connections with what I wanted out of life and the role that I had played in that. That was kind of the start of it. It was about six years ago that I really went into nutrition. I started my business in helping women build a healthy relationship with food and themselves and it’s morphing every year. It’s an ongoing process, as I’m sure you know.
Lindsey Parsons:
Yeah, thanks for that background. When I gave up sugar, that impacted my weight. It mostly just ended that battle with a baby belly that I kept thinking I’d get rid of somewhere in between my first and second child – I adopted my second child so then I had no more excuses. I had to do something. I’m curious, did it impact your weight when you gave up sugar?
Danielle Daem:
Yes, it did. I’m also someone that’s never been overweight. I’m grateful for that. I’ve been able to outrun and exercise it, especially in the first 30 years of my life. As things change, obviously, we go through different changes of life, it becomes more prevalent, but yes, I definitely remember like the inflammation of my body going down – feeling more energized and my tastebuds coming back online. I definitely did notice a little bit of weight balancing. My body was getting back into balance when I started eating real, whole foods. Who would have thought?
Lindsey Parsons:
Who would have thunk it? So let’s talk a little bit about how sugar impacts the gut.
Danielle Daem:
Yes, let’s do it. I’m sure that you’ve touched on this lots in many of your episodes as well, because sugar is one of the biggest culprits when it comes to what we’re actually putting in our body and how it affects our gut. A couple of things are going on here. We can dive a little bit deeper into some of these. Caveat here, I’m not a scientist and you definitely are more in this area of all the specifics around gut health for sure. When I’m talking about sugar, I’m mostly talking about really simple carbohydrates like white bread, white pasta, sugars, honey, maple syrup or agave. I’m not necessarily talking here about complex carbohydrates, although some things like yams and beets that are higher in sugar can be really sensitive for some people.
What most people are struggling with are highly processed foods, all of the added sugars, all of the juice and all of the things that really sneak in to give us that crazy blood sugar spike. One of the things that’s really going on here, and we can talk a bit more about this is, is understanding that sugar and processed foods feed the bad bacteria in our gut. We’re getting a huge surge of all of this yummy food for all of the “bad guys.” right? These nasty pathogens, or yeasts and bacteria that live in our gut that normally lie dormant. Sugar is the preferred source of fuel for these bad bacteria. They can really start to take over and obviously that leads to all sorts of issues. Our over consumption of sugar increases the acidic environment in our gut (and our whole body). Our gut is becoming more and more acidic, because sugar is extremely acidic. This leads to inflammation and can lead to degenerating the intestinal lining, which we know is not a good thing. So many diseases ultimately stem from inflammation, from gut damage, which is why I love what you’re doing so much, Lindsey, focusing on the gut, as it is really the hub and the number one area to look at and focus on when we’re looking at total body health.
As I just mentioned, this bad bacterial overgrowth can really take hold and can produce this dysbiosis. Balance between the good bacteria and bad bacteria in the gut is thrown off. These harmful bacteria that love sugar that in a perfect gut, live dormant, and live peacefully being managed by the good guys. Any of the bacteria that can be considered pathogenic, or yeast-like will be fed by sugar. Some of the specific bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus is definitely one that that gets fed in a big way by sugar, and obviously produces a variety of toxins that can really lead to disease and damage.
Lindsey Parsons:
That’s, by the way, if you’ve heard of MRSA, it’s Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which is that skin infection that doesn’t go away unless you get antibiotics, but you catch it in the hospital.
Danielle Daem:
Another one that can obviously be loving this increase in sugar is Clostridium perfringens. This is something that you get from contaminated food and it can live dormant and the amount of sugar that we’re feeding it just just allows it to grow and take hold. Obviously, there’s E coli as well. That’s a big one that gets fed by sugar. Like I said, the list is long so if you know a lot of the fancy technical names for these strains of bacteria, just know that they’re really being fed by sugar. I was doing some some extra research actually before this interview Lindsey, because I wanted to really have some more facts to share with all of you. I found this one study published in the PNAS journals that was actually showing the link between fructose and glucose, which are the simplest sugar molecules. This study showed that it decreases the abundance of a protein in our gut that actually regulates gut colonization. It’s possible that this increase in consumption of sugar is actually preventing our gut from being able to colonize with the healthy bacteria. We know now that over the years with how we’re eating and how we’re living, the amount and the variations of our amazing microbiomes and the beautiful bacteria that we want in there, the thousands of strains that we actually want existing in our gut is becoming less and less. Just like we look at the world, and we see cultures and languages being lost as we sort of come together in this one world energy. This is happening in our gut too and that’s a big problem, because we need the variety. We need these these ancient strains to provide this total body health.
