Amanda Leith: Why Quitting Sugar Alone Won't Fix the Addiction

Most people trying to beat sugar addiction focus entirely on what they eat — cutting sugar, eliminating flour, cleaning up their diet. But according to certified food addiction counselor Amanda Leith, that's only half the battle. And without the other half, relapse is almost inevitable.

In this episode, Amanda breaks down why abstinence-based food plans alone are not addiction treatment — and what the missing piece is that keeps so many people stuck in the cycle of quitting and starting over.

In this episode you'll discover:

• Why removing sugar isn't enough to recover from sugar addiction
• The "roundabout" of addiction — and how the physical and mental sides trap you in a loop
• What the mental obsession really is (it's not what most people think)
• Why "just this once" is the most dangerous thought in recovery
• How your emotional barometer fills up — and why sugar is always waiting when it does
• The difference between treating obesity, emotional eating, and food addiction
• Why sugar addiction may be harder to treat than drug and alcohol addiction
• What full recovery actually looks and feels like

If you've ever quit sugar, cleaned up your eating, and still found yourself back at square one — this episode explains why. Real recovery from sugar addiction isn't just about what's on your plate. It's about healing the whole person: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And according to Amanda, that kind of freedom is possible for everyone — no matter how long you've been struggling or how many times you've tried. 

Transcript

Meet Amanda Leith And Shift

FLORENCE 0:01

Welcome everybody today with an interview today with Amanda Leith, who is um the I don't know what executive director, director, CEO of Shift, some big, she's the big wig over at um an organization called STIFT. It was originally Acorn, which she has been working, she'd been working with since 2015. It is the oldest organization that was dedicated to helping people with food addiction. And it's been going for 35 years, and she joined the team in 2015. And then in 2019, she renamed it and relaunched it, and it's been heading up this amazing, it's a facility, right? One of very few in the world where people can actually go to get food addiction recovery support. So let me, what else to tell you about her? She's a phenomenal passion for this because she's like many of us, she's walked this path. When the light bulb went on for her, like, oh hey, wait a minute, is that what's going on for me? Is that why I keep struggling with this, even though I keep like throwing everything at it? Um when that light bulb goes on for some of us and we get the support we need to get unhooked from sugar and ultra-processed food, and the frickin' miracles come in. We feel better, we sleep better, we think everything about our life gets better. We there's no way you can't not want to pass it on. And that basically sums up Amanda in a in a nutshell. But let me tell you a little bit about her credentials. She's an addiction counselor, certified food addiction counselor. She's a CNABS-trained advanced relapse prevention specialist, ARPS, with a background in drug and alcohol addiction counseling and group facilitation. Welcome, Amanda.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Thank you so much, Florence. So excited to be here.

