Excerpt from THE HUNGER CRUSHING COMBO METHOD by Abbey Sharp, RD
INTRODUCTION
The Road to Abundance
It’s a wild time to be alive, folks. And I’m not just talking about the political landscape, the acceleration of AI, the grim economy, or the superstardom that is Taylor Swift (basically, the only thing our generation seems to have going for us). The state of affairs when it comes to diet and nutrition information (or, should I say, misinformation) is enough to leave anyone aghast. Never before have we had so many competing ideas about what to eat. Gluten makes you fat. Seed oils are inflammatory. Eggs are good for you. No, wait, they’re bad for you. No, actually we were right the first time, eat the damn eggs! Just make sure they’re grass-fed, free-range omega-3–enriched eggs, or don’t bother.
Every day, we’re faced with hundreds of messages about food and our diet, the vast majority of which are contradictory and often just flat-out wrong. Between social media influencers, sensationalized media headlines, and the notorious inconsistency of nutrition research, it seems the more we learn about nutrition, the less confident we become in our ability to eat intuitively. Man, for something as primal as putting energy into our body, it’s starting to feel like we need a PhD just to pack a basic lunch.
Not only is eating well now confusing and complicated, but it’s also riddled with shame, morality, and judgment too. Chances are, you’ve felt the pressure to restrict what you’re eating in some way, whether that’s your total calories, sugar, or even the hours during which you’re “allowed” to eat. Welcome to the modern world, my friend. Focusing on all the foods we can’t have because they’re bad is now so deeply ingrained into the fabric of our lives, it’s largely invisible. But while diet dogma may help you at least temporarily control your body shape, size, or health markers, often it has a more permanent effect on your relationship with food and your body. The result is a longtime struggle with body dysmorphia, dissatisfaction, and disconnect from your own internal wisdom.
If you’ve been dieting your whole life, ask yourself this seemingly simple question: “What’s the first thing I think of when I hear the word ‘cake’?” My seven-year-old son who, hopefully, has years before he’s made an acquaintance with diet culture, would probably say “birthday,” “party,” or “fun.” But to so many of us who have been dieting our whole lives, just breathing in toxic messages about our bodies and food, “cake” isn’t such a jolly word. It may conjure up words like “guilty,” “cheat,” “unhealthy,” or “bad.” And these words may even become absorbed into our own being. Suddenly, just the thought of red velvet makes us feel fearful and ashamed. This is the $300-billion-plus diet industry that feeds off our insecurities, forcing us (particularly women) to beg for another solution to our self-loathing and food fears. So, here we all are, indoctrinated to feel just as bad about having a mini biscotti at the office as we would about having an affair with someone at the office.
Let’s change that, okay?
Food is not just a compilation of banal nutrients meant to sustain life; it’s actually evolutionarily designed to be pleasurable. If it weren’t, we’d be too distracted by other interesting earthly pleasures, like a bird in the sky or a new flower in the distance to get off our butts and find something to eat! Honestly, every time I see an influencer flex about spending $12 on a flavorless, 20-calorie bottle of celery juice, I imagine our caveman ancestors face-palming and rolling their eyes even more aggressively than I do. No matter how hard the diet industry pushes us to fight against our inherent love of food, it will always be one of life’s great pleasures. Take it away, and the body sets off alarm bells that something is very wrong and that we need to rectify the uncomfortable situation stat. Cue the late-night pantry raid. The soul-gnawing guilt. The self-loathing and punishment all the weeks that follow. You’re in the fiery depths of diet hell, and after just one or two kicks at the can, it can feel nearly impossible to climb out. I know, because I was shackled to this cycle for years, and it nearly cost me my life.
For most of my adult life, my motto has been, “If I’m not ahead, I’m behind,” a mindset that I’ve embodied since I was young. Those who know me personally know that I’m a classic type A. And the constant battle of trying to keep up with the Joneses (and by Joneses, I mean my own unattainable high standards) has won me both praise and a lot of agony. At as early as six years old, I would cry in my bed, worrying myself sick over the next morning’s dance competition. In high school, my focus shifted to my budding singing career and “winning” all the top theater parts. That success soon led me away from my supportive small rural community to try to “make it” in big-city Toronto, taking the year after high school to really sink my teeth into the music industry. Adults much older and wiser than I insisted I had the “it” factor; I just needed to get myself into the right rooms. Not surprisingly, my frenemy, anxiety, took full control. I had thrown everything away for this opportunity. I had moved away from my friends, I had put a pause on any higher education, and as a bona fide people-pleaser, I was paralyzed by the fear of letting everyone down. If I didn’t make this happen for myself, who would I even be?