Lindsey Parsons:
Because I think you’ve also seen too how all the studies show that the more diverse your gut microbiome is, the better your health outcomes.
Danielle Daem:
Yeah, totally. This is where the studies are proving that children who are born vaginally versus C section get more of that initial gut bacteria on birth and that actually gives them stronger immune systems and just in total. It’s kind of serious. We need to be paying attention to what’s going on at a bigger level, not just even personally, right. That’s why I know you’re doing such amazing work here with the podcast, because this is of huge importance. We’re losing diversity in all areas on the planet. When we lose that in our gut, we essentially are just continually weakening ourselves and leaving ourselves susceptible to disease, viruses, diabetes, cancer and mental illness. All of these things are stemming from that imbalance. I found another study that I just wanted to mention actually out of Oxford, that was really interesting. It was called “The Adaptation of Gut Microbiota to Modern Dietary Sugars and Sweeteners.” It’s essentially hypothesizing that the gut bacteria living in there, even the ancient strains, are actually shifting and genetically modifying based off of the types of sugars that we’re eating. The type of diet that we’re eating is now impacting our internal environment in a big way. It’s actually changing the cellular structure of our gut microbiome, of our gut and of all the cells in our body to adapt and to live and to thrive off of these, whether it’s artificial sweeteners or regular sugar as well. Our human body is trying to adapt to all this processed nonsense that shouldn’t be in it in the first place, and unfortunately, we’re getting caught up in this wave of inflammation, cravings, addictive behaviors, let alone all the things that are happening in the brain when we’re eating sugar as well. I found that to be a great reminder for all of us. This is having a long term impact not only on our gut microbiome, but also on our children. If we’re wanting to procreate, we’re passing that on.
Lindsey Parsons:
Absolutely. You mentioned artificial sweeteners and I thought that’s an interesting topic. I was going to talk a little bit more about better sugar alternatives, but I just want to for just one second, talk about things like acesulfame potassium, NutraSweet, aspartame and those types of artificial sweeteners? Can you talk a minute about that?
Danielle Daem:
I don’t know all of the science and studies specifically on them. There’s a couple of things actually to really know and to consider when it comes to what I just called alternative sweeteners. There’s so many sweeteners out there now being produced, obviously, in laboratories. This is the first red flag for me. This is not something that came of the earth, so why is it in my body? This is just something really important to consider when we’re putting any foreign substance into our body. Our body is going to be a little bit confused about what’s going on and it’s not going to have necessarily the pathways to metabolize it, to flush it out or just recognize it and let alone use it for any use in the body. When it comes to a lot of these sweeteners, and obviously a lot of them are slightly different. Artificial sweeteners and alternative sweeteners are really designed to be way sweeter than even normal table sugar. A lot of them are designed (especially aspartame and sucralose) to be like more than 100 times sweeter than sugar. We’re still giving our tastebuds a crazy hit of sweet and that’s still sending signals to to our dopamine centers saying, “Sugar is coming!” It still releases the insulin into our blood, because our whole body thinks sugar is coming. It alerts the whole digestive system that sugar is coming even though sugar doesn’t end up coming. A lot of these these sweeteners don’t have glucose or fructose in them so that they’re being touted as being safe for diabetics and those sorts of things, when in fact, there’s still a response in the body taking place that’s really abnormal and actually leading to inflammation around our insulin receptors. It’s really important to understand how the food industry actually does a lot of trickery. The billion dollar food industry knows that we’re on to them about sugar. They know that the masses are understanding processed foods, seed oils and sugar is bad for them. They are one step ahead of us trying to find ways to sell us on their food products, so they can label things as sugar free. All of these nutritional labels are a red flag in my opinion. We need to really be careful in making sure that we’re staying with whole real foods as much as we can. These sweeteners are processed and made in a lab. I would put them in the pharmaceutical category. These are things that are foreign to our body. We’re still discovering and research is still being done. We’re never really going to know the overall effects, but there’s a lot of information coming out there now. It’s very easy to find and do your own research on a lot of these sweeteners. I have a lot of clients who would have things like Erythritol or sucralose and they would get extreme diarrhea or bloating. That’s obviously a telltale. Your body is telling you to stop that because it’s not working. There’s there’s definitely a lot of things to consider there, especially around the actual addictive tendencies that we all have. We’re not actually solving a sugar addiction problem, or a sugar eating problem, when we’re just swapping out natural sugar for unnatural sugar that’s 100 times sweeter. We’re still using it in the same way. We’re still using it to treat ourselves or to emotionally eat and avoid stress at the end of the day. We’re still doing that when we switch over to these “healthier sugars.”