FLORENCE 1:40

Well, let's start a bit with your personal journey. So, what, you know, what does that look like? Share some of the highlights.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah, wow. Well, you kind of said it. Like, what why am I here? Why am I sitting in this seat? So, um, you know, as you said, like many of us that are in this field, I had a long, brutal, painful journey um with addiction. And specifically today we're talking about food addiction. Um, and like you said, it wasn't from lack of trying. I was doing everything. I was all the different diets, the exercise programs, I was vegan, I was doing keto, I was doing whole foods. And I grew up um in a very, very healthy food, healthy food home, um, which is different from a lot of other people. I wasn't, you know, eating what we often call the standard American diet. And um, so we had good food. My mom nutrition was very important to her. Um, but food was always, if I look back on it now, um, it was important to me in a different way. Um, and we didn't have a lot of sugar or treats in our house. Um, and I thought that meant something was wrong with us. I'd go to other people's homes and they had treats and sugar, and I was just like, this is where it's at. This is a real family, this is fun. Um and then, though, when I uh was my my teenage years in my early 20s, um, you know, I was a pudgy little girl, not that big, but I was a little overweight. And then in my teenage years, you know, I found other things that were far more sparkly and exciting to me than food. And that was uh alcohol and drugs and boys. And that's where I was. That was my gig. Um, and then in my early 20s, um, some things happened and I um slowed down. I used to say I quit, but that's a complete lie. I slowed down my drinking and drugging, and and I can see exactly when I slowed down, my food went through the roof. Um, and I can only see that if you look at my weight. Um, and food became probably the most important thing in my life at the time, uh, through my 20s, through my 30s. And again, I tried everything to fix what I thought was my weight problem. And no matter what I did, I just got larger and larger and larger. And I did a lot. I did eating disorder treatment. As I said, I did lots of the pay and weight diet. I went to lots and lots of personal trainers, dietitians, nutritionists. I went away to fat camps. I mean, I really did a lot. I even had weight loss surgery. I had the Lap Band. Um, I mean, I was desperate. And my weight just went up and up and up and up. You know, and the doctors would say to me, Oh, you know, you're pre-diabetic and you have high cholesterol. And I would be like, Yeah, yeah, I know. And it just wouldn't matter. I was back the next day or soon after. And another thing that is different for me than a lot of people is I was not a professional dieter. Many people, by the time they get recovery, have gained and lost hundreds of pounds. That was not me. I could never lose weight because I rarely could stay on a diet for longer than a week. I mean, I just couldn't follow it. Um, and that went right into my uh weight loss surgery. So I had the lap band put in in 2006, and it was fairly new. I'm Canadian out here in Canada. It was a lot of money. And I remember going to the doctor that was gonna put it in, and he said to me, you know, after you have your lap band in, you're gonna be able to eat about half a teacup. And I was like, Yeah, no, no problem. I it's a problem. I got this, you know. And at the time I was about close to 300 pounds. And um, so I got the surgery and I just I was so excited. This was finally gonna fix my life. Because by this time, not only was I morbidly obese, I was depressed, um, I had anxiety. Life just wasn't going well. It might not have looked like that on the outside, other than I was physically obese. You know, I had a job and but I I was not a happy camper. And so I had my surgery. And when you have the weight, when you have the lap band, uh, for the first three weeks, you can only have liquids. So I stuck to that and I lost 25 pounds that first three weeks. That is the only weight I ever lost on the lap band. And this is, you know, a$20,000 surgery. And and I didn't lose any more weight because I could not follow the food plan. And so much so that, you know, you you you have to be very careful. Um, and you have to eat like mushy food or liquids. And I couldn't do that. So I consistently was eating food that I would choke on. I was vomiting two to four times every day for four years when I had my lap band in. And with the lap band, they fill it up and make it tighter and tighter so your stomach's smaller and smaller. And they could never fill mine because I couldn't deal with it even when it was at its largest. Um, so I gained weight with the lap band. So I I lost the 25 pounds, gained that back, and then gained more weight, weight, and then had to have that removed um four years later um because I was I just caused way too much damage. So I worked really hard at this. And I had been in 12-step rooms for years. Um, and I had gone to a 12-step fellowship for food addiction, but I I didn't, I wasn't one of them. I just wanted the diet and all would be good. Of course, that didn't work. Anyways, you know, I I went to treatment for what I thought was going to be for food addiction um in 2012. Um, and again, nothing changed. And I I'll say this: I had seen this program online called Acorn, and they dealt with food addiction. They also had a professional training program, and I was like, it was only five days, and it wasn't that expensive. Now, this is a joke because this is coming from someone that had no money to her name. I didn't have a penny, but I knew I was in the drug and alcohol treatment world by then. I knew treatment was normally 30 plus days, and it was thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. And this wasn't either of those, it was five days, and I think it was at the time for the five days, I think it was like$3,000 US. I was like, that's not gonna work. So I went to this other place. Anyways, needless to say, um three years later, uh, nothing really had changed, and I um decided to go to Acorn. And I'll tell you, from the moment I walked into that treatment, nothing in my life has been the same. And that is because I finally got treatment for the disease that I had. I had been getting treatment for years for obesity or for an eating disorder. Both of them, I had both of them, but I had both of them because they were symptoms of my food addiction. So when we treated the root, which was my food addiction, then I healed, and those symptoms of weight um and the eating disorder went away. Um, so yeah, that was in 2015. And um I started, I started working for Shift right away, or it was Acorn at the time right away. I also worked for a drug and alcohol treatment center here in Vancouver. Um, and then I went full-time with Acorn a couple of years later. And then the uh owners of Acorn were retiring in 2019, and um, it just all happened, and and I purchased the business and kind of here we are, um, following the same principles of you know what Acorn was doing for over 30 years. And we we've definitely done some changes to it. But and I'll just say this, you know, yes, I've lost over half my body size, and I don't, you know, I don't have high cholesterol and I'm no longer diabetic and all those things that I had. And though there's so much more than that in my life, you know, like my my whole there's nothing today the same as it was, you know, 10 plus years ago, um, because I finally got the proper treatment. So that's why I'm sitting in this chair today.

FLORENCE 9:46

Gosh, thank you so much for showing all that. So tell us then the tools that people are being given to treat emotional eating or weight loss, you're saying, are different than the tools that we need for food addiction. Tell us about that mismatch and what are the tools that what makes the tools for food addiction different than the ones that people are typically picking up, either from internet or other treatment programs?

