PP 318: Return to Whole Foods with Sherry Strong

“We can’t wait until the government or food industry changes. WE have to change.” -Sherry Strong

Sherry says she was born an addict, addicted to refined sugar. She realized at an early age she wanted to eat healthier, however it wasn’t until her 20’s that she put the pieces together, mentally and nutritionally. 

Kim and Sherry chat about dieting, the serious harm of refined sugar, the driving forces behind our food choices, politics and more! Listen to hear how Sherry is using her 30+ years of experience and knowledge to help others live healthier lives.

 

Highlights:

03:00 Side Effects Of Bad Nutrition
07:00 The Lack Of Nutrition/Nutritional Training In The Medical System
10:00 Refined Sugar Vs. Cocaine
13:00 Kim’s Thyroid Journey
19:00 Hydrating Properly
24:20 The Ridiculousness Of The Lawmakers In The Us
28:12 Nut Pucks And Nut Pockers
37:50 The Impact Of Moving Into A Viewpoint Of Compassion
41:47 Awareness Vs. Hypochondriacism
47:12 The Power of Food

 

Listen in as @thekimsutton and @strongsherry chat about #dieting, the serious harm of refined #sugar, the driving forces behind our #food choices, politics and more! Listen at: https://www.thekimsutton.com/pp318 #positiveproductivity #podcast #nutpucks #nutpockers #healthyalternatives #nutrition #sugaraddiction #awareness Click To Tweet

Connect with Sherry

 

 

Sherry Strong is a Food Philosopher and Nutritional Strategist. She is a Chef, Nutritionist, the Curator & Co-Founder of the World Wellness Project, former; Victorian Chair of Nutrition Australia, Melbourne President of Slow Food, TEDxTokyo 2009 speaker and was a highly commended faculty member of the Institute of Holistic Nutrition, Vancouver Campus. Her recent presentation at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition Alumni Association Conference in Toronto commanded a standing ovation and continued praise.

 

Resources Mentioned

Book

People 

 

Inspirational Quotes:

03:40 “As a human species, our brains are not geared to diet. We are geared to eat when food is abundant and not to deprive ourselves.”  -Sherry Strong

12:54 “What it is that we’re meant to be eating and how we’re meant to be eating as the human species is a process that we need to re-learn because for most of us, we’ve had decades of conditioning that are confusing us.” -Sherry Strong

17:11 “The further something is away from nature, the more harmful it is to the body and the planet.”  -Sherry Strong 

22:43 “When you start to eat from a perspective of whole foods, you never have to count calories again.  It’s only when the body is addicted and malnourished,that it overeats.” -Sherry Strong

24:54 “We can’t wait for the government or the food industry to change. WE have to change.” -Sherry Strong

34:19 “As we start to learn to deal with our discomfort in a much more healthy way emotionally, we’re no longer using substances and behaviors. We’re actually starting to build strength and resilience.” -Sherry Strong

41:09 “What we do will catch up with us one way or another.” -Kim Sutton

44:33 “Cutting some things out and making healthier versions, you’re not actually giving stuff up. You’re trading and you’re liberating yourself.” -Sherry Strong

45:53 “I definitely want to get healthier. I want to see so much more of my life!” -Kim Sutton

47:26 “The social context in which we eat is as powerful as what we’re eating.” -Sherry Strong

Episode Transcription

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host, Kim Sutton, and I’m so happy that you’re here to join us today. I’m also thrilled to have Sherry Strong with us. Sherry is the founder of Return to Food and Sweet Freedom. 

Welcome, Sherry.

Sherry Strong: Thank you so much for having me, Kim.

Kim Sutton: Oh, you’re so welcome. And listeners, you’ve heard me say it before and you’re gonna hear me say it over and over again, Positive Productivity is not about perfection. I forgot to turn the space heater off before we started recording, so I apologize to you Sherry and to listeners if you should hear it pop up. But I think I’m going to deal with that little buzzing rather than sitting here freezing while talking to you.

Sherry Strong: Fair enough.

Kim Sutton: I would love to hear, and I’m sure the listeners would as well, how did you get to where you are today?

