How to Break Sugar Addiction and Take Back Control of Your Health

What if sugar is not your real problem? Most conversations around sugar focus on weight or willpower, but for many people, sugar is tied to stress, mood, comfort, and coping. Today I'm joined by Mike Collins, founder and sugar addiction expert, to explore what sugar may really be doing in the body, the brain, and the emotional patterns behind the cravings. Welcome, Michael, to the show.

Thank you, Rita. I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Well, sugar is this huge, huge subject, isn't it? We hear it social media, in the news, all the doctors talking about it. It really seems to be one of the evils of all, whether mental health or physical, you know, complaints happening in the body. So let's start with, is sugar addiction Real, or is it usually a sign of something so much deeper?

It's because it's not ever yet been named into the— what's called the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, the DMS, which is the handbook of psychiatric illnesses. But there are work groups, and I think it will be. At one time, I was the chairman of the board of the Food Addiction Institute, and they are— they have a work group, and there's other work groups of college professors and people, researchers, that are trying to get it Also, the ICD-10, which will be the ICD-11, the World Health Organization manuals and information, that workgroup is actually even bigger. They're probably closer to naming sugar addiction as a true malady. You have to kind of make your own decisions. I've interviewed over 400 of the world's leading experts, all the researchers, all the people working on those workgroups, basically. At the end of the day, it really is the science is ahead of the public's understanding. And this is easy to equate to sugar, I mean, cigarettes, because cigarettes, like people still smoked, we kind of knew, then finally, the diagnostic tools exist to prove that sugar caused cancer. And so then the warning labels came out and whatever, we're about, you know, midway up that where we don't quite have the diagnostic tools, but we We have pretty good proof that it causes fatty liver, heart disease, you know, all kind of, you know, weight gain, type 2 diabetes likely, maybe Alzheimer's, maybe Parkinson's. It has effects mostly in the brain is where the real science, the movement forward. I always kind of break it down to the body folk, the body researchers, and the brain researchers. And for 100 years, we've studied The effects of sugar on the brain. We know about the things that I mentioned— weight gain and type 2 diabetes, etc., fatty liver. Really, the beautiful research that's coming out now is about the brain and, and the ascension of a new industry called metabolic psychiatry, where people have changed their diet, got rid of the sugar and the ultra-processed carbohydrates, and got put Bipolar and regular depression in remission without medications. We got off their medications. And this intersection of addiction and mental health and behavioral change is kind of where we've always lived for the last decade, helping people. People aren't— the part that's kind of not well understood is they call it empty calories, and it's not— they're not getting nutrition. But now it's really starting to prove out that it's actually toxic calories, and the folks aren't looking for a sweet taste on their tongue. They are actually looking for a dopamine hit. And when I say dopamine, I mean dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, GABA, oxytocin, adrenal glands, endorphins, cannabinoid receptors. Almost all everybody knows what dopamine is, so I use it as the the catchword. But it really— they're not really looking for that sweet taste. They're looking for a touch of self-relief from daily stresses and strains, or God forbid, old trauma, sexual or physical or whatever. This is the connection that my job, I think, as a spokesperson, to get this information out.

Especially when it starts going into the behavioral side of it. Like a lot of people say for their kids, they're on sugar, they take them off sugar, you know, they put them on medication for ADHD. Many do have ADHD, but if you change the diet or take them off the sugar, all of a sudden a lot of those ADHD symptoms seem to either go away or they lessen to a significant degree. When it comes to mood and energy and behavioral patterns How can people start recognizing that in themselves? That, oh, wait a minute, I've just had some sugar and all of a sudden I don't feel well, or all of a sudden I feel kind of angry or snappy at someone.

Right.

How much is sugar driving this? And how can people recognize that actually what I've just eaten— the sugar is quite fast how it metabolizes in the body— one of my experiences is actually just related to the sugar I've just had? But they're not joining the dots, maybe.

Yeah, that awareness is really hard to come by in an average person, is because when you get to be an adult, you're really not trying to do it to— you don't consciously think you're doing it to soothe. You're generally, genuinely, generally just doing it to get back to baseline, to stop the withdrawals that are happening. And anyone that's tried to quit knows the first 5 or 7 days is not fun with all of the kind of symptoms you described magnified, really intense.

Mm-hmm.

