Ep 70- Should You Cut Out Sugar and Carbs to Stop Binge Eating?

June 12, 2025

If you’ve ever thought, “Maybe I should cut out sugar and carbs to get my eating under control”, this episode is for you. 

I’m sharing my own story of doing 30 days of no processed sugar, what happened after, and why cutting out food groups like sugar and carbs is one of the biggest binge eating myths out there.

You’ll learn…

• Why cutting out sugar and carbs can actually make bingeing & cravings worse

• The truth about “food addiction” and why it’s not your fault

• What to focus on instead so you stop feeling out of control around food

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, confident eaters, we are rapidly approaching summer and every time summer comes around. There will be some people that are telling you to take these drastic actions so you can get hot for summer, you can get fit for summer, or maybe you are just starting to put this pressure on yourself to finally get it together so you can feel confident in your bathing suit this summer so that you aren't worried about binge eating at the barbecue.

 And a big thing I see people starting to do is wondering if now is the best time to start cutting out sugar and carbs. Now, there's a lot of reasons that people think this will help, and I'm gonna go into my story today to tell you about the times that I did 30 days of no sugar and what happened when I did that.

So the reason that we think cutting out sugar or carbs will be helpful when we're trying to stop binge eating is because we think those two things are addictive or that they trigger a binge.

And a lot of these thoughts around these foods are influenced by diet culture, the keto trends, or even doctors and coaches who aren't very well educated on binge eating, who suggest cutting out our problems foods.

Remember that binge eating did not become a recognized eating disorder till 2013, so just a little over 10 years ago. Meaning there's a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of professionals who still do not know exactly how to treat binge eating and the right advice to give.

So it makes sense on the surface that we think if, okay, sugar and carbs are the things we are binging on, well why don't we just cut them out and then we won't binge anymore.

It all seems to be logical and a lot of times sugar and carbs and cutting them out. It feels like something you can control. Especially when everything else about your eating feels out of control. Sometimes it can feel good to feel like, I'm gonna make a decision to do something here. I'm gonna make a decision to change something.

But we're gonna talk about today why that decision can sometimes backfire or we might continue to binge even after that. So I fell into this dilemma too, where it was in February, 2019. That my binge eating was getting drastically worse. This was my second time relapsing with binge eating, and it was coming back with a vengeance.

I was gaining weight super rapidly. I didn't know how to stop. I was trying intermittent fasting, and I thought, you know what? I keep bingeing on sugar. I would take my roommate's food. I would hide in bathrooms at my sorority house, eating the dessert. So I decided I'm gonna do 30 days no sugar. And I knew this was gonna be hard for me, so I thought, let me get all of my friends accountable with me so that I don't have to worry about keeping myself accountable.

So I told all my friends all the benefits that I had researched about 30 days no sugar, and how it was going to change our freaking life and how we were gonna have no more sugar cravings, how we were gonna feel healthier and happier and more energized, and it was just gonna be the best thing ever. I did so much deep research on doing  this 30 days with no sugar.

I. So I got three of my best friends on board, and we began our journey February 1st to do 30 days no sugar. Maybe it was even in January because I remember we talked about, I think it was on Valentine's Day that we would quit so we could eat our Valentine's Day chocolate.

I thought that eliminating the sugar would solve all the problems, and I was super excited to start. But as I went through that month. I could not stop thinking about food, and I was already thinking about food, but the obsession ramped up to a whole new level that I couldn't even imagine. I literally  spent every single waking second thinking about when I was going to eat, when the sugar free challenge was gonna be over, what I would eat then.

I started becoming really obsessed with finding sugar-free recipes. I would Google food porn and obsessively watch people eating food, like it was the weirdest thing. But you know, I know I'm probably not alone in this. I would search up like food porn and I would watch these videos of people eating massive amounts of food, I think on youTube, they're called Muck Thingss. I could be wrong about that, but I know that there's something similar where people just watch other people on YouTube just eating a lot of food, and this is what restriction does to our brain. This is actually so normal. I was not that  much of a weirdo after all.

Restriction makes us feel crazy, even if we were technically being good. So the craziest part about all of this is I actually did stick to the 30 days of no sugar, which blew my mind. Like the amount of willpower that took was a lot. But I did it. And at the end of it though, I was just like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe how much time I spent this month just thinking about food.

And even though I never did a full out crazy binge during that time on sugar. I still overate in other ways, but I was still kind of good, and yet I didn't feel any more free around food. In fact, it didn't reduce my obsession at all. It fueled it where I felt more obsessed with food than ever before.

Then as the challenge came to an end. I decided, okay, I'm gonna just mindfully start to include back in the sugar. I thought it was gonna be all good and for the first like week or so, I actually did pretty good. I felt like I was including food back in mindfully. But I decided to step on the scale after that.