Sherry Strong: I often tell people that I was born an addict. And by that, I refer to what the chief health administrator in Amsterdam would refer to as the world’s most dangerous drug. And that drug was refined sugar. And my mother was convinced by doctors and nurses that this new baby formula was better for her baby than breast milk. And in the 60’s, baby formula had what I call a lethal recipe of refined sugars, oil, salts, grains, chemicals, including things like MSG which is a known neurotoxin. So growing up in what I call the culinary equivalent to a gastronomic black hole where we had poverty, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically, food was not something that was a gift of my family. I remember growing up often thinking that it was a form of child abuse, what we were eating. And my family thought I was crazy. I remember looking around the dinner table and looking at everyone thinking, no one’s complaining about this food. And they’re looking at me, what is wrong with her complaining about this food?

And so I often make the joke that I don’t know if their past lives or future lives. But if there is such a thing, I came to this incarnation for the food. And through many years of having sugar addiction and the problems that actually creates in the body, I managed to, by my mid 20’s, work myself up to twice my size. So I like to make a joke that I wasn’t 10 foot four, and I haven’t had a massive height reduction. But I can now literally fit into one pant leg of the pants I wore when I was at my biggest. And I think we’re a society that really focuses on looks, and so we tend to really pay attention to people’s weight. And although being twice my size was not fun and I didn’t feel to have a great body image at the time, I would say the worst thing that was actually happening was the depression, the brain fog, the lack of energy, and just a real lack of desire to really be alive in the world. And I realized I couldn’t diet, so dieting never worked for me. Every time I went on a diet, I gained weight. So there was a certain threshold at which I thought, stop dieting. This is not working.

Kim Sutton: Can I interrupt you for a second?

Sherry Strong: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: Why did that happen? When you went on a diet that you gained weight.

Sherry Strong: There’s many reasons. And that is, as a human species, our brains are not geared to diet. So we are geared to eat when food is abundant, and not to deprive ourselves. And so dieting doesn’t work. Because number one, it doesn’t address the real reason why we’re over consuming food. So it just says, stop eating, or don’t eat this, or just eat this. And it doesn’t actually address the reason why we’re consuming too much food. So if you don’t address the actual program design, adjusting the page is not going to make a difference. If you think about it, it’s kind of a tech term. So the reason why we’re actually making food choices happen for mental, emotional, spiritual reasons, as well as physical reasons. But until we actually understand those and address those, just saying donate this and eat this is not useful or helpful. And the 5% of times where it does work, it’s because people are just so ready, and they’re there, and all the other pieces are in place that just any diet will work for them. It’s not one diet or over the other. 

So unless you start to address the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical drivers of the food choices we make and have a natural connection to our food or body on the planet, most diets are temporal and they’re not going to actually take root and create lasting change. So that’s basically the journey I went on to discover all of that, and I moved into positions of influence. I was the Victorian Chair of Nutrition Australia, was the Melbourne President of Slow Food, I was consulting to the government on nutritional policies, and speaking around the country on television, radio and in the media, and I still had a form, what I call the dirty little secret, and that I was still addicted to sugar. Now, I was no longer having half a liter of ice cream for breakfast anymore. Eating chocolate chip cookies by the batch or a full chocolate cake in a day, but I was just wanting it. So I just have one thing here, and just one thing there, and just one cup of coffee with some sugar in it, and just one piece of pizza or one glass of wine. And over the course of the week, I still had sugar addiction. 

And it really wasn’t until I almost lost my mother due to complications that really came from her being addicted to sugar, weakening her immune system. And when she took an antibiotic that’s routinely prescribed with little canines in it, her system was that weak and she succumbed to fluoroquinolone toxicity and almost died. And she still to this day doesn’t have full use of her hands and her legs. She can’t walk on her own and she doesn’t have full functioning upper hands, but her immune system was compromised. And it was one of those things where I was in the hospital with her and I looked over at this woman who was next to her who was admitted into the bed next to her and they were around the same age. This woman was tall and slender. And by any account, someone would have assumed that she was healthier than my mother. But she’d been admitted into the hospital because she’d had a diabetes induced stroke and broke her leg in the fall. And so she’s in the hospital having broken her leg after a diabetes induced stroke, and her family brought in a 24 tray of donuts.

Kim Sutton: No way.

