Why “white knuckle” effort won’t heal your addiction to sugar for the long term

Loving yourself: easier said than done

You may have heard that if you want to heal the roots of food and weight problems – including sugar bingeing – that you need to love yourself. Once you love yourself, you can change your habits, lose weight, feel comfortable in your body, and eat less sugar.

Love yourself and Poof! – you’ve found the root of your problem.

This sounds good – and simple – but what does it mean? And how do you actually go about doing it? How do you learn to love yourself?

I hear this over and over from the hundreds of men and women I work with – “everyone tells me I need to love myself but I don’t know how or even where to begin.” Loving yourself may feel as doable as say, doing your own car repairs.

Why you go back to old patterns

So instead of doing what feels impossible – loving yourself – you do what you know:

• you go on another diet to lose weight
• you use will power to try to control your sugar cravings
• you turn food into something very, very grim that you’re always trying to control
• Or you may feel so overwhelmed that you do nothing.

What you need is a map – a map that shows you how to love yourself. Then you’d know how to find your way out of sugar cravings, sugar bingeing and more. Then you’d have an alternative to dieting and white knuckling it to stop your sugar binges. You wouldn’t get trapped in hopelessness or overwhelm.

If you had a real map, you’d feel confident that you could make self loving choices with food – and hopeful that you could heal the roots of your sugar battles.

Self love is a skill you can practice

Many people think of love differently than, say, knowing how to diaper a baby, wallpaper a kitchen, or speak French. That’s because all forms of love involve relationship – and relationships are nuanced and multi-layered.

But the building blocks are the same – they’re skills, something that we learn. Skills are either taught to us or modeled to us. Skills like self love are primarily modeled to us by our caregivers. If you had poor examples of self love, you may not have learned this skill – it may not be as intuitive or natural as someone who had better models.

So if you struggle with self love – and feel ashamed for how you don’t love yourself – I would like to greatly reassure you it’s not your fault. It’s not proof that you’re a broken or terrible human being. No matter what your upbringing was like, or what role models you had for love, you can learn how to love yourself. You can change your relationship with yourself.

Karly’s history with sugar addiction

I understand how you feel. I’ve had strong feelings of self hatred for most of my life. It’s no wonder that I’ve also done it all with food – I’ve been a life long overeater, sugar addict and had multiple eating disorders – including bulimia, binge eating, and body hatred – for over 20 years. I felt disgusted by myself and my habits with food, and yet I couldn’t stop.

I’ve seen counselors, healers of every shape and form, therapists, nutritionists, spiritual teachers. You name it, I’ve done it. I found progress, but was still stuck.

In my 20s, I started reading about how sugar is addictive and cried in relief. Finally, I understood why I couldn’t stop eating it once I started, and some of my shame softened. With this knowledge in hand, I was confident that I could easily “put my mind to it” and simply stop eating sugar.

Instead, I spent the next 10 years wrestling with sugar. For a few months I’d be sugar free, and then I’d go back to bingeing on it. At one point, I was sugar free for several years – long enough that I wrote a book about being free from sugar, Overcoming Sugar Addiction. I felt in control, confident, and free of sugar cravings, happy that I’d healed my sugar addicted brain and body….

Until… my mid 30s, when I went through the hardest four years of my life, and went back to eating sugar. I felt embarrassed, discouraged, and like a failure. Where did I go wrong? It was a painful, painful time.

Looking back, I can say that going back to sugar was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because during that time I learned something life changing:  physiological healing (healing the sugar addicted brain and body) is not enough to heal a compulsive sugar habit.

How do I find lasting freedom from sugar binges?

To find lasting freedom from sugar bingeing, you also need emotional healing. You need to heal the sugar addicted heart.

You can create a kind, loving, nourishing relationship with yourself – to be the unconditional, loving mother to your own, aching heart instead of sugar.

You can learn to integrate the skill of self love.

How is sugar your refuge?

Do you use sugar as your:

• mother, your source of comfort, nourishment, self soothing, and unconditional love
• power (or to express your powerlessness)
• buffer – how you soften, soothe or avoid painful feelings
• shield – how you separate yourself from others’ feelings, needs, energy, and demands
• voice, how you set limits, how you create boundaries, or how you communicate your feelings
• friend, your companion to soothe loneliness
• connector, how you connect to others, find belonging, and connect to your past

When we focus on just cutting out the sugar, we miss the point. The point is to understand why we turn to sugar in the first place.

Sugar was my mother, my power, my buffer, my best friend.