Lindsey Parsons:
Thanks for that elaboration. I asked the question, because I had a nonprofit advocating for healthier food in the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland and the studies show because of course they were saying, “Okay, we’ll take the sugary sodas out of schools, but we’re going to leave the diet sodas because those are good for kids.” Studies came out showing that there was a higher correlation between diet soda and type two diabetes than there was with sugary sodas and the action mechanism hadn’t been elucidated, at least at that time. Some of the suspicions were that (and there were studies showing) people ate more when they were drinking diet soda. It wasn’t like you could just replace the sugar craving with diet soda. That sugar craving kept them eating, which was fed by the diet sodas.
Danielle Daem:
That is really fascinating. I’ve heard of that as well in different studies and also just in my own experience seeing my clients the last six years. When we eat these alternative and artificial sweeteners, a lot of them are actually like exactly that. The mechanism in the body actually drives more cravings. Our body thinks we’re about to eat something with nutrients in it and it doesn’t get nutrients. Things like fructose are now being shown to actually turn off our hormone that makes us feel satiated. That ability for your brain to know you’ve had enough. Fructose is something that we can just eat constantly – hence high fructose corn syrup being used in every processed food. The food industry knows that it’ll just keep us coming back for more, keep us craving and disconnect us from our body’s natural ability to know when we’re satiated. There are very intricate things happening in the body that are keeping us going. I love that example in the in the school systems, I’ve heard of other examples like that as well – where it’s just leaving more and more cravings, more sugar intake and not solving any problems.
Lindsey Parsons:
I’m curious whether you recommend a cold turkey approach to cutting out sugar or gradually decreasing your consumption? What works better for people?
Danielle Daem:
I love this question because my answer is, “It depends.” There’s no right answer to this. I would really encourage anyone here to really just tune into yourself. It’s kind of a 50/50 split. Some of my clients love going cold turkey. Funny enough, actually, the day we’re recording this interview, my current group program just started sugar free today – their 4 week detox. They’re going cold turkey today, but we’ve actually spent the last four weeks in that program getting them ready mentally and physically to take that leap and go off sugar. It’s going to be really dependent on your personality, your lifestyle and how much prep you’ve done in advance. If you want to go cold turkey, it’s really important that you prepare yourself in advance. There’s a lot of prep that needs to go into that to make you successful to stick with it. Meal planning, keeping your freezer stocked with emergency foods, keeping healthy snacks, and really thinking through how you’re going to handle challenges that come up – birthday parties, holidays, vacations and all of those pieces that can really us throw us off course. If that terrifies the living c-r-a-p out of you, then maybe a gradual approach is more manageable for you. For a lot of women especially, there’s this huge fear of losing our best friend when we begin getting rid of processed food. I know this fear is very real. There’s this belief that we’re not going to have anything fun in our life, we’re not going to have any joy and my best friend is going to be gone. In that case, it is really helpful in my opinion is to gradually ease into it. I find that people who do gradually ease into it with the proper plan and support tend to be way more successful because they’re ready for the challenges that come or ready for the hiccups, the withdrawal symptoms or the things that might show up in their body once they’ve slowly built in some whole, real foods. It’ll also be a lot easier on the body if we spend four weeks gradually minimizing our sugar intake before taking it all out. It’ll be a lot easier on your body than a sudden cold turkey.
Lindsey Parsons:
What kind of withdrawal symptoms do people experience?
Danielle Daem:
Another great question. When we think of withdrawals, that can be headaches, there’s often digestive upset in the beginnin,g especially someone who’s going cold turkey and switching from processed food to real food. Your bowels and your gut are going to be very confused for a while, so there’s going to be digestive issues. Pain can really come out as the toxins are being pulled out of your joints and muscles. You might notice some extra pain, headaches and exhaustion, especially for the first couple of weeks.