The snapping and the hunger and the headaches and all that kind of stuff. So it's the very rare person who can be aware of there's a cause and effect. I had sugar and now I'm tired or lethargic. Or I'm snapping at someone. It's true, but that's really not something they catch. You know, they don't— people think of it as aging. People think of it as, you know, the person's being a pain. That's why I'm snapping at them, whatever. But when they get off of it, that behavior goes away. It really does. There's a famous sugar educator who, to this day, her daughter's a doctor. She's still trying to rebuild the relationship because when she was on the sugar, she was— her word, not mine— a bitch. You know, it was— she was really difficult to deal with. And, you know, she's having, you know, still trying to rebuild that relationship because she was just a nasty person. And there's a lot of people who say the exact same thing. If they can do it— Like, here's one of the problems. So because I've been open about my alcoholism and my drug addiction, I have attracted a lot of people who are former addicts. They got sober from alcohol or drugs, but they could not put down the sugar. They just couldn't do it. They, they start— they're very addiction savvy. They're really understanding what stuff is doing to them. But honestly, because the information isn't out there, they haven't put 2 and 2 together. They have not kind of tied it together. And because it's ubiquitous and absolutely everywhere, and from every celebration, birth to death, let alone every day, all day, from breakfast, lunch, and dinner, people don't make the connection. They just think everybody's doing it, and they think of it as aging, or they think of their physical symptoms, their mental and emotional symptoms. They just think of them as aging a little bit, or this is how I am, or this is my way, and they don't really put it together. If they can— and here's what I, you know, the message of this is to let this information light on you. And if some of it is resonating, then maybe that's what you, you know, you'd like to move towards, some, you know, attempting not to use sugar for a time.

If they know all that and they do feel it, why is it so hard for so many people to stop?

If I told you to stop eating steak for a month, you'd— okay, I like steak, but you still do it. When you tell someone, or not even you tell them, they tell you that that's what they're going to do, this is their goal, they have committed to it, and they fall off. They can't do it after 3 or 4 days. It isn't a conscious thing, as we kind of mentioned before. And it doesn't manifest itself like, I've had a rough week, I need a beer, it's Friday, I'm gonna, you know, just have a few beers and forget about the stress of the week, right? The job, the kids, or whatever. It kind of manifests itself like a little craving for a little chocolate bar, a little craving for a soda, whatever. And okay, I've committed that I'm not going to have it, but I've had a good meal, let me have that little piece of pie. This is how it manifests itself. And this is the, the, the, the reframe, if you will, the reset that we, we go through with people to bring to the conscious level this reality. Again, I mentioned the dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, etc. You have your deep limbic brain, and that brain is taking care of your heart and your lungs, and you can sleep and You're not going to die. And then the midbrain— this is how it evolved too, over a million years. And then the midbrain, which, you know, it does different things. But the real issue is the frontal cortex, the nucleus accumbens, the control center. And this is the research for the ages. Hopefully in 50 years we'll know how this works. This need for that dopamine hit and all those other brain reward chemicals. gets translated to the frontal cortex, the control center, that I need to go out in the snowstorm for ice cream. I need a little chocolate. I swore I wouldn't do it, but I just need a little. You know, your thought of committing for 30 days, committing for 60 days, committing till you lose weight, whatever, goes out the window. And it's almost— people describe it to me as unconscious. They like They go unconscious. They don't even realize, and they just, they just have a craving for it. And that's the, the part we have to uncouple. I call it a pattern interrupt, kind of a Tony Robbins thing. You have to snap your hands in front of your face and interrupt the pattern. Like you're about to pick up that candy bar and you say, wait, and you interrupt. It literally wakes you out of that unconscious. deep limbic brain, that need for that dopamine soothing, right? And then you go for a walk or get a hug or go to yoga or pray or do breathwork, something besides a substance to soothe yourself. And that little linchpin, the answer to your question is that little time period of when you're aware And become aware is the one of the keys to all of this really is.

I can relate to that unconsciousness. And so many people I've spoken to talk about that. They kind of feel like when they, when they want something to soothe themselves, and it's always some form of sugar or something that like bread or biscuits or anything that turns to sugar, it's like they, they say they become like a zombie. They just become zombified and they just go and they can't stop themselves. So this, what you're talking about, this pattern interruption of like clap your hands, snap yourself out of it, like kind of wake up, have maybe like a few words like, what are you doing? Or something like that just to stop it. I think that's great advice.

You'd be surprised that little motion, it knocks you out of the zombie mode. It literally wakes you up and you're like, uh, I've lost 5 pounds. This is day 7. Why do I want to ruin it?

When someone has a real love for sugar or a sugar addiction, you know, they say, oh, I've just got a sweet tooth. They explain it away that way. And they say, well, I've given up sugar, but I've gone to the natural alternatives. What would you say about those natural alternatives? Because are they not giving your brain a signal that something sweet is still coming in and you then have all the metabolic cascade after it? Are they really healthy?