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Yes, question. And there's a lot of talk about this right now, and it can be quite contentious. Um, so I will give you what what I've witnessed for myself personally and what I see professionally with clients is that um when we're treating, we we kind of put this into three different categories, and this makes it very basic. But actually, Phil Wardell, who was the uh co-founder of Acorn, came up with this. We talk about three types of eaters. And the first type um is uh the person that has obesity or they're overweight. They have weight struggles, and their only issue is weight struggles, meaning what they need is the treatment that's so readily out there, kind of calories in, calories out. They need a food plan that is sufficient for their body, and they need an exercise plan that is also sufficient for their body. So they need education and they need willpower. And once they have those things, you know, this is the person that might go to the doctor one day, and a doctor's like, you know, cholesterol's kind of creeping up. And they're like, okay, and they're like, so here's the doctor says, gives them a uh food plan, an exercise plan, and off they go and they do it. There is many people out there that do that. And often we call them the painway diets, the big ones like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. They're for that type of person, and they actually work. The truth is, only about 10% of us fall into that category. And most of us, though, are put into that category with the medical industry. They just want to treat the obesity. So that's kind of a very basic that category. The next category would be the emotional eaters. And emotional eaters are again, there's a plethora of treatment in the world for emotional eaters. And um, these are the folks that are eating or not eating, if you will, um, starving themselves because of emotional reasons. And they need to learn skills, how to live life, how to be in the world with their feelings. Um, how can they show up in the world day by day and be in their feelings, react to the world without having to numb out by either starving or binging? You know, this is where you'll see a lot of the binge eaters, the anorexics, and the um the purgers. And so again, I want to be really careful though, because all of those can be in the food addiction category as well. So with these folks, it's really about therapy, um, whether it's one-on-one, whether it's in group, they also might need a healthy food plan, healthy exercise plan. Um, but what they're really looking for is tools to be in the world with their emotions and their feelings. And I want to say I'm really simplifying that. And so what often we'll see people by the time they come to food addiction treatment is they've had one of those. They've had a lot of therapy for an eating disorder, andor they've had a lot of work on diet and exercise. And then the third category is when we pop over into addiction. And addiction is actually a brain disease. We are now, we react differently to the substances that we're addicted to. So the addiction must be treated at the same time as the other issues. So when we talk about treatment for addiction, it's really about treating the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual all at the same time. So if we just take away our substances, but we have no work on our emotional, a mental, and spiritual, it's not going to go very well because it's the only thing that we've got to cope and be in this world. So it doesn't go very well. Eventually we have to pick up the food again or whatever our substance is. And if we only work um on the emotional, but keep ingesting the addictive substances, we have no choice but to eventually keep eating those addictive substances because our brain needs more and more and more of them to function properly. So we have to deal with the whole person when it's addiction. So addiction absolutely has to be an abstinent-based food plan, which there's, I mean, that's a conversation all on its own, but an abstinent-based food plan as well as dealing with the mental, emotional, spiritual. And so when we talk about actual treatment, that's what we're talking about, treating the whole person, the bio, psychosocial, the whole person. Um, and many, many people by the time they get to us have had one or both at different times, but not the whole combination.

Abstinence Plus Mental Recovery Skills

FLORENCE 14:48

Right. Everything but the suggestion that maybe the substance that's lighting up our brain and hijacking our appetite and compelling compulsive food behaviors and creating cravings that makes it really difficult to say no. Because if you have cravings every day, I mean, you know, sooner or later you're going to give in. So that piece is just the missing piece of the butt but I also see the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

It is it's the missing piece about being completely abstinent. But I see a fair amount of people actually, um, Florence, that will come into treatment with us that actually have been physically abstinent, but they haven't had the other treatment. And I think depending on what level of food addiction you're at will depend on what level of support that you need. By the time people are coming to us, normally they're in pretty rough shape, you know. So they many, many times, and and I think this is common that um more and more that there's more people treating food addiction, that's what they're calling it. And I just I want to be careful here because just an abstinent-based food plan is not treating addiction. It's pulling out one part. You know, if you look at, we have something called the roundabout, where there's two sides to addiction: there's the physical and the mental. And you can't leave one of them out to have long-term recovery. You just can't. And so the physical is what you're just talking about. It's the addictive substances that are going to trigger the brain. So that has to come out for sure. But once that's out, unless you deal with the other side, which is the mental side, we talk about it, our emotional barometer, unless we learn tools to not have our emotional barometer fill up with life, just normal life that's happening, we're going to hit what we call a boiling point. And you'll often hear, you know, it's the where the mental obsession comes in. But the mental obsession, people often confuse that this, they think it's it's because of physical cravings, but the mental obsession is a thought that comes into our mind that says, only food is going to fix this, and we lose all memory of the negative consequences that we had. So only food's going to fix this, and it's not a big deal. I'll just be able to do this once. So then we pick up because literally by that point it's our only choice, and then we're back onto the physical side. And the physical side can go two ways. It can be a day where it's like, oh, look at that. I was able to just eat one cookie and I'm okay, which is very tricky for us because we think, look what I did. And then, but again, if we do nothing else, we're going to go back around again. Or it can be, I picked up that cookie and I couldn't stop. So it's so important to treat all of it. And again, depending on where you are in your stages of addiction, really depends on two things. I think it depends on what your abstinence needs to be and how much mental, emotional, and spiritual support you need. Because I think in early stages of addiction, often sugar is the only thing that needs to come out. If we catch it early, which is why, oh my gosh, I wish we could do this early with all young people, pull out sugar and it won't progress. By the time people get to us, it's often sugar, flour, and volume, um, you know, volume of food. And so I know we now call this sugar and alter-processed food addiction, which I wholeheartedly agree with. And there's a piece that misses the volume of food. Whereas once you're in a later stage addiction, many of us will eat anything in volume. Vegetables, you know, anything we will eat in volume. So there really is a part for volume addiction.

FLORENCE 18:30

I know the the very first time I binged on chicken, I thought, wow, I never thought that would be possible.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Right? Especially if you take out the sugar stuff, but you haven't done anything else, then you're gonna fill that with something else. And it can literally be, I mean, we see people binge on anything. Um, and that's why for that group of people, they need a weighted measured food plan. And again, that's later stage of addiction.