Lindsey Parsons:
I’m sure there’s got to be a die-off reaction because the pathogenic bacteria aren’t being fed and they’ve got that lipopolysaccharide, which is an endotoxin.
Danielle Daem:
Exactly. We’re realizing a lot that some people also have cold and flu like symptoms. They feel really tired and sick. Just knowing that all of that is normal is really, really helpful. There’s quite the process. It’s almost like it has to get worse before it gets better kind of feeling. You have to push over the hump. And it usually only lasts one to two weeks, maybe three. Everybody’s very different, obviously. I know for some some of my clients, it lasted three days, and then they start feeling great again. It depends, but it’s important to stay on course and pay attention.
Lindsey Parsons:
It’s going to be exactly like a Herxheimer reaction. When you start taking antimicrobials, the first two or three days could be really bad for some people who have a really severe overgrowth. So you mentioned seed oils. Let’s talk for a minute about why seed oils are bad and what they are.
Danielle Daem:
Seed oils are heavily processed fats that have been designed by the food industry because they’re very shelf stable and you can put them in a lot of processed foods to add some flavor. This is one of their sneaky ways of trying to add flavor and fat, especially if they’re not going to be using sugar in a product. These are pretty much any of the oils that you see in the grocery store shelf in a clear plastic bottle. Things like canola oil (rapeseed oil), sunflower, oil, vegetable, peanut, soybean, corn or margarine – any of these oils that are from plants. These oils are essentially just toxins to the body. They oxidize like nobody’s business, and can create a lot of free radicals in the body and start augmenting and causing damage to our cellular structure. What they also do is inflame our cells They also inflame our insulin receptors, which can support and lead to more insulin resistance.
Lindsey Parsons:
That’s a relatively unknown piece of it. I think I listened to an hour and a half podcast on the very sciency details of exactly how you need Omega six oils to have type two diabetes. This is a little, well known trick. I think if you told someone, “The only thing you need to pull out of your diet is is seed oils.” Everything else would come with it because there’s no processed food that does not have seed oil. You could just tell them the only thing you’re not allowed to eat is that.
Danielle Daem:
I’ll have to try that. That’s a neat trick. Another thing that they do is get into our fat cells and damage our body’s ability to actually burn fat for fuel. This just really damages our metabolism and the processes that are able to, in an ideal world, be metabolically flexible and burn glucose or fat for fuel. I mentioned earlier already about the oxidation and they’re just extremely inflammatory. Just think of seed oils as cancer-creating inflammatory substances that should not be used. I don’t know, Lindsey, if you or any of anyone listening has ever seen the YouTube video of how they make canola oil. You can find it on YouTube. It’s a very old video with horrible filming footage, but watch that and never again will you ever want to eat a seed oil in your life. It’s really eye opening what they actually do to produce it, making the sludge and what they mix it with. It’s pretty shocking too. I encourage anybody to just do a YouTube search for how Canola is made and it will come up. It’s a really powerful visual.
Lindsey Parsons:
I’ll try and find it and link to it in the show notes.
Danielle Daem:
I know a lot of experts in the nutrition space. We have debates of like, “What’s worse sugar or seed oils?” It’s kind of a 50/50 debate. They’re on par and there’s a lot of people out there touting that seed oils are even worse for you than the sugar that we’re ingesting. Either way, they’re both equally as toxic and produce a lot of cellular damage, free radicals and toxins in our body. We’re dealing with a toxic load just living in the world that we live in and we don’t need to be putting these added toxins into our body if we if we don’t have to.
Lindsey Parsons:
Briefly, what oils do you recommend people use?
Danielle Daem:
Things like butter, ghee, avocado oil and olive oil are good for no heat. You don’t want to heat those oils. We can get into flax oil and walnut oil. Those need to be kept in the fridge. We want oils that are really delicate. These are these are going to be the ones that are more packed with omega threes and the saturated fats that we do need. Coconut oil is another good one. Any animal fat is recommended. I actually have lard in my fridge, who would have thought that we would actually be promoting lard again? I remember the whole “don’t eat fat” craze back in the day. We need to get over that because we do need fat in our body. Tallow is another one – any of those fats that can be rendered from animals. When it comes to high heat cooking, you should do your best to use fats that are solid at room temperature. Those are the ones at least that I use in my home and that I definitely recommend. Pay attention to that heat amount, because fats can become very unstable very quickly. Things like beautiful olive oil is absolutely an incredible addition to your diet. You don’t want to heat it or agitate the cellular structure of the oils, because if you do, we’re ending up in the processed seed oil category again.