Sherry Strong: Yeah. And I remember thinking to myself, and not only that I was looking at the hospital food, what they prescribe for heart patients, it’s the most insane things that they were doing around the food piece. I just looked around and I thought, and I could see the nurses and the doctors, most of them looked really unhealthy. And when I started to do research about what doctors ate, what nurses ate and how people were actually taking nutritional advice from people who had not studied nutrition properly, at best nowadays, doctors get two weeks of nutritional training. I’ve been studying for over 30 years, and there’s still so much to learn. So there’s no way that two weeks is even going to touch on what it is that people need to know. And the other piece is when the doctor did come and talk to this woman who had diabetes, the conversations that she had, I could barely understand because I have three decades of training. But there’s no way the layperson would have understood what the doctor was trying to tell them. So there’s a way in which you’d need to communicate what it is meant to be eating as the human species. And that’s the work that I’m dedicated to now. I basically branded myself as a food philosopher for the last two decades because I’ve developed philosophies and strategies that help people relate to food, their body and the planet in a way they just get it. Does it make sense? There’s no nutritional confusion when you follow the principles that I wrote about my book, Return to Food.

Kim Sutton: I remember growing up and going to all, I remember the name of the store, it was called Sugar Creek. But I think people today more recognize the name of 7/11, at least in the United States. And I remember going there because it was the most convenient when I was with my mom. Two liters of soda was always more affordable than a gallon of milk, like eight times more. So when times were tough, and Mom, if you’re listening, I’m sorry, I just had to put it out there. When times were tough, it was the soda that got picked up straight and not the milk.

Sherry Strong: Yeah, yeah.

Kim Sutton: I remember that so distinctly because now as a parent myself, we’ve struggled financially from time to time, but I’ve kept my eye. I’ve always kept my eye on the price of milk. I’m not saying that we don’t have soda in the house, and I know we shouldn’t. I’ve actually taken myself off of it, but I’ve been delighted to see that milk has become more affordable. Sherry, I grew up in New York, in Rochester, New York, which is Upstate Western New York. But after college, I moved outside of New York City. And since I’ve left there, I do believe I heard that they’ve banned soda sizes, like over a certain number of ounces. I think I’m saying that right? Like you can no longer go to 7/11 and get the super Slurpee, or big size, or whatever, because they are trying to get it under control. But I can see where the addiction to sugar would come in. And I’m going to go as far as to say I’m addicted to sugar.

Sherry Strong: Yeah, well, as long as you’re a human being, everyone’s vulnerable to sugar addiction. And depending on how resilient your genes and your body are, your conditioning from birth and how nourished you are will determine your predisposition to sugar addiction. And when you look at how sugars are made, it makes total sense. I remember when I was a chef in Australia in the 90’s, I was studying food and cooking by Harold McGee, and I saw how sugar was made. I remember thinking to myself, look, I have never made heroin or cocaine before, but I’m pretty sure that those processes are similar. And essentially, if you take cane juice in its natural state, and if you’ve ever had a glass of it that’s freshly pressed, it’s hard to finish a whole glass. And the reason is because there’s tons of nutrients in it. So the body says, I’d had enough, whereas you can take two liters of a soft drink. And because there’s no nourishment in it and it’s highly addictive, the body actually shuts off the brain’s receptor to say, stop drinking, because of two things.

One, it shuts off the brain receptors, but the body’s always trying to get nourished. So when you have something go into the body that’s not nourishing, it says feed me more, I’m not getting what I need. So we’ve learned now through studying the brain and the brain scans that cocaine lights up the brain in a certain pattern in the dopamine receptors. And when you put refined sugar in the same brain and compare it, it lights up the dopamine receptors eight times more than cocaine. So it’s lighting up different, not just brighter, but more regions of the brain than cocaine does.

Kim Sutton: Oh my god.

Sherry Strong: Yeah. And now we have this substance and we are putting it in baby formula. So people are having it right from birth, it’s created setting us up for addiction. But even if you’re breastfed doesn’t mean you’re completely invulnerable to sugar addiction. And it’s in everything. It’s not just in our sweet treats, it’s in our savory things. I mean, I picked up a pack of beef jerky when I was traveling recently thinking, I just want something to stabilize my blood sugar. And I took one bite of it, and I spit it out, it tasted like candy. When I looked at the packet, 30% of the serving was actually refined sugars. So that does two things. One, sugars are a lot cheaper than meat. So that companies are making more money, people thinking they’re buying a product. And two, it’s more addictive. So you’re much more likely to buy it if pellets acclimated that sweet taste.

Kim Sutton: Beef jerky with sugar.