FLORENCE 18:56

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Mm-hmm.

FLORENCE 18:58

And sometimes, well, at least in my case, I felt like I was playing whack-abo. I was slowly taking things out. It actually started with dairy because my whole motivation was I had terrible, terrible, terrible migraines. I was suicidal. I just wanted them to go away. I wanted to die. And I just couldn't get a grip on them. And the medications were, you know, of limited efficacy. I was in and out of urgent cares. So eventually I started to look at my diet and I had heard that cheese can trigger migraines. So I got that out. And then it was flour. I'm like, okay, I got that out. And then it was potentially sugar. And at that point, I was like, why, okay, I'll let it go too. And then all of a sudden it was like, wait a minute. I I let go of chocolate. I let go of coffee. I let go of all kinds of things. I wasn't really a drinker because it triggered migraine. But then it came to sugar. And I'm like, hey, wait a minute. I've already been through this. I already know what it's like to let something go because I don't want to be in pain because this keeps coming back in. I kept thinking, there's something more going on here. But, anyways, so then I eventually get the sugar out. And then, you know, the volume meeting picked up. I thought, wait a minute, I'm just playing whack-a mole. It's like I'm never gonna end it, it's never, it's it's always gonna be one more freaking thing, right? Because I wasn't doing the deeper underlying work that you're referring to.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah, and and Florence, I I want to say too, like it's it's amazing and brilliant for you that you were able to just, oh, I'm not gonna have cheese. Oh, I'm not gonna have flour. Like many of us, like I went, I I also had migraines and allergies, and I had all these things that people would say to me, you know, I worked with a naturopath all my life. That's the doctors that I had, and they treat the food. I couldn't follow any of it.

unknown 20:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

They'd give me this thing, and it would just be, I'd try it, and then I would feel again the shame. Like, I can't stick to this. And that's what happens. That's later stage addiction. So all these and all these things, like it'll make you feel better. You won't have uh digestive issues or headaches. That wasn't enough for me. And it's not enough for many people by the time they're looking for solid treatment for addiction. And so it's brilliant when we can get it earlier and you are able to do that. I wasn't able to do that. Yeah. And many, many people aren't able. And so I think it's really important that we get the message out. There's actually nothing wrong with you if you're not able to do that. You're not weak, it's not a thing of willpower. You just have a later stage of addiction and you need more support. Kind of, and then you said you realized that as the whack-a-mole was going and you needed it all. But many, many people can't do what you're suggesting.