Lindsey Parsons:
You certainly don’t want it to burn. Like if you see your oil smoking, pour it out, in the garbage, not down the sink, and start over.
Danielle Daem:
I’ve done that. I’ve been heating coconut oil on the stove and I forget about it and I’m like “Oh no, it’s burnt!” In my line of work, the emotional connection that we have to food is one of the biggest root causes around sugar addiction, beyond the physical addiction that’s actually going on. For most of us, this is actually the stronger addiction. It’s the emotional piece. There’s so much that I could talk about with emotional eating and this emotional connection, but when it comes to our gut, these heavy emotions or the difficult emotions that we might be dealing with on a day to day basis are driving us to actually want to eat the processed food. We’re going for comfort. We’re going for the junk. When we’re eating the junk, it’s doing all these things that we just talked about. We need to start looking at our triggers and our patterns around this. When it comes more specifically to eating time, and our digestion, we are often not in a relaxed state. Most of us are not when we eat. I look around to see that we’re eating in our car, we’re eating quickly at our desk, we’re eating in front of the TV, not even paying attention to what we’re eating. We’re eating maybe while we’re arguing with our husband. All of this puts our body you know, essentially in a stress state and in a state where we’re not relaxed. We’re not aware that we’re about to digest food. This obviously can do a lot of things to our body. The biggest thing it that really does is shutting down our digestive system, especially if we’re not mindful eating. Our digestion starts with our eyes or our nose. A lot of my clients don’t even look at their food or don’t even know that they’re eating. They’re watching TV, and scrolling on Instagram at the same time while they’re shoving things in their mouth.
Lindsey Parsons:
Let’s talk a little bit about the emotions around eating and how that impacts gut digestion. And the chips are just going into the mouth, right?
Danielle Daem:
They’re just appearing in the mouth as if from nowhere; it’s magic. When we do that, our body and the rest of our digestive system doesn’t get the signal that there’s food coming in. We need to release the enzymes. We need to release all the protein. We need to release the bile and all of the things that we need to actually break down these foods to properly be digested into our bloodstream. This is the argument for mindful eating and learning to get back to actually prioritizing, sitting down, going slow and being present with our food – even if it’s for 10 minutes. Even if it’s just for that quick bit of time to really do our best to minimize distractions. When we do that, we also support our body in calming the nervous system. We need to be in the rest and digest state. Because when we’re not, if we’re in a stress state or we’re ruminating over an argument that we had with a friend yesterday or we’re just feeling heavy and nervous or we’re worried about work and we’re just in a tailspin of nervousness and stress, what that tells our body is that we’re in danger. When we’re in danger, all of our energy and our internal resources are being sent to our brain and our limbs. The digestive system is the last place that gets energy if we’re in a stress state, whether it’s mental or physical stress. Our body has that reaction, even if it’s not actually in our reality. When we relax, our body can actually send the appropriate energy and resources to the digestive system so it can function properly. This is a great example and maybe experiment for anybody. If you’re eating when you’re stressed and you feel like you’ve got stomach cramps, gas and other digestive symptoms, it is probably because you weren’t focused on your food. You weren’t relaxed in that state actually allowing your digestive system to do the magic that it does. Those are a couple of the ways our emotional state really plays a big role in keeping our digestive system calm and working optimally. It’s more than just meditate and relax every day. There’s a big practice here that I’m not perfect at.
Lindsey Parsons:
Nor am I.
Danielle Daem:
I’m going to be the first to admit that this is still something I work on.This is harder said than done, but it’s important.
Lindsey Parsons:
It’s something I teach some of my clients, especially the people who come to me for weight loss. If you sit down to the table, really feel your stomach tense, you just stop and do a couple minutes of 5-5-7 breaths – five in, hold for five and out for seven – in two minutes, you can just completely change into that parasympathetic, rest and digest state and have such a better chance at assimilating your nutrients.