Meanwhile, I had always had a sensitive tummy. I almost thought it was just normal to constantly feel a little nauseated and bloated. But performance butterflies only amplified my daily discomfort. I didn’t have a name for it at the time, but I know now that I had been suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). And thanks to a constant conversation between my deteriorating mental state and my perceptive gut, my digestion was perpetually on the fritz. It seemed that everything I ate caused some discomfort and pain, which, looking back, was likely more of a mirrored reflection of my tortured brain, than of any one triggering food or drink.
But, alas, I thought it was time to get some help with my tummy troubles. So, at the recommendation of a family friend, I enlisted the support of a local homeopathic naturopath. Her recommendation was simple and direct: Cut out all the sugar in my diet. According to her, sugar was toxic and it was poisoning my gut and my mental health. It needed to be eliminated.
Not surprisingly, once I started focusing all my energy on sugar elimination, I began losing weight. I also started receiving loads of praise from people around me. These compliments were pure ecstasy. And if cutting out sugar got me a round of applause, I figured that cutting out more “bad” foods might get me that standing ovation I so desperately craved.
I had already “mastered” the art of scanning every food product for words that end in -ose (shorthand for sugar in everything from bread to cereals to salad dressings to pasta sauce). I was ready for the gut-healing detox 2.0. Sugar may have been public enemy number one, but according to all the “health” magazines at the checkout, fat was also on the naughty list. It, too, had to go.
Very quickly, my list of safe foods got even smaller, and so, too, did my weak body. Compliments ceased and were replaced with whispers, looks, and words of concern. And just like that, my steady stream of people-pleasing dopamine was ripped away. The shame only drove me further into a state of depression and despair, and my only sense of satisfaction came from control.
Or at least the facade of control. After months of living off fat-free, sugar-free yogurt and massive bowls of lettuce sans dressing, my willpower self-imploded. I started to binge. But, of course, in the most “controlled” way possible. Every Sunday, I would spend the day fasting, pacifying my hunger with tea while running errands to distract myself. Then, at night, I would eat the equivalent of more than all my weekly meals combined, in the form of all the “forbidden foods” I had otherwise cut out. A multicourse smorgasbord of fries, pizza, pasta, cheesecake, doughnuts, and ice cream as soon as the clock struck five p.m. and the cheat meal began. Every waking moment between those feasts was spent drowning in food fantasies and planning my next “cheat,” always with the sad knowledge that the life I was living in real time was so miserably gray. And despite the climax that was that end-of-week meal, I would spend the rest of the week in an even deeper depression. Each week, the binges got bigger, and the restrictions got tighter, and it became unimaginable to ever stop.
It became me.
And I hated that me. So, I retreated into my delicate shell, withdrawn, small, silenced. I had spent my whole life being the little girl with the big voice, and suddenly, I felt completely incapable of singing a single note. Symbolically and figuratively, I had fully lost touch with who I was. My quest for diet purity quite literally hijacked my brain, and my body was succumbing to its powerful control.
Eventually, the adults in my life woke up to the fact that this regimen was not serving me, and was quite possibly going to lead to my demise. I had to admit I had a problem, and it had a name: orthorexia. Orthorexia is often described as “clean eating taken to an extreme.” Unlike other eating disorders that focus primarily on restricting the quantity of food consumed, orthorexia involves an unhealthy obsession with the perceived quality, healthfulness, or purity of food. In my case, my orthorexia eventually evolved into a dangerous eating disorder cocktail that included both anorexia and binge-eating tendencies.
Recovery was not a simple linear journey. But after meeting with a dietitian (my first introduction to the profession), I was able to wake up to everything that diet culture had stolen from my life: the relationships, the experiences, the mental space to think, grow, and learn. Most people ease into recovery slowly and gently, but I knew I had to go all in. Seemingly overnight, I went from micromanaging every bite of food that grazed my lips, to attending nightly food events and restaurant launches where I had zero say in what I was eating. Yes, it was scary to fully relinquish control, but the freedom was so invigorating, so exhilarating, I knew I could never let myself go back. And it’s this lived experience of mine that has guided me into my career as a registered dietitian specializing in helping people make peace with food for good.