How To Tell If It’s Addiction

FLORENCE 21:23

Absolutely. And it wasn't like it was like, oh, I never touched cheese again. Come on. That wasn't it. It was on again, off again, but it phased out. It was not the battle. I was not addicted to cheese cheese like I was addicted to sugar. There was a difference. Um, because yeah, you're right. But then I was in my 20s and it wasn't volume eating. I was a sugar, I was a food addict. So talk to us a little bit about how do you assess whether or not someone falls into those categories? Like what is a food? Tell us about food addiction. How can people get a sense of whether or not they fall on that spectrum?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Uh, such a good question because unfortunately, we don't just have a blood test. Oh, yeah, you're food addicted, or you're an alcoholic, or you're a drug addict, you know. And so a couple things. And you know, we, you know, I come from the world of treating drug and alcohol addiction, and I treat food addicts exactly the same as I treat a drug addict and alcoholic. Um, and so when we're, you know, we do consults with people all the time and they're free, and it's just that like let's see where you fit on the spectrum. And then depending on where you fit, I'm gonna give you some resources that might not be shift. As a matter of fact, by a lot of times when the people come to us, they're not for shift, you know, they they need a a lighter treatment than we have. So we it's really important for us, and it's just about conversation. And so, you know, there's we always kind of look at in there in the back of our mind, you know, the 11 criteria for for addiction in the DSM, of course, you know, which is tolerant, you know, do we need more and more to get the same effects? Um, do we have withdrawal when we stop? You know, do we and and do we have cravings for it? Do we continue to eat despite negative consequences? Do we choose to eat instead of going out and doing social things sometimes? Um and so we talk about that. And then what I'm really listening for people is I always ask people, what have you done? What have you tried? And most people have worked really hard at this. Um, even if they're not in late stage. I mean, let's be honest. We're we're a society that we want to lose weight, we want to look healthy, we want to be thin, like these are all the things, you know? And so what have you tried? And the more people have tried, um, you know, if they've just tried different diet or if they've just tried different therapy, you just start being able to weed out kind of what's going on with them. And I think one of the biggest things um we look for is is the progression of people. Like, tell me about your story with food and eating and where's it gone? What has worked? Has anything ever worked? Um and you know, are you having medical consequences in your life right now? It's really just things like that. Those are the things we're looking for, and it it's all those very telltale signs of addiction. And I think that um what I also will tell people is that and this sounds kind of cavalier and it's not, is that try the treatment for food addiction, and if it works, and we do have to be careful because there's definitely people in the eating disorder world, anorexics, themics, that some of the treatment for food addiction can be dangerous for them. So we really want to be careful with that. But overall, it's really I'm looking at the exact same signs as people that are going into drug and alcohol treatment, and it's the criteria for addiction. And it does not look like being obese necessarily all at all. It can look underweight, healthy weight, obesity, like so you have to really ask the questions. As a matter of fact, some of the people in the latest stage of addiction are a are underweight or a healthy body weight, because many of them are also exercise bulimics at the same time. You know, they're they're exercising in order to keep their body size down. So uh it's really through conversation and talking to people. And, you know, how are people mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and physically like really what's happening for you? Um, so it's really about a conversation with people. And what have you tried? And have you tried things many, many times and nothing's worked? And as I say, by the time people are coming to us, they're exhausted. You know, they they've worked pretty hard, they've tried a lot of things, including treatments that people say are treating food addiction, because there really is a lot of that out there these days. It's kind of the word, it's the lingo on the street or figure addiction. And for many people, um, doing those things isn't enough. Just like it wouldn't be enough for a drug addict or an alcoholic. And I just want to say one other thing, because I keep comparing it to drug addiction and alcohol addiction treatment. And I think it's important to note that we really do treat it the same way, meaning you need to be physically abstinent, and we're treating the mental, emotional, uh, and spiritual exactly as we treat drug and alcohol. The tough part about food addiction is that in the drug and alcohol world, they don't have competition and treatment. And that sounds really weird. Like, what's competition? Well, the diet industry, the health industry, the weight loss surgery industry, and the now more and more the medication industry are all competition because all of those treat the physical part of our addiction, the obesity part of it, which is often what people really want is to lose weight. And that's okay if that's what you want. And so because we have so much competition, if you will, people have a lot of different places they can go to and a lot of different things they can try. And unfortunately, they get so beaten down because many of the, if you're really an addict, none of those things on their own are ever going to work. You don't have that in the dragon, dragon um alcohol addiction treatment world. It's just an added extra nuance piece. And the one other thing is that there are different abstinence. People with food addiction, um, there can be different things that they need to be abstinent from to not have the physical cravings. We all know sugar um is probably the most, the biggest one in flour. Most every um food addiction plan that I see is free of those. But then there's other things. There's like natural and artificial sweeteners that some have, some don't. We don't have any of those on ours. Some can have flour, some don't. We don't have any flowers on ours. Some can have grains, some don't. We do have grains. So there's some nuances in that. It's not as black and white as the physical abstinence from drug and alcohol treatment.

Fast And Intense Brain Chemistry

FLORENCE 27:59

Amazing. There's a book by Adam McGarnold. It's called The Affliction of Addiction. Have you read it?

SPEAKER_01 28:05

No, I haven't even heard of it. Oh, I write it down.

FLORENCE 28:08

Yeah, Adam McGarnold. Um it's great. It's a short little book. And basically he just says here's the deal. If you have a true addiction, you have a neurophysiological response to a substance that is not normal. I guess I don't know if that's the word, it's exceptional. It's exceptional. It's fast and it's intense. And if it isn't both fast and intense, you're never going to become addicted to that substance. It has to be both. If you ate a cookie but a half hour later you felt a little bit nice, that's not gonna work. It has to be rises that, you know, it lights up all the feel-good neurotransmitters, and there's five different systems and neurotransmitters that can be impacted by sugar in particular. And it's intense. If it's a little bit like, oh, that was lovely. I enjoyed that cookie, but I don't need to at least eat the last little bit of that. It's a gentle little tiny pleasure, and everyone falls on the spectrum of how fast and how intense. Those of us with addictions, food addictions, it's fast and it's intense. And this book just basically blasts you with all the science that basically says, don't complicate this. The addiction piece is that in a story. You don't have any conscious control over that. You were probably born with it, maybe not. Who knows? Who cares? The bottom line is that once there's a substance that does that to your brain, good luck. You're your your best bet is to just let it go.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

I love fast and intense. I just love when you said that. It's true. Yeah, that's that's what we're going for.

