Mike grew up eating plenty of sugar. As a competitive boxer and wrestler, he would sometimes lose weight to make his target, then celebrate with a pie. It wasn't until much later, when he started having ongoing health and back problems, that he began looking more closely at his diet. Mike says that when he cut sugar, his inflammation decreased and his aches and pains started to go away. He also shares why he decided to cut sugar out of his diet and how that change affected the way he fe...
Nov 8
28 min
When you start cutting back on sugar, it’s easy to put all carbs or sugars into one basket. But my guest Dr. John Lewis, a nutrition scientist, explains why that basket is too big. John looks at sugars by where they come from and how they are built. A simple sugar is a single molecule. A disaccharide has two molecules, like sucrose (white sugar). Polysaccharides, the kind he has spent years researching in aloe and rice bran, are long chains of sugar units linked together. An...
Nov 1
35 min
Suzanne had already figured out that sugar was her problem. She had spent 25 years on every diet out there, but she realized that sugar was tripping her up, including for intermittent fasting. So in 2025, Suzanne booked a call with me about getting support, but at the time, she wasn’t ready to sign up for my Freedom from Cravings Formula program. Back then, Suzanne thought she could do it on her own, and she didn’t want to spend the money on a program. For the next year she ...
Oct 25
39 min
In this episode, I’m joined by Paige, who explains what "nervous system regulation" means with relation to recovery from sugar addiction. Paige’s message is that when we reach for food under stress, the real issue is a nervous system that has gone into emergency mode. A calm brain doesn’t crave, so her approach starts with calming the body and using the small pause between a thought and an action. Paige also talks about why the third week after reducing or cutting sugar is usually the h...
Oct 18
38 min
It's episode 300 of the Life After Sugar podcast! Woo hoo! To celebrate, I go back to some of the first things I ever talked about on this podcast, back in 2021, and to why the show exists in the first place. Sometimes we forget the basics, so I think that the 300th episode is a good place to remember them. In this episode, you'll hear about: some different names for sugar, including the Cuba story that made me realize the white crystals we call sugar originally come from a plantwhy "pu...
Oct 11
32 min
Susan Peirce Thompson, PhD, is a former food addict and the founder of Bright Line Eating. She and I recorded Episode 125 back in June 2023. Susan is back on the podcast to talk about her new book, Maintain, the fifth book in her series about food addiction and weight loss. In this episode, we talk about what happens after you lose the weight and why maintaining it can be harder than people expect. A big part of that is learning what to do when you’re no longer using food, especially fo...
Oct 4
30 min
In this episode, I’m talking with John about sugar cravings, hydration, and what he calls “intracellular hydration.” John shares his story of growing up in Columbus, Ohio, becoming a sugar addict, and eventually developing a very different perspective on health and the role of sugar and especially hydration in the body. John surprises me with his fascinating “marbles and sponges” analogy to explain intracellular hydration. He also explains why he believes sugar cravings are connected to dehyd...
Sep 27
34 min
Martin was a guest on the Life After Sugar podcast on Episode 110 in February 2023. He’s back to ask me some questions about sugar, to talk about his new book, and also about the concept of an "irrevocable commitment". Martin practises intermittent fasting. But he’s continued to have something sweet after dinner, which is a habit that goes back to childhood (nothing wrong with that!). In this episode, we talk about: Martin’s 66-day experiment without desserts and what he learned from itHow hi...
Sep 20
46 min
Heike grew up in Germany eating lots of sugar and large portions, and she was overweight by the time she was a teenager. After moving to the United States in her early 20s, she discovered a very different food environment than the one she was expecting. She was surprised by how much fast food, fried food, burgers, French fries and starch-heavy foods there were, and how little emphasis there seemed to be on vegetables. In this episode, we talk about: how some people can moderate sugar, and oth...
Sep 13
35 min
Dr. Nathan Bryan has spent years researching human health and physiology... but during his medical training, he received zero dedicated training in nutrition. In this episode, we talk about what he learned after his medical training and through his research, and how the nutritional quality of our food has degraded over time. Dr. Nathan and I talk about how we consumers need to educate ourselves (which is easier said than done with all the confusing info out there!). We also talk about sugar, ...
Sep 6
39 min
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