Oh my God, this is the one question I get a lot of grief, a lot of emails, a lot of comments on posts and whatever. Mostly you're talking about fruit and dried fruit and fruit juices and these kind of things, which theoretically are supposed to be healthy, right? There was a great marketing campaign 30 years ago when I was young and probably when you were young. They used to call it the green grocer. And that's where you got your vegetable. And a marketing genius from the fruit industry combined the two to fruits and veg. And so that the two would go together. The problem is, is that this is a big problem, is that they debate when this was, but it's like 300 to 400 years ago. The fruit that existed was like those little nasty crabapples. And a banana didn't look anything like it does today. It was like a pod full of seeds with very little flesh. And very little fructose in it. Like, it was enough for an animal to eat and taste the sweetness so that they would get the seeds and then go and their bowels would be irritated about, you know, 100 yards down the way, and then they would put the seeds out. Okay, but here's the problem. And you would get— and this is important— you would get about 1 or 2 days of sugar in the entire 365 days. Because only at the peak of ripeness were these things even edible. Maybe if you went and got into a beehive and you got a little honey, that was it. That was the only fructose we ever got. Fructose, or the table sugar molecule, is half fructose and half glucose, right? And it's the fructose molecule that is the— Is the offending molecule, the one that causes all the trouble, both behaviorally and physically. Okay. And emotionally, I dare say. And the fructose in today's modern fruit is hybridized to take the bitterness out of the fruit and to have more flesh and to have more juice and to keep that fructose amount growing. We have seedless grapes, seedless oranges, seedless watermelons, things that could never propagate in nature. They have, they're manmade by grafting and hybridizing. Okay. That's the easiest way to describe it. But all of the other fruits, including the apples that originated as those little crabapples, are now giant, bountiful packages of delicious sweetness from 300 to 400 years of hybridizing and grafting and getting new seeds and planting better. The fructose molecule is identical, meaning the fructose molecule in the fruit is the same molecule as in the table sugar. The molecule doesn't change, so you're ingesting the same thing. And the big problem when you're in the early days of a sugar detox and wanting to do a behavioral change is large amount— you got to take dried fruit and fruit juice right off the table. That is just a— A recipe for disaster. But even these high glycemic fruits, you've gotta take off because it'll keep— I say this phrase a lot, it'll keep the cravings alive. And who the hell wants to do this if you're always gonna be craving a candy bar 'cause you ate 2 apples today? And so in the early days, you can have a handful of blueberries, of raspberries or something, some berries that have low glycemic and low fructose counts and to kind of get you through. But binging on the others or eating dried fruit or fruit juice, drinking fruit juices is a recipe to continue the same behavior you have. Like, who wants to do this if you're always going to be craving? If you're going to always have this discussion with the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other saying, do this, no, don't do that, do this, don't. It's like, who wants to have that free rent in your head? That conversation that sometimes takes an hour or 2 a day. You're going home. There's an ice cream shop on the way home, and it's another 40-minute drive. And the whole 40-minute drive, you're not thinking of work, you're not thinking of the kids, you're not thinking of the husband. You're thinking of, should I go? Shouldn't I go? Should I go? Shouldn't I go? Who wants that? And the only way to get that mind quiet, that mind clarity, is a touch of abstinence. 30, 60, or 90 days. Hell, they've done a cabbage soup diet. They've done Rigorous exercises, they've done everything under the sun. Try this little experiment of 30 or 60 a night, preferably 90 days of 100% abstinence, and tell me, report back. You know what I mean? That's exactly, uh, that's my only job in life, is to get people to see 90 days. If they can see 90 days, then they, they make the decision. Their skin is better. Their weight is better, their numbers are better, their A1C and all these are, you know, everything is better. And they may slip and they may go back, but the important thing is that they realize that what they're ingesting is likely causing their health issues.

It does sound like you'd need pretty good willpower, especially if you're highly addicted to sugar. Does that apply to things like stevia? And all those sort of alcohol sugars that have no calories, but the reaction is the same.