Joy Returns When You Heal

FLORENCE 29:32

That's it. That's it. Yeah. And and when you understand that's just happening at the brain level, that there's no conscious control over that. And it doesn't happen that way for everybody. The reason other people can leave uh, you know, a little tiny bit of their cookie on their plate or dessert or whatever is because they don't have the fast and intense combo. And so they look like they're more disciplined or have their together better or something. It's just garbage. They have total different brain physiology. End of story. You've got this. But that means when, but the good news is that when we have a brain that responds fast and intensely to a substance, we can respond fast and intensely to other pleasures too. And it could be exercise, could be sunset, could be learning how to fall in love with uh, you know, get pleasure, get that right, that we have responsive systems. Although I guess I get in the late stages they're blunted and we're often flat and despairing and depressed. And like I get that. But we there's hope that we can be restored. We have a fundamental capacity to restore it. Speak to that. I see you're nodding your head.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Oh, I'm so glad you you're acknowledging that because it can sound all doom and gloom. And it's so hopeful. And and you're right, you know, when we've been practicing any addiction, they do get blunted. They just do. So experiencing natural joys in our life, they're not so joyful. You know, we're we're wired to get a good hit of joy in our life from a sunset, from hugging a child, from holding our partner's hands. That's what we're wired to get those hits from. But when we've used addictively for a long period of time, those things do not feel very joyful. And that's why, you know, when you're addicted, people will be like, what's up? They're crazy. They're choosing their drug, alcohol, food life over their children. Or that's right, that's right, they are. Because, first of all, they're not choosing, they are powerless and they're blunted. And the deal is it does heal and it does take time to get to that place. And when I said to you a few minutes ago, like nothing in my life is the same, that's actually what I'm talking about, Florence. It's the little things in life, the little joys that I have so much joy in my life, but it's nothing major. Um, it's little, I get to be present and in the world. Like right now, I'm looking out my window and I can see the mountains, I can hear the birds. That brings me joy. I had a client say to me, it just stuck in my mind a couple of years ago. She said, you know, I've lived in this house for 20 years and we've had wind chimes out on our porch. And she said, I was sitting out there and I heard the wind chimes this morning for the first time in 20 years. Oh, you know, she was two months um absent and in recovery, and it was like, and she's like, and they're so beautiful. And it's like, right. So, yes, there is so much hope, so much hope and joy. And, you know, I often say to people, when we picture being in recovery, what we end up getting is not what we pictured. Thank God it's not what we pictured, because we have no, we have no concept about what life can be like. And I want to also be clear, I'm not saying life is all roses and rainbows, and this is not it at all. Um, but that's actually normal life. We get to be in life, the ups and downs, um, without the big extreme. Um, and it's a beautiful way to live. And it's a beautiful way to live. And there's no reason that that can't be there for every single person. And that's actually one of my missions is that when it comes to food addiction, that no matter what level you at, we're there to meet you, to treat you, for whatever your particular um addictive level is. And you get to have a life of freedom because that's really what we're going for is that it's freedom. We're not white knuckling, we're not like, okay, I'm not having sugar today. Okay, I'm not having. We would never stay in recovery if that's what it was. Our life in recovery has to be profoundly better than our life in addiction, or we're never going to do the things we need to do. And it is.

FLORENCE 33:29

So powerful. I was thinking about your comment about the joys and the little, the little bits, right? I often say to my clients too, that we don't have to give up sugar. We don't have to give up the pleasure of sweetness. We don't have to give any of that up. It's just that we get it now in the context of the sweetness of a Brussels sprout, the overpowering pleasure of a simple strawberry. It was always there. It just got blunted because of the food culture that we live in. And that all that pleasure that you get from a donut just gets transferred to the pleasure of a whole food. We don't give up the pleasure. It just we recalibrate to be able to receive extraordinary prep pleasure from Whole Foods. And I love what you were saying that I get as much pleasure now out of life, not that it's all happy, happy, joy, joy, which is a classic addict thing to think, right? Because we used to be able to tweak our biochemistry. So we would get high, we would get pleasure, we would feel like anytime I'm not in this state, there must be something wrong. I better go get something, right? But we really, oh gosh, no, the the ups and downs and the tough moments and the beautiful moments come together. Just like, I don't know, not everything tastes fabulous every day, every meal, but you know, sometimes a dry chicken breast is the dry chicken breast. But right, like anyways, just wanted to add that.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Yeah, it's so true. And and you know, we want people to enjoy their food. You know, if this is not about having food that doesn't taste good. However, for me, like food was so important that if a meal wasn't perfect, I mean it, I mean, I was distraught. Whereas now it's like, yeah, if I have a dry chicken breast one day, okay, I'm gonna get to eat again. Um, and and when you said the thing about the sweetness of a Brussels sprout, it's so true. There sometimes I will eat certain um vegetables or fruit, and I'm like, huh, this is like way too sweet for me because our taste buds do change. And now, like even when you said donut, I had a bit of a visceral reaction. I'm like, oh, like the thought of that, the sweetness of it is just like kind of makes me stick to my stomach. Um, and I I never, you know, I'll just say this. When I was in treatment 10 and a half years ago, I remembered looking at the counselor at the time and I was just sobbing. And I said, I don't want to give up my food. I can't imagine my life without the food. It seems boring, it seems hopeless. It just seemed like black and white and dull. And that was my truth. I couldn't imagine, and you know, rightly so, knowing what we know now about addiction. I it was true, and so I didn't even want to give it up. I just knew I was miserable and I was morbidly obese and I was so beaten down that I guess thank the universe, I was just willing to do whatever it took one day at a time. And um, and now I can honestly say it's very rare that a day comes or that a moment comes that I want to that food is my answer. Food is just not my answer. Um and it, you know, another thing you said when you know, we're just we're just addicts, we always want to feel better. I still have that. If things are rough and going hard for me, I'm like, okay, something's wrong with me. I need to fix this. I still have that go-to. Um, and the deal is though, my my mind will go to, and it can be kind of frustrating. It's like, yeah, well, I know food won't do it, you know, I know drugs won't do it, I know alcohol won't do it. And it's a little bit back into the corner. So I have no choice but to just be in it. And that is what does it. That is, you know, the more I can come home and be connected to myself, that's what recovery is. I'm just recovering the connection to me, myself, who I am at the core. Um, and I can't do that while I'm ingesting uh addictive substances. And so now it's just that. I just get to be with me. Do I like it all the time? No. Uh, but I'll take this any day over what my life was like because I really wasn't living. Now I get to live life. I get to be present in the world and not obsessed with food or my body or all those other things. So it's it's a gift beyond anything I can imagine. And it's not at all what I thought it would have looked like.