Healing the sugar addicted heart

To truly separate from sugar I needed to find that person within me – rather than looking at sugar as the thing to fill it, to make me feel whole, loved and cared for.

I began this work of reparenting myself – with lots of practice, patience and support – and found something radical. As I looked inside and saw my long term patterns of mothering myself with sugar, suppressing my needs (and then eating sugar to compensate), and using sugar to soothe my strong emotions, I was able to slowly, gently detach from these ways of being. Instead of focusing my energy on “controlling” how much sugar I ate I focused my energy on creating a kinder, more compassionate, more loving relationship with myself.

When I focused on being kinder, more loving, and more compassionate to myself, eating less sugar was the natural side effect.

Rather than willing myself to stay sugar free, I found I didn’t need it in the first place. I’d found true nourishment in self love, self kindness, and self compassion. This is what I teach in Overcoming Sugar Addiction for Life…

Eating less sugar is the fruit – the inherent reward – of creating a kind, loving relationship with yourself.

How to order

What you’ll learn in Overcoming Sugar Addiction for Life

What if being free from sugar isn’t a matter of “controlling” how much sugar you ate, but rather healing your need for sugar in the first place? What if…

• instead of forcing yourself to say no to sugar you found you didn’t crave or even want it?
• you felt so nourished, loved, and whole that you didn’t need the sugar to fill the emptiness?
• you found true, lasting safety, comfort and pleasure in your own heart – and not in food?

Dear one, to heal your sugar habit you don’t need to crack the whip and get your “stuff together.” You don’t have to boost your will power. You heal by developing compassionate ways of:

• caring for your emotions
• setting limits and boundaries
• validating needs and emotions
• softening anxiety and inner tension
• expressing your feelings and needs
• finding contact and closeness with others

How to order

Your daily intake of ___ instead of sugar

My friend, this is love in action. Instead of using sugar to fill your needs, you’ll learn how to receive what you truly need. You’ll learn how to boost your daily intake of:

• love and connection
• acceptance and belonging
• emotional, physical and spiritual nourishment
• true comfort

As you forge a more loving, forgiving, and merciful relationship with your tender humanity – your emotions, needs, thoughts, feelings, and your precious body itself – you’ll notice positive changes in:

• how you relate to yourself
• how you think about yourself
• how you talk to yourself
• how you care for yourself
• and how you relate to others

It also, fundamentally, changes how you eat. Rather than willing your sugar habit away, you grow out of it.

 

Overcoming Sugar Addiction for Life includes:

• 6 audio CDs and a workbook. The audios give you a core concept or “how to” that you’ll need to find lasting healing from sugar, and the workbook gets you out of theory and into practice – actually creating changes in your life.
• The workbook also contains written exercises to understand where you get stuck with sugar.
• Each core concept has visualizations to foster healing on a deep unconscious level.
• You’ll learn tools to soften sugar cravings that don’t rely on white knuckling it.
• Structured support – a map to follow on what to do first, what to do next, what to do last.

How to order

What are readers saying?

“I feel I’ve been changed just by following some of the “caring” techniques Karly explains in this program. Giving myself unconditional love for the first time in 55 years and feeling better about my life is truly a blessing…and I haven’t even started the workbook yet! This program is much more than about sugar or weight.” – Bonnie, Canada

How to order Overcoming Sugar Addiction for Life

I invite you to try this gentle program now.

More than healing the physical nature of a sugar addiction, you can experience the deepest levels of emotional healing – freedom from shame, self loathing, self criticism and self judgment. Imagine feeling whole, peaceful, happy and free. Imagine who would you be without the crippling beliefs of “I’m too much,” “I’m not enough,” and “I’m bad.”

Payments are in USD with Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal. 100% satisfaction guarantee.

 

How to choose?

What if it’s not for me? If you order the program and wish to return it or are unsatisfied in anyway, you’re welcome to a refund within 60 days. I want to assure your complete satisfaction and aim to treat people in a way I’d want to be treated.

This program may be ordered securely over Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption using our verified safe store that is Payment Card Industry (PCI) certified compliant. Please order with assurance that all your information is encrypted and stored securely. Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal options are available. Any questions contact help@sugar-addiction-book.com.

Listen to the 1st CD from Overcoming Sugar for Life

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What else can Karly tell me about choosing this program over others offered here?

A: Listen to this answer by Karly:

Q: Wasn’t this program called Becoming Binge Free? What’s the difference?

A: You’re right! This workbook and CD program used to be called Becoming Binge Free. We’ve renamed it and given it a new cover to make it easier for you to use and understand. But it’s the same material inside.