As I’ve quickly learned as a professional, my experience is far from unique, and as such, I will sadly never be out of a job. Twenty years ago, I fell into disordered eating patterns likely due to my own personal comorbidities and circumstances, including preexisting anxiety, ADHD, perfectionism, and loneliness, all of which are major risk factors for eating disorders. Sure, I was also exposed to diet culture messaging in the media, but I wasn’t fully immersed in it the way young people on social media are today. My eating disorder took hold long before the “What I Eat in a Day” videos, the social media echo chambers, the perfectly curated influencer feeds, and the nonstop proliferation of mis- and disinformation online. Today, you don’t need any existing genetic or mental health comorbidities to be massively at risk. In fact, our collective obsession with “clean eating” is now so celebrated that orthorexia and general disordered eating are almost status quo. The message being: If you’re not buying the sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free Paleo muffin, are you even trying?
I know that many reading this right now have struggled with their relationship with food in some way. It is estimated that 8 percent of the US population (nearly thirty million Americans across a variety of cultures, genders, and age groups) suffer from an eating disorder. And a 2008 survey with over four thousand American women found that 65 percent reported behaviors consistent with disordered eating. So, even if your personal journey hasn’t manifested as a full-blown eating disorder, worrying about food has still likely stolen years of life. The guilt you’ve felt when you swore you would only eat two fries, but polished off the whole plate. The shame of “cheating” on your diet with your kids’ Halloween haul. The mental gymnastics of trying to calculate how many calories you can eat at breakfast if you plan to have a glass of wine at girls’ night. You have been robbed of so many joyful life experiences by obsessing about food and your body, experiences that make you, you. And whether you’ve been trapped in this cycle for months or years, it’s been too long.
You can’t get that time back, but you’re here today because, going forward, you want to do things differently. And by “differently,” I’m not saying I’m going to convince you to not give a damn about your health, how you look, or what size of pants you’re going to buy. We all have wellness goals! For one person, that may be to improve their daily blood sugars so they can reduce their medication dose. For others, it may be to lose 10 pounds so they can feel confident at the pool. It’s not up to me (or anyone else) to judge whose goals are “valid” and whose are “vain.” But when it comes specifically to numerical weight-loss targets, they’re not always the most actionable goal. We can’t directly control what our weight decides to do when we cut out sugar or integrate a daily run. And if the number on the scale is your sole indicator of success, it’s nearly impossible to push through the discouragement when your progress doesn’t move at a linear, predictable, or quick pace. We do, however, have control over behaviors that support our goals and health (assuming these behaviors are accessible to you). Although, in the past, you may have taken the control component into dangerous, extreme territory, I’m going to teach you a revolutionary approach to eating well without the common pitfalls and harm. No risk, all rewards. No scarcity, just abundance. No fear, just loads of delicious nourishing food.
Introducing the Hunger Crushing Combo, a revolutionary non-diet additive approach to eating and living well. You’ll never look at a bag of potato chips in the same way again.
We have never been more informed—and yet, more confused—about what we eat as we are today. And between our cultural fear over food additives and the buzz around GLP-1 drugs, the noise has become impossible to tune out. Registered dietitian Abbey Sharp has seen—and debunked—it all. Her revolutionary Hunger Crushing Combo Method helps you banish fear foods, guilt, and cheat days, and finally get off the diet roller coaster for good. It’s a simple framework that teaches you to effortlessly balance your meals by combining two or more of the Hunger Crushing Compounds: protein, fiber, and healthy fats. The result? You crush physical hunger, silence emotional cravings, and eat well without deprivation, denial, or dieting. No counting. No tracking. No restricting. Even better, the HCC is adaptable to your goals and unique needs while restoring joy and pleasure to eating.
Discover:
• Science-backed insight into why the HCC compounds work
• Tips on how to use the HCC method effortlessly and intuitively
• Chapters devoted to specific conditions including weight loss, insulin resistance (type 2 diabetes and PCOS), fitness, menopause, and raising healthy kids
• Thirty easy and adaptable recipes
• Cheat sheets for building your own HCCs
• and much more!
Learn how to turn your “unhealthy” cravings into HCCs to stabilize blood sugars and help support a healthy weight—all without giving up the food you love. The Hunger Crushing Combo Method helps you finally feel full and reduce food cravings without ever dieting again. And, yes, you can have your cake and eat it too!