Sherry Strong: 30% of it is sugar. So if there’s 100 grams, 30 grams of that is sugar.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my god.

Sherry Strong: Yeah. So it’s all kinds of things that you wouldn’t guess. And even people will be drinking green smoothies from juice bars that are massive, like a leader of a smoothie, one, would never consume that nature. And 70% of that serve can actually be reconstituted juices, which just basically reacts like sugar in the body. And then people are drinking it down, having this massive hit of sugar in a very short period of time. Most people when they have a soft drink know that they’re not consuming anything that’s going to help, but most people don’t think that when they’re having a smoothie, and they’re wondering why they can’t wait or why they can’t concentrate, all I had was this green smoothie. So it can be quite a confusing path for people, and getting that sorted out, and making sense of it, and understanding what it is that we’re meant to be eating? How we’re meant to be eating as the human species is a process that we need to re learn. It’s encoded in our DNA, but we need to relearn it because for most of us, we’ve had decades of conditioning that are confusing us.

Kim Sutton: And I’ve learned it goes even beyond sugar absolute, and maybe this is just, I don’t have your 30 years of experience. I know I’m gonna say some stuff that’s not right so please just jump in and correct me. However, I have 30, almost 40 years of dealing with hyperactive thyroidism since birth, and I’m about to be tested for celiac. I didn’t realize until I was actually in the hospital about a month ago, actually a month ago, almost exactly now that my thyroid levels were way off like my body wasn’t accepting it. And the doctor said, we need to get you checked out for that. But I didn’t realize until he said that. And I started looking at everything that I was eating, how much gluten I’m actually eating every single day. And I almost feel like I’m addicted to that.

Sherry Strong: You are. And here’s another interesting thing that’s really important for every North American to understand. The gluten we’re eating is very different to the gluten that the Italians are eating. Most of our gluten comes from wheat that’s genetically modified, and that has another layer of toxic effects on the body. And this is not debatable information. It’s only debatable in the United States and Canada where we’re not given the full extent of the understanding of how genetic modification impacts the human body. Whereas in Europe, they get it. They totally understand that. And I’ve had many people, clients who were celiac or had severe gluten intolerance, and they can go to Italy and eat a pizza and pasta and not have a problem. 

So there’s a few things that are happening. One, the human species was never meant to eat wheat in the amounts that were eating it. All you have to do is look at how our mandible is geared and made. And if you have the tiniest little bit of husk of wheat, it’s just as repellent as us eating dirt. It feels terrible on the palate whereas, if you look at beef, a horse, or a cow, they eat whole. And there’s nothing like a cow freaking out because of a little bit of husk on it. They just naturally eat it that way. So if you look at how we’re meant to eat as the human species, nature tells us what to eat, and the quantities to eat it, and by how easily it’s obtained in nature, and how we naturally respond to it. As a species, we have given kinesthetic abilities to interact with our food and understand what we’re meant to be eating. In a natural environment, that’s great when we are pure. But through many generations of being separated from nature, we’ve lost our kinesthetic connection to what it is we’re meant to be eating. So nature tells us what we’re meant to be eating in the quantities, we find it in nature. So if you think about it, there’s a hierarchy in nature of air, water, vegetation. We most life depended on air, we’re second most light dependent on water. 

And third, where as a species where we get most of our nerves from vegetation that comes from the soil. So if you think about it, even in that respect, there’s a hierarchy of what we’re meant to be eating. Because the harder it is to obtain nature, the less we actually require it as a species, and the harder we have to work for it. And so the things that are harder to obtain in nature also give us the biggest energy hit, which is why there’s no obesity in nature because we work off the corresponding energy to actually get that food. And which is why the only time you would find, in history, people becoming obese in tribes is when they were either the cook who had access to all the food, or they were the tribal leader who had lots of people providing them food and they weren’t working it off themselves because they were in that leadership role. Not always, but more often than not. So if we cannot get something in nature, not only do we not need it. It’s harmful to the body and the planet. And unfortunately, most of us in western civilization are spreading throughout the whole world. 

Now unfortunately, we’re eating from that third area of things we could never actually get in nature, which is genetically modified food, including our wheat and soy, and many, many other things we could never make in nature. This is not breeding, this is not hybridizing, this is a genetic modification that can only happen as a result of very complex processes in a laboratory. And so the further something is away from nature, the more harmful it is to the body and the planet. And so we’re starting to eat, not just things we couldn’t make in nature, but we’re now starting to eat natural things and unnatural amounts that we would never have in nature. 