Danielle Daem:
People often complain about eating healthy being expensive, but how much money are we wasting by not digesting the food that we’re actually paying for? It’s a very interesting kind of argument, maybe for another day. And I don’t have the answer for that, but how much are we actually wasting financially and energetically when we’re not paying attention and we’re just shoving food in all day long and really not being present with that process?
Lindsey Parsons:
I do still a little bit coach people on weight loss, but a lot more at the beginning of my career, and breaking the sugar habit. Of course, some of my clients came to me with eating disorders, not necessarily bulimia, but certainly binging cycles, followed by punishing cycles and starving themselves. I’m curious how you work with people who do have an eating disorder. I found that to be one of the most challenging things for me personally.
Danielle Daem:
This is such a good question, Lindsey. This actually came up on one of my group calls in my current group a couple of weeks ago, because there is this easy trap to fall into when we talk about giving up sugar. “Are we not just on another diet? Are we not just limiting, controlling and starving ourselves of something over here?” I’m actually of the belief that we do need to really be careful with what we tell our brain we can’t ever have again. This goes especially for food. This can be really a slippery slope, because as soon as we are told we can’t have something, we want it more. We feel like we don’t have the freedom to make our own choices. A lot of my work is really about tuning back into our true selves, and rebuilding a deeper relationship with ourselves, and thus a relationship with food. When we feel fully empowered, and we fully know and love and respect our body, it becomes a choice to avoid certain foods. I’m making a loving choice to not eat processed seed oils and sugar. It’s not that I can’t have it. It’s that I’m choosing not to because I know what it does to my body. And I love myself too much to do that. This is really like just scratching the surface on a lot of the deeper work that we need to do if we want to actually make a healthy relationship with healthy food in a lasting way. There’s no quick fix here. We need to really go inward and take a hard look at why we’re eating sugar in the first place, what the relationship with food is, our beliefs about food, our beliefs about ourselves. I often say that our relationship with sugar is just a byproduct of our relationship with ourselves. We have to start repairing that relationship with ourselves. You need to really be paying attention to what’s coming up for you. If you notice that restricting sugar in your diet is triggering that old pattern of bingeing and purging, that’s really important information for you to then lay off. Maybe you need more guidelines. Maybe you need less hard rules. Maybe there’s some more work to be done there. I really believe that all of our patterns stem from a deeper level. There’s an old neural pathway and your ego is using that pattern to get something or to accomplish something from a survival mechanism standpoint. We need to look at that stuff and actually do some deep healing. Does that answer your question?
Lindsey Parsons:
Yeah. Obviously, it’s a complex problem to solve. It’s not an overnight problem. Sometimes I think about working with clients who start out with a self-professed eating disorder. Don’t anticipate in 12 weeks that you’re going to lose weight, if that’s your goal. Anticipate that you might maintain, which probably is a step forward. Maybe another 12 weeks, you might actually get to the point of losing. It’s not an easy proposition undoing a lifetime of an eating disorder.
Danielle Daem:
Yeah, for sure. There’s a lot of baby steps and obviously, unfortunately, there are of a lot of detoxes and things out there that might not work for you if these are your old patterns. It’s definitely a tricky rope to walk. It’s very person specific. It’s very individual. It’s hard to give any specific advice here, of course, but just be gentle with yourself. Understand that this is a process and a journey. The more that you connect to your true self, go inward and repair that relationship with yourself, making better choices becomes a lot easier. The mindset work is really about not guilting or shaming or making up stories about yourself, right? We need to find a way to understand that we’re human and understand that most of us have spent decades to get to where we are, especially when it comes to our addictive patterns. This isn’t going to change in 12 weeks. This isn’t going to change overnight. I’m still learning, growing and finding weak spots that I’m working on. This is six years into my sort of self discovery and healing journey and it’s going to continue onward, because I’m human.That’s okay. I’m always learning and growing and being challenged.
Lindsey Parsons:
That’s one of the first things that I tell people after the first meeting is, I want you to go and watch without judgment, just with curiosity, what you’re doing around food. When you eat sugar, what is going on in you? Just to try and not be judgmental of ourselves for the first time, perhaps, in your life. Because there’s so many people out there who are just beating themselves up every time they eat sugar or every time they overeat. The first piece is to pull out the judgment and just understand.