I can answer this with one name, one gentleman's name. His name is Dr. Louis Cantlie, and Dr. Cantlie had a lab named after him at Cornell University, has since moved to Harvard University. He came up with the understanding, and I believe it now, the sweetness is what we're fighting against. Your sweet receptors on your tongue will change in 10 days, okay? But in the meantime, if you're ingesting sweetness, and let's just be honest, the way that we do the first 60 or 90 days is there's nothing to sweeten, first of all. But if they're trying to sweeten something, you get the sweetness and your body, your brain, those neural pathways that are grooved are saying, where's the calories? Where's the other part of the equation? Right? Because a lot of times they're mixed together. And so your body's, it's the sweetness that's the thing you're fighting against. And you'll recognize it quickly because after 10 or so days, 11 days, you know, carrots will taste sweet, peppers will taste sweet, macadamia nuts will taste like candy, right? You wanna cut down the attraction to sweetness. And everybody's had this experience where something is just too sweet, syrupy sweet. But if you were to go 30 days and then have your older treats, you would feel that way because your taste buds had changed. And so it's really, again, we're back to the brain of it all, the nucleus accumbens, the dopamine receptors, the neural pathways that you've grooved. The goal here is to groove a new neural pathway. Everybody's heard of brain plasticity, right?

Mm-hmm.

It's a new neural pathway. When you feel stressed or worried or fearful, you go walk the dog or you go for a run or go to yoga or whatever it is you do. For self-soothing. It's also the— again, as we mentioned a little earlier, the raising to awareness that when you're needing, craving something sweet, you're trying to negotiate with your devils and your angels. It's like you have to break the pattern consciously. And the best way to break the pattern is to be with people who are doing the same thing, a peer structure, a peer group. That is doing the same thing. That's the best way to do it.

For someone who has a severe sugar addiction or is absolutely addicted to carbohydrates, needing what you say, needing that dopamine hit is so strong, it's very hard sometimes when you're by yourself to break the pattern and create a new one or not actually put anything in your mouth. So is it only through these kind of extremes that you believe Abstinence from it is essential, or can you just have a little bit, or doesn't that work at all?

Genuinely, my experience over 60-some-odd thousand detoxes is that 100% abstinence is actually much easier than 90%. It just is easier because a little, quote unquote, what they call traditionally cheat days, it keeps the cravings alive for 2 or 3 days. So now you're 2 or 3 days in. And you're almost basically starting from zero because you've got to start the whole detox process over again. If you're not what I call healed up, meaning healed up from the inflammation that sugar causes and, you know, the every other malady that it causes, it's just a vicious cycle. Cheat days or the 10%, whatever the small amount is, it just keeps it all alive. It keeps the active cravings for it all alive. But, you know, I made every mistake in the book. over the decades that I've been doing this. It's those subtle nuances that, you know, a lot of these questions ask. A lot of people ask the same questions. The subtle nuances that have cut the time period that people do the, what I call, back and forth. You know, they— people literally— have you ever been to a gym in January? In our program, you can come back anytime. In January, we have the huge flood because People back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then January, I'm starting again, I'm starting again, you know.

Do they correlate how they feel in their body with inflammation, the fatigue, and the aches and pains, that it's actually the sugar that they're having?

That's the $64,000 question. No, they think it's aging, and they believe their doctors where they need, they, you know, they need a pill for this and a surgery for that. They don't believe it. They do not put the 2 and 2 together. They just do not because the information is not out there. And that's why I'm on these podcasts. That's why I'm out there pounding the drum so that more people can understand and catch up the general public to the science, right? The newer science that's evolved in the last 2 to 3 years. No one puts that equation together. Very few people put that equation— even after they've come here, they don't put it together well. They'll fight me. They'll fight me because of what I call the brainwashing of the diet industry. For 50 years, the mantra has been eat less, exercise more, eat less, exercise more. And everybody knows the statistics. 95% of everybody that loses any amount of weight gains it all back in the first year and then some. They add some. That has now effectively been raised to 99%. A new book just came out. And so it effectively lowered the rate to zero success rate of people who eat less and exercise more, do the old standard ways of losing weight without understanding that calories have been dead for years and no one buried them. We are not a bomb calorimeter, which is the way they measure calories. We are a chemical reaction, right?

Mm-hmm.

Our body reacts to the the product as a chemical reaction. And it's the chemical reaction of the fructose and the liver and the brain that keeps these— keeps the addiction alive. Without education, without information, without people understanding the evolution of the science, we are going to keep being stuck in the eat less and exercise more. The diet industry is a $78 billion industry. With everything all in, everything included from gyms to supplements and everything else, you know. Then every time someone comes to me, 95% of people come with me originally for weight loss. When they come to me, the only— they keep— all they want is a food plan and an exercise plan. They don't want to hear what you and I are talking about because they don't think it relates to them. They think that I have a newfangled way of helping them eat less and exercise more, which I do not. I mean, I don't have that. That doesn't exist. To, you know, this has really come down an education process, an awareness process.