Why Food Addiction Is Harder

FLORENCE 37:47

Amazing. So beautiful. Yeah, I love that definition of recovery that it's recover recovering a connection to ourselves. And really, it doesn't seem like the big prize, but it's the big prize because the falling in love with an everyone's fallen in love in their life. I imagine there's rare exceptions in the planet, but for the most part, we've all had the experience of what it feels like to fall in love with a child or a puppy or another human being or something that we just truly loved it. Well, it feels the exact same thing when we're recovering a connection to ourselves. Instead of having that part of us that's hurting, being like, oh, okay, let me let me repress, suppress, avoid this, you know, flight away from this. It's like, oh, sweetheart, right? And that intimacy that we can have with another human becomes internal. It becomes personal. And it's just, it's gorgeous. It feels good, it feels every bit as good as falling in love with another person. It sounds impossible, but it's true. It's uh self-abandoning, you know, and returning to the food. And it that's painful because anytime we're abandoned, it's painful. Anytime, whether we're abandoned by ourselves or someone else, or rejected by someone else or ourselves, it's the same experience to the body. And we get to stop all that. Um, is there any other similarities between drug and alcohol recovery or differences, similarities or differences that you wanted to add about drug and alcohol treatment? Is there anything more you wanted to say about that?

SPEAKER_01 39:08

I kind of weaved that in already, didn't I? I I I think, you know, this the the similarities are are vast. And um and I believe, you know, I think a lot of people can can be soft, but to me, I think food addiction um is one of the most fatal diseases in the world. It's just called when people on their death certificates, it's called heart attacks or strokes or diabetes. Um, I think it's more fatal than drugs and alcohol. I think it's harder to treat than drugs and alcohol. Um, and unfortunately, with food addiction, you know, we're kind of we're where the drug and alcohol world was 50 years ago, you know, in the medical industry. Um so the the similarity to how it needs to be treated, I believe, are identical. There's nothing that you do in drug and alcohol treatment that you wouldn't do in food addiction treatment. There is more that we need to do in food addiction treatment. Um, and it's harder. And it's harder for one of the reasons that I already said. We have a lot of competition. Um, and so there's a lot of things other people will try. And I think one of the toughest parts is that if people have is if extra weight is one of their symptoms of food addiction, um, they're gonna try many, many, many things before they're gonna get to addiction. Because who wants to be a food addict? Who wants to do this? You want it, it's way easier and softer to do the other things. And I agree, if you're not a food addict, you don't have to do what we do, don't do it. Like you just don't have to do it, right? So, so it's about um so the the competition as well as the medical industry that we really get a lot of pushback still from the medical industry that food addiction isn't real, sugar addiction isn't real, ultraprocessed foods isn't real, addiction isn't real. And um, we're getting there. And the more how we can really help them is the more people that have a recovery in food addiction share it with their own health professionals. That's when the health professionals start seeing it. And when your lab work comes back and your lab numbers are so different, like that's where the medical industry can start buying into it. So that makes it more challenging. Um, and then the other the differences is is I I think I said it, is that it's not black and white that every single person has the same physical sobriety. Uh, like with drugs and alcohol, you just cut them out. Um, all of them have, right? With food, it depends on what you're physically addicted to, as well as we have to eat. We can't just stop. And I know people say, well, you can't just stop drinking too. And I hear that. And it's a little bit more nuanced than that. You know, we many people say, you know, you have to pull the tiger out of the box three, four, or five times a day, depending on what you need. So so it's just really figuring out that for people. I actually think though, that, and again, that's a contentious issue. I think the the amount of food plans, the amount of conversation about food plans actually is unnecessary. And I think it just complicates the food addiction treatment. I actually think it is pretty basic. Um, and people don't want it to be basic. Of course, they want to talk and debate their food plans. And I'll say that what we witness over and over is that the people that want to debate their food plans or change their food plans the most are the ones that have a harder time in long-term recovery. And so, anyways, so that would be a difference, is that you have to work with people about what is their particular food plan. We don't do a lot of that at Shift because we've seen our basic food plan has worked for over 90% of the people in the last 35 years, unless there's major medical issues. So the competition is different. Um, the uh physical sobriety is is more nuanced. Um and other than that, I think that um the mental, emotional, spiritual treatment is exactly the same. I think food addicts need more support than drug and alcohol because you are around it all the time, you're eating all the time, it's out there in the world. And um, so I think we actually need more support than drug addicts and alcoholics do. Um, and that looks different, you know, depending on where you're at.