Danielle Daem:
Yeah, yes! That’s definitely where I start as well. I’m glad you mentioned the word curiousity. That’s a huge focus when I work with my clients too. Curiousity and awareness number one. And also number two, I have to remind everyone about this, our addictive patterns and our unhealthy habits with food are not our fault. It is sick, when you actually do the research and you learn, this world that has been created around us by the food industry, and the pharmaceutical industry and the government, and just all of the way that we have been taught to use food for emotional reasons to you know it’s everywhere, it’s in the media, it’s in false news and studies that have been paid by politicians. There’s a lot of documentaries out there now that are really great, really pointing to some of the injustices that have happened. That’s important for any of you listening who are putting this on you, that there’s something wrong with you. “Why can’t I give up sugar, why can’t I eat healthy, what is wrong with me?” I think we all massively need to take that pressure and blame off of our shoulders because we’ve been raised in a world to use food for every possible emotional reason, to treat ourselves, to show love, we’ve been constantly bombarded with the message “feel bad, eat sugar”. It’s everywhere and it’s been hidden in our food. And there’s so many things that have been out of our control. I often say this: “It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility if you want to turn the corner and live a long, healthy life.” There’s nothing wrong with us. Ugh! We need to throw that out. It makes me so sad that every woman I meet is going around with this belief that there’s something wrong with me because I can’t get off sugar.
Lindsey Parsons:
Meanwhile every single store you go to, it’s in the checkout aisle at the hardware store.
Danielle Daem:
Right? Why is there a huge candy section here? I want nails and screws! Every restaurant adds it to sauces. It’s just, we’ve become addicted for many reasons and most of them are not our fault, nor were they our choice. This is not a you problem, everybody listening. This is a massive societal problem, which you can do a lot about. You can absolutely take your power back. You can absolutely do this deep healing work that we started talking about. Arm yourself with this beautiful knowledge from this podcast and actually make changes. There’s so much that you can do. Please know that you’re not powerless, but it is important to take that blame off because that blame is just going to crush you and keep you in the shame cycle. You’re going to stay in the guilt cycle and you’re never going to come out of those patterns if you stay there. There needs to be some self compassion and curiosity is a great place to start.
Lindsey Parsons:
Tell me where people can find you and the break free from sugar program that you host.
Danielle Daem:
My website’s a great place. It’s DanielleDaem.com. You can come and find me on my podcast as well. Lindsey, you’re going to come and be a guest on the “Beyond Sugar Freedom Podcast.” That’s probably the best space to connect with me. I’m on Facebook and Instagram as well @DanielleDaem. I put my podcast up on YouTube too. I’m in many areas, but I’d say my website and podcasts are probably the best places to start if you want to start diving deeper into your relationship with food, your relationship with sugar and dive into some of those inner pieces that we touched on today.
Lindsey Parsons:
We’ll link to all those in the show notes. How long is the break free from sugar program?
Danielle Daem:
It’s a 10 week program. I’m just in the middle of a run now. I only host it a couple times a year. Actually I haven’t hosted in a year. This is the first time in a year I’ve hosted it, but I have a couple other programs as well that I host. I am going to be hosting it again in 2023 so you can get on the waitlist on my website and definitely check out some of the other resources there.
Lindsey Parsons:
Okay, great. Do you coach individually as well?
Danielle Daem:
I don’t anymore actually. There’s group and then I have a VIP option with my group programs as well for people who want one-on-one sessions in the container group.
Lindsey Parsons:
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge about sugar and how to get off of it. And I hope some people can check you out and who need help in that area.
Danielle Daem:
Thank you so much for having me on Lindsey. This was such a great, great conversation. I really enjoyed it and thanks, everyone for listening. I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to reach out and looking forward to having you on my podcast, Lindsey.
If you’re struggling with dysbiosis, diarrhea, constipation, leaky gut, candida, IBS, IBD, or other gut health or all over body problems, you’re welcome to set up a free, 30-minute breakthrough session with me (Lindsey). We’ll talk about what you’ve been going through and I’ll tell you about my 3- and 5- appointment health coaching programs in which I recommend lab tests, educate you on what the results mean and the protocols used by doctors to fix the problems revealed. Or if you’re ready to jump in right away or can just afford one appointment at a time, you can set up an 1-hour consultation with me.
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