And what was so fascinating to me was during those 30 days of sugar free, I actually didn't lose any weight, but I gained two pounds still, and I was so confused because I thought I had cut out sugar. But it turns out you can still overeat on other foods besides sugar. It is possible to still eat more than your body needs, even if you are eating no processed foods.

So I was starting to add it in slowly because I knew that I didn't wanna cut out sugar forever. And as I started to do that, it felt good at first but slowly but surely, my craziness around the sugar returned. But this time it was even worse. I cannot even tell you how bad my binge eating came back after this.

Over the next coming weeks, I binged more and more and more until like I know I keep saying this, but I just felt like the most absolute crazy person around sugar. I just felt so obsessed about it. I could not stop thinking about it, and so it made me 10 times less free around food than when I started, and it made me so much  worse off than if I would have never done  the 30 days, no sugar to begin with.

So let's talk about why my sugar free month ultimately ended up failing and why cutting out sugar or carbs isn't something that works long term.

Whenever we restrict something, we are showing our brain that this is a perceived threat, that this is something that we're not supposed to have. And again, logically that seems like, well, that's good. We're telling our brain this isn't something we wanna have. But what our brain does then is it turns on its survival response and make sure it starts looking out for it everywhere we go.

When we are in a hungry state, sugar and carbs become extra appealing. So if on top of cutting out sugar and carbs, you're also not eating enough, which is what often happens when we cut out an entire food group, then this survivals response is going to be 10 x and we are going to be thinking about food, dreaming about food, daydreaming about food even more.

But the constant appeal of them will actually go away when you're not constantly hungry and you're well fed. So the second that you start to eat more, this obsession around sugar and carbs will likely go away. Now, if it's not going away, that's something that happened to me, and that might be something else going on under the surface, because there's a lot of other factors that can be evolved in that.

But I want you to remember that we need carbs to function properly. There is a reason that we have them in our diet. And cutting out these entire food groups sends the signal to our brain that this food is scarce, which is gonna ramp up our urgency, our cravings, and our panic eating.

And when we label sugar and carbs as bad, so even if we are eating enough, just these labels alone can increase our cravings, make us feel more rebellious and lose control, where instead we want to learn how to feel safe around them. The goal is not to never want sugar, it's to not panic around it so we can actually eat it mindfully in moderation like everyone else.

So here's the truth. You can still binge on foods that don't contain sugar in carbs. I binge so many times on protein bars. I binged on fiber one bars. I binged on even tofu sometimes, like I would just overeat on it. Some of these healthier type foods I have definitely overeat on before, and I know you have to.

Okay, so even if you cut out sugar and carbs, you're not really addressing the root cause of your binge eating here, which is showing us that it's not really all about the type of food. In fact, I rarely see that binge eating as an issue because of the type of food you're eating unless you're eating ultra processed food 24 7.

If for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day, you are having frozen meals and takeout in McDonald's, then yes. There is some aspect of the food chemistry that might be impacting your desire for food, but for most of the people I work with, you're probably eating pretty healthy already, like on the day-to-day basis.

It's just the binge eating that's getting in your way of all the things you consume when you are in a binge frenzy. So the food itself is not the problem, and we know this because if the food was the problem, everyone else in the world would binge on it. And that's just not true. We see people every single day eating cookies in moderation, eating chips in moderation.

So it's not the food, it is the thoughts and emotions you have toward that food that separates you out from a natural eater. These people who eat normally. It's not that there's some special creatures, it's that they're thinking and feeling about food in a different way than you are right now. So think of it like this.

It's not the cookie that's the problem. It's the story in your head about the cookie. It's how you think these thoughts such as, this is so bad for me. I'm gonna gain weight. I can't control myself around this food. I don't know when I'm gonna get a cookie again, so I'll eat it all now. I need more. One isn't enough.

Those are the thoughts that are making you feel crazy around food and binge eating.

You have trained your brain to have a different relationship towards these foods than normal eaters do. And it's a toxic relationship, right? It's one that doesn't love you back. So we wanna break up with our toxic relationship with food so we can have a healthy one with it.

And if we were to think about this in a relationship dynamic like between two humans. This would be like you are the toxic one in the relationship. Okay. We're gonna take responsibility that we're the toxic one in our relationship with food. The food is not doing anything to us. The food is an inanimate object.

It does not have control over us. It does not call to us. It does not pull us in. Right? That is our thoughts around food. So if we are the toxic one around food, it's not the food that needs to change, it's us. Okay? That is the harsh, honest truth. If you cut out sugar and carbs, it might work for a little bit, but this is a Band-Aid coverup.

It is not a root cause solution. Cutting them out might have that temporary relief of temporarily feeling in control, but the truth is you're not gonna stay in control forever because you're gonna wanna have these foods again, and you're not addressing why you're binge eating in the first place.