Q: What’s the difference between Overcoming Sugar Addiction for Life and your overeating program, Heal Overeating: Untangled?

A: First, Untangled is meant to help with overeating any food. OSA4L (it’s easier for me to abbreviate it!) is meant for those who are trying to eliminate or reduce the amount of sugar they eat.

What they have in common is a gentle focus on the inside stuff. This includes:

• healing old programming, healing the barriers to self love
• creating a compassionate relationship with your human self
• befriending emotions

What Overcoming Sugar Addiction for Life has that Untangled doesn’t is:

1. A workbook and lots of written exercises. Writing things down brings clarity and focus to the audio exercises and teaching, leading to those “a ha” moments that create shifts in your experience. While Untangled has some written worksheets, this is much more extensive in OSA4L.

2. A focus on the hidden, unconscious needs that drive your cravings/desire for sugar. You’ll learn how to identify what you’re truly needing underneath the sugar and how to give yourself this true nourishment. You’ll also learn how to allow yourself to have these needs in the first place – how to embrace your tender, vulnerable, precious humanity.

3. A focus on grounding yourself with regular, rhythmic self care so you feel nourished, strong and cared for. All change arises from this place of, “I have what I need.”

4. An introduction to grieving (and its cousins surrender and acceptance), one of your most powerful tools for emotional healing.

5. Teachings on radical self acceptance and compassion to heal self judgment and self criticism.

Q: What do you mean when you say ‘is sugar your mother?’

A: If you struggle with letting go of sugar over the long term, you may use sugar as a surrogate parent or lover, how you feel nurtured, connected and loved. So letting go of sugar feels like letting go of love itself! You may feel a form of separation anxiety when you don’t have your sugar treats around, or you may feel this anxiety at even the thought of not eating sugar.

You’re looking for refuge – a source of safety, unconditional love, and nurturing. But sugar can’t give you those things – it’s an empty hole that’s never filled. Dear one, how many times have you eaten sugar hoping to fill that hole, only to remain unsatisfied?

Instead of turning to sugar as your source of comfort, you’ll learn how to create true refuge in love. This is the deepest level of safety – not a safety that comes from control, fixing, or managing, but safety that comes from surrendering to love, to the Divine, and to the inner faith of, “I can handle this.”

Q: How does compassion help me heal my sugar addiction?

A: Okay, you may be wondering – self compassion and love and kindness sounds great, but will it really help me eat less sugar? You may be fearing that if you’re kind and compassionate to yourself, then you’ll just sit on the couch and eat ice cream all day. You may fear that being kinder to yourself will make you do nothing except eat sugar.

It’s a great point, so let’s clarify. Compassion is not “eat whatever you want.” Compassion is also grounded in wisdom. Compassion is finding the right, kind action. And if you’re sugar sensitive, compassion may mean limiting or not eating sugar. This is where compassion’s strength lies. It sounds counterintuitive, but being kinder to yourself is what makes you strong. Being kind to yourself is what enables you to soften your resistance and to do the work of separating from sugar and learning new habits.

Q: What does ‘kindness’ have to do with sugar cravings?

A: Sugar cravings are uncomfortable. You feel the “itch” and want to scratch it – and yet you don’t want to eat the sugar and get caught in the same addictive cycle!

So you may try to suppress or control your sugar cravings, but that only works for a while. At some point you feel overwhelmed and you give in.

Instead of fearing or fighting with your cravings, there’s a 3rd path – showing your cravings kindness. Rather than looking at cravings as something to control or indulge, you can learn to see them as a hurting part of you that wants your belonging, care and love.

When you turn towards your cravings in compassion, they soften. In Overcoming Sugar Addiction for Life, this is called “rocking your cravings to sleep.” Embracing the part of you that’s hurting and longs for sugar doesn’t make the craving bigger – it quiets it.

Q:  How does meeting my needs change what I eat?

A: We all have needs for belonging, connection, love, joy and more. Many of us feel undernourished – that these deep needs aren’t being met in our daily lives – and then we overindulge in sugar to try and make up the difference. We’re using sugar to care for ourselves, to release stress, to feel “whole.”

In this program, you’ll learn how to change these patterns so that your true needs are met in your daily life – in your relationship with yourself, with others, and with the Divine – and not with sugar. Not only do you find greater health and freedom from sugar, but you’ll also find greater joy, inner peace and less stress.

Q: What if I don’t want to order using a credit card?

A: Please call us at (888) 297-7076 and we’ll find a solution. We also accept paypal.

How to order