I think that's why people do listen to podcasts like this. There are so many, uh, conflicting opinions. There's misinformation. Someone says sugar's not that bad, it's actually this that does all of that in your body— the inflammation, the pain, mood disorder. Someone else— I think people just getting confused. So it's great that you actually have broken it down and let people know that Mood disorder and all of— sometimes a lot of the mental health issues that we deal with, you can trace it back to sugar. Does that change actually look like in someone if they stop sugar? We want to finish this episode to really encourage people to do the 30 days off sugar detox, and what change will they see in themselves?

I've come to the belief that rheumatoid arthritis is a paper tiger. It really doesn't exist. It's sugar addiction. 95% of our folks stop hurting joints, hands, hands and knees stop hurting, right? It's true story. So one woman had already had one knee operation, had the other one scheduled. That was 2 and a half years ago. I said, just give me 90 days, no sugar. And she goes, she was still in pain from her other operation. So she did it. To this day, 2 and a half years later, she's never had that second operation. All the carpal tunnels, all of these things go away, right?

Pregnancies.

Lupus. But the most— and here's a crazy thing— we had so many people lose 100 pounds, so many people put type 2 diabetes in remission. When we do surveys, when we ask them what was the biggest benefit, literally the answer to your question, what will they see? What was the biggest benefit? The one I was— and I was not expecting it— said their brain came back online. They began to focus better, remember better. Less anxiety, sleeping better, fog brain goes away. And they did not expect it. I did not expect it in the early days. But now it's a, you know, it's a foregone conclusion. The whole last 2 and a half years I've spent interviewing these experts on brain science and sugar, the whole puzzle is coming together. I mean, they call Alzheimer's Diabetes 3 now.

Yes.

Because your chance of getting Alzheimer's if you have diabetes goes through the roof. Now they're associating with Parkinson's. In the metabolic psychiatry world, there's hundreds of stories of people changing their diet, getting off their depression meds, putting bipolar depression in, in remission. So again, this intersection of behavioral change— that's what they call the drug and alcohol world, the behavioral health world. The behavioral health world intersecting with the diet world. And when I say diet, I mean the lack of ultra sugar and ultra processed carbohydrates. It's not really— because you can be a vegetarian or a carnivore, it doesn't matter as long as you're eating whole foods. I've had success on both, with both groups. And I've interviewed the biggest and best vegetarians and carnivores in the world, and To a man, every one of them, both sides agree that the number one ingredient is to get off the sugar and ultra-processed carbohydrates for health. So what they can expect is they can expect a drastic change in their life.

That's what they're looking for.

It is. And look, I'll be honest, weight loss is only a measure of this success story. It's a marker, it's a guide. It's not the reason they should attempt it. The reason they should attempt it is, in my opinion now, brain clarity. Now, overall health and metabolic health, yes, but it's for brain clarity because then you can make your own decisions. How should I say? I mean, the right word is addicted, but you're not tethered. You're not yoked to this, this thing. Yes, everybody's doing it. My father used to have a saying, you know, if everybody jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump with them? You know, just because everybody— and there's a really a more practical one about a monk or somebody saying, There's nothing good about being well-adjusted to a sick society. And if it comes to pass, which I believe it is already, but it's going to happen in our lifetime. I'm always inspired by Candy Lightner, who founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving. When I was younger, drinking and driving was just don't get caught. It was not a social bad thing, right? Oh, you're a social pariah, right? If you get caught or you, or you do it at all. The same thing is going to happen with the sugar as the science gets out to the public, you know what I mean? And women, when they stop, when they get pregnant, they're going to stop drinking, smoking, and eating sugar because they're not going to want this. There's, there's already a lot of evidence for that. There's big giant nonprofits, First Thousand Days, you know, a lot of big nonprofits that talk about this. You know, my job, like I said, is to get people to understand if any of this— it takes about the arc of a podcast To kind of unpack what you and I have talked about so that people can reframe their view of whatever their goal is. Is it weight loss or put type 2 in remission or whatever, or just general health? It reframes how you get there because the real work is emotional, intellectual work. It's not physical exercise or diet.

Well, it always starts with the mind, the emotions. And I think it's always best to always, in these sort of situations when you are so addicted, maybe just to sit and sit with yourself and reflect and think about what are you thinking, why are you addicted, you know, interrupt those actions. Mike, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast and talking about, you know, sugar addiction and what it does. And I think this is going to resonate with so many people because it is a growing problem, and many people do talk about their addiction to sugar, whether it's, you know, medium or a very high addiction. So for everyone listening in the audience or watching, Mike's details will be in the show notes. He has a fabulous program, the Sugar Detox Program. You are only going to be better off getting off the sugar. Thanks, Mike.

Rita, thank you so much. Appreciate you having me.