Cutting out sugar and carbs is just an action you take. It does nothing to address those thoughts and feelings I just mentioned that you're having around food. We need to address the mindset. We need to look under the hood and look at what are all these reasons that the binge eating is actually happening.

It's not because of the food, okay? It's the mindset we have around these foods. The relationship we have with it.

So a little real life reality check for you. You're gonna wanna go to a birthday party at some point and eat cake. You're gonna wanna be at a Mexican restaurant and having chips sometimes. So chances are if you're gonna want to eat these foods again, at some point, you're gonna need to learn how to eat them in moderation.

If you don't know how to handle sugar and carbs, when they do come back into your life, you will continue to binge on them. So the skill that we wanna learn here is not how to willpower harder and cut them out more. The skill isn't learning how to be around them without losing control.

So here's what you're going to do. Instead of cutting out sugar and carbs this summer. First, I will have the podcast worksheet in the show notes that sums up this episode. So if you haven't gotten my podcast worksheet bundle, go get that. But I want you to know that we cover eating in moderation, very in depth, together as an entire pillar in my confident eater program.

So if you're having trouble with the mindset piece, you can work with me one-on-one in my confident eater program. Okay, so what we're gonna do in step, I first want you to let go of the belief that control equals safety. Okay? And say that again. Let go of the belief that control equals safety. Safety does not come from rules around food. Right. That is actually coming from a place of fear. When you say, no sugar, no carbs, no eating after 8:00 PM I can only have desserts out at restaurants. I can only have two pieces of bread a day and no more.

That is not safety. That is coming from fear, that is coming from this desire to control, but what we really feel is very out of control around food. It does not make us feel any more in control around food. It actually makes us feel like the food is controlling us.

So if control does not equal safety, what does equal safety is trust. Trust in your body that you can figure this out. Trust that your body has the wisdom inside of you to know how to moderate these foods. Okay? Our body has learned what to eat and how much to eat for millions of years, maybe tens of thousands of years. I don't think we've been around for millions of years.

Okay? But tens of thousands of years. And it has learned how to regulate our hunger and fullness. It has learned to decide which foods are good for us and which foods are bad for us. It has learned how to not overeat because overeating is not good for our survival either. It makes us heavy and sluggish and weigh down.

So your body wants you to be at its natural weight, it wants you to be healthy, and it has a lot of mechanisms in place to do that. So true safety around food equals trust, not control.

Then instead of trying to fight your urges or cut out sugar and carbs to eliminate them, I want you to start getting curious about them. Really looking, what are my urges telling me? What do they sound like? How do they feel in my body? The more awareness you can have around your urges around food, the easier it will be to sit with them.

And part of that is changing your thoughts around sugar and carbs to be neutral. Sugar and carbs are not good. They're not bad. They are just neutral. They just exist in the world. They are not healthy, they're not unhealthy. They are just a neutral circumstance, a fact of the world that sugar and carbs exist.

And once you can really practice believing that these foods are not bad, you're gonna release your attachment to them. Right?  Think about if you've ever liked someone and they just like don't really like you back and you feel obsessed with them because you can't have them. It's the same thing with sugar and carbs. We become obsessed around them because we feel like. We never have enough of them. We need more of them. We have to get them all in right now.

So if instead we remove that attachment to them by not looking at them as something bad and just something that we can have and enjoy, at times it's going to become so we're not so obsessive around them all the time.

And finally, I want you to focus on nourishing your body and stopping restricting. You don't need to cut out entire food groups to be healthy.

And in fact, I think that makes you very unhealthy to not have these food groups. Again, carbs are absolutely necessary and so is sugar right now. Of course, we don't need like gummy bears most of the time in our everyday life. Maybe if you're going for a long run, you need gummy bears and sugar is a necessary nutrient then.

But sometimes we need pleasure and if we eat sugar and carbs and amounts that feel really good to our body, we're gonna get pleasure from it. And pleasure and not stressing over food is healthy. Okay? Cortisol is something that is  one of the most unhealthy things for our body, the stress hormone.

So many people will have such healthy habits. They'll be exercising all the time. They'll be eating, quote unquote good. They'll be sleeping well, but their cortisol levels are through the freaking roof, and because of that, they don't feel healthy. Everything is outta whack. They're breaking out all the time.

They're super anxious all the time. Okay, so if you are stressing about sugar and carbs 24 7, that is also not healthy. That is also not gonna get you where you wanna go.  All right, you guys have an amazing week enjoying your sugar and carbs and amounts that feel good to you. You don't need to cut them out, I promise you. It's possible. I eat sugar and carbs every single day. So do millions and millions of people around the world and is 100% possible to reach all of your health goals and all of your eating goals while also learning to have 'em in moderation.