FLORENCE 43:16

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Remember one time uh recently seeing like a little cartoon, and there were there was one door and the door said Whole Foods, and then there was like sort of like a like a window that you might go to at a fair and you could go up and make an order or something like that. So it looked like there was a little window and it said Whole Foods here. And then there was another exactly right next door to it said exempic, right? And there was nobody lined up at the Whole Foods, and there was this long, long, long, long lineup of right. And that's what you're talking about with the competition is that we're just they're just looking, we're just looking for solutions, and nobody, nobody in their right mind would give up sugar unless there was a really, really good reason. And there's no better reason than when you have an I guess.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

And I want to say, you know, with the with the new medications, Lycosempic and the weight loss surgeries, I'm not anti them. You know, there's a place for them. But what I would love to see is that when patients are going to their doctors to find out about the medications or find out about weight loss surgery, that they're getting screened for addiction. And if addiction is present, they get treated for the addiction. Best case scenario before, uh at least during or while they're having the medication and the weight loss surgery, because it's not going to work if addiction is present. It's not going to work long term. It will get because all you're treating is the symptoms. And everyone wants treatment for the that's why we go to treatment. We want treatment for our symptoms. It's weight, it's depression, it's family problems, it's financial problems. We all go to any drug, alcohol, uh, food addiction treatment to treat our symptoms. And a good treatment center, what I believe is treatment, is only going to treat the addiction, though. They're not going to treat all those other things. The great news is, as you treat the addiction, very often the symptoms start healing as well. And if not, then you can get extra support. Um, so what happens if when people go on these medications or weight loss surgery, their main pain, which is their weight, starts healing. And so their desperation goes down. And unfortunately, what then happens is that people, we are then enabling people to stay much longer in the addictive cycle, and their lives will get much more painful because the weight which was causing them the most harm in their mind is being healed for a short term. But it's just causing them to stay in addiction longer. Um, so I I for all even therapists will treat people with addiction by not doing any of the physical, just doing therapy. And to me, we just enable people to stay in the addiction longer, if that's truly what's present. Dieticians, nutritionists, same thing. They'll just work with people on the physical. But if they're not treating the physical, or sorry, if they're not treating the mental, you're keeping it's all going. That's why to me, treatment, it's physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. And if addiction is present at whatever level, all of those need to be treated at with the appropriate um support level of um how severe you are in your addiction.

FLORENCE 46:25

Amazing. Thank you so much, Amanda. Done a lot of interviews over many, many years. I've been in this field for 30 years. I first awakened to my own addiction in my 20s. And this was very, very powerful. Like, wow, like what a what an incredible grasp you have on this. Like how deeply you embody the truth of this. And I think your your background in drugs and alcohol and your experience of that, like I just think that depth of understanding about addiction, it's just really deep. And I really feel it and think I just want to acknowledge that. Um, is there any final words you would like to share today about this topic before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Yeah, thank you for saying that, um, Lawrence. And yeah, I'm very passionate about this topic because it it ruined my life. It ruined my life. So um, yeah, and maybe that leads into my final words is that, you know, I want to say to people that there really is a lot of hope. And if you're a food addict, it's also not your fault. It is our responsibility to get better and do the recovery, but it's not our fault. This is not about being weak or not having willpower. Um, and there's a lot of confusing information out there. Um, but there's so much hope. And just start, just start. Like even anyone that's going to be listening to this in your summit, they're already starting. They're hearing information, and you're going to hear different information coming out of the summit. And so it can be confusing, and that's okay. You know, that's okay. Um, once we're on the road to researching our own recovery, in my experience, what we need for recovery will show itself to us. We don't have to guess. Am I an early stage addict? Am I a late stage addict? You'll be showing. Unfortunately, you'll be showing. If you're not getting the level of support you need, you're going to be showing that you need more support. And there's more support out there, you know. Um, and um, so yeah, I just really what I just want people to hear is there's so much hope. There's so much hope. Um, and it's possible for people to get absolute freedom from food. It is possible, and it's not a boring, dull life without it. It's it's it's unbelievable.

FLORENCE 48:40

Amen, sister. Tell us about how people can reach you, find out more about acorn, anything like that. Yeah, so we're now called shift, we're not calling.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

No, it's that's okay. I I I don't mind being called Acorn. Yeah, so I mean it was Acorn for 30 years. So we're now called Shift Recovery by Acorn, and uh, we have our website, foodaddiction.com, and we uh all we treat is food addiction, and we do um several a year. We have in-person and virtual uh treatment programs, eight-day treatment programs, followed up by um 11 weeks of amazing aftercare. So you can go to our website, uh, foodaddiction.com, and one of the best things to do would be to book um a consult with us. They're free. Uh there's several of us that do them, and it's really not about just selling you shift, it's about let's hear your story, and then we'll we'll direct you to where we think is a fit. And you know, we we have a lot of of um resources in this community. Um, and um, so that's your best place to start. Um, and you can you can um uh sign up for one of those on our website, foodaddiction.com. Pretty easy to remember. Couldn't get easier. I absolutely love it. Thank you so much again, Amanda. Thank you so much, Lawrence, for having me and for doing this.