So an example of that is, I asked people, if you had to source all the berries so you could have a cup of blueberries in your smoothie every single day, what would that look like? How many berry plants or blueberry plants would you have to plant? How much time would it take you to actually accumulate all those blueberries in a natural environment? You would dry them, but how much freezer space would you have to have? If you had to gather all your own blueberries, pop them in the freezer and then you just extrapolate over all the other things that you’re eating, and start to understand that when you put four cups of apple juice from constitute, reconstituted in your smoothie with your cup of blueberries, your spinach and all these other things, you can see that over the period of the year, that wouldn’t happen in a natural environment. And even if we’re eating natural things, it can create an imbalance in the body. And everyone who I will initially talk to who has the standard American diet will just be overwhelmed. They’re like, oh, my God, where do I begin? This is just too overwhelming. And the truth is that I totally get it. And if I had to do everything that I’ve learned over the last 30 years and a month, I would probably wouldn’t even get started. But that’s your phrase that you keep saying over and over is progress, not perfection. And that’s how you actually make things happen. So you make one change in your life. And then when you’ve got that handled, whether it becomes where I say this phrase, this is how I do life. So I just would not wake up in the morning without having a liter of lemon water, that’s just how I do life. And if I do something different, it’s kind of a shock to my system. 

So one of the first things I do for people is to get them to start hydrating properly. And that means finding a source of spring water. And spring water is cheaper than soft drink and milk than anything else. It is our primary source of hydration we’re meant to be. We’re not meant to consume milk as a species after weaning. Any species on the planet doesn’t drink milk past weaning. And not only that, we’re not meant to drink milk of another species that’s designed to make that species 1,200 pounds. So spring waters, that’s number one thing that I get people hydrating their body with. And just that thing alone will impact their sugar levels which will impact their mental acuity, their brain fog, their energy levels, and the weight will start to come off as well. So that’s just to switch one thing from hydration to something that is going to be good for your body. It’s going to make a change on every single level. And then from there, once that’s handled, we implement the next change that is to start to nourish our bodies.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. Wow. I noticed when I stopped drinking soda, and I don’t even want to admit how much I was drinking, let’s just say more than a couple cans a day. First, I did have to deal with the caffeine headaches. But when you’re coming off of any drug that you’re addicted to, that happens. I tried to give up soda and coffee at the same time. I gave up on that because I needed to work. So I decided, okay, let’s just do one at a time.

Sherry Strong: That was the right one.

Kim Sutton: Thank you. And I’ve shared this in an episode in the past. So listeners, I invite you to go back and listen to those. Actually, I’ll put them in the show notes for which I should say, right away, you can find at thekimsutton.com/pp318. There was a day that I was interviewing a prospective business coach from the McDonald’s drive thru. Okay, how bad is that? I have my kids screaming in the backseat like I hadn’t planned accordingly. And not only had I not planned what I was going to do with the kids, but I hadn’t planned dinner. So rather than going into the grocery, I went through the McDonald’s drive thru. So that was like a big awakening for me. Oh, my gosh, then I started just going to the grocery more. And I’m not going to name the local grocery. I don’t need like a Oprah beef scandal on a Positive Productivity Podcast, but I don’t know if some of the younger listeners would get that reference. But you do, yes, Sherry?

Sherry Strong: Yeah. Oh, my God.

Kim Sutton: I find it so comical that in my grocery, the bulk food section, which is partially good because you can go and get bags of whatever you need. But it also provides you with bins of candy and the book food is right next to the produce. But on this particular day, I was walking past a display of avocados and my body just screams at me, you need those. So I picked up some, I got home and I just devoured one right away. And I was like, huh, I wonder what the nutritional value is of this. So I hopped onto Google and I looked it up, and I found out that an avocado, even though it does have fats in it, has as many calories as a Big Mac from McDonald’s. But the nutritional value is so much greater. I did not feel hungry after that avocado.

Sherry Strong: Well, avocados are pretty much a perfect food, and the fat in the avocado can actually help you burn fat. So that whole kind of fat phobic approach to weight loss and nutrition is outdated. Actually, there was some politics and machinations going on by the sugar industry who deflected the fact that sugar is actually a bigger cause for heart disease than any of the fats, even the horrible fats in our diet, that sugar is actually a bigger cause of heart disease. So that avocado that you’re eating, when you start to eat from a perspective of whole foods, you never have to count calories again. You just never have to do it. Because what happens is, as the body gets nourished, it will tell you to stop eating certain things. It’s only when the body is addicted and malnourished, it’s only by shutting off, you have to consciously shut off and stop listening to your body in order to overeat on whole foods. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s much more rare. So your Big Mac might have the same calories as the avocado, but it has no real valid, usable distance, and then hundreds of chemicals in it. So that compound that makes that burger tastes like it’s been on a char grill even though it’s cooked on a stainless steel grill is a flavor compound that can have up to 400 ingredients in it. And you as a consumer have absolutely no legal right to know what’s in it because that recipe is patented pretend.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. So ever since then, in full disclosure, I’ve been picking up the bags of four avocados from Mexico, because it’s more affordable to get that than avocados in the US which one cost as much as that bag of four. Actually, my son has actually started enjoying those. He’s like, Mom, can I have an avocado? Like, that’s what he wants? And it feels so great. He’s 15. He’s a freshman in high school. He’s been working out this year with the football team. He has never been into sports ever, but he’s becoming more conscious about the food decisions that he’s making. And it feels so great. I can’t say that I’m the influence. But hopefully, I’m influencing that he’s seen me cut out the soda and start eating avocados. And really be trying, not fully succeeding, but trying to make a better effort. 

I want to jump though, Sherry, if you don’t mind just for a quick second, this is not about food. My husband and I both started smoking very young. My husband was definitely not of legal age. To be totally honest, neither was I now that I think about it, so I can’t just blame it on him. But we did stop smoking, and I think I’ve admitted this once on the podcast. I still vape. I know here in America that there’s a lot of legislation out there that’s even getting down on E cigarettes, and I understand the nicotine is still there. I totally understand. But the tobacco industry is getting involved because they are losing market share. They want to continue selling cigarettes versus losing market share to the vaping brands. Yes, there is still glycerin and nicotine, but the 1,600 chemicals that are in a cigarette are not in the liquid anymore. I am not saying listeners that vaping is healthy, I am not at all. And I will wean myself off that too, someday, it will be a huge celebration. But like you said about dieting, we have to be fully prepared. I understand the circumstances, I’m just glad that I can breathe and actually push my kids in a spin again. But it amazes me just like the unhealthy food industry, the legislation in the US at least is not helping us out.

Sherry Strong: No, we have a system where our government, and this is in most countries with the exception around the food in Europe, they’re much more progressive and protective of their population. But basically, we can’t wait for the government or the food industry to change, we have to change. The food will only be available as long as people are buying it. So if you stop buying a product, a company can’t survive if everyone stops buying it. So we have an industry that controls our government. And it’s just the logistics they have way more money, and lawyers, and lobbyists to keep the government busy doing somersaults, trying to just take care of the basics. I learned this when I worked consulting the government. I remember looking around at the table and the other people on the board, looking and thinking that everyone here is terrified to make a decision, that they’re afraid to lose their position or their credibility by making a stance as something as simple as saying, stop eating refined flour and sugar. That would never happen because they’re terrified of funding that comes from third and fourth layers down to actually try and find out where that comes from, to actually control how things work. 

So if we as consumers have to take our power back and stop blaming, we need to take 100% accountability, and we need to start to make those changes. Now, if you’re not taking in 1,400 chemicals and you’re vaping, that’s a huge leap. And I always say in Return to Food, I have a whole chapter on it called Pick Your Poison. Because if you look at any traditional culture, Kim, they will have something they smoke, or something they eat, or something they drink that alters their state. And sometimes, that comes from what they refer to as spirit plants which take them somewhere else, and they have different kinds of experiences from anything to tobacco, to marijuana, to ayahuasca, they have those things now. For me, my drug of choice is chocolate. That’s my spirit plan.

Kim Sutton: I’m going to like reduce sugar, but not reduce, like not eliminate chocolate, but–

Sherry Strong: I can tell you how.

Kim Sutton: Please.

Sherry Strong: I often say that I’d rather live to 100 with chocolate than 110 without chocolate. But here’s the thing, my palate for chocolate has changed dramatically over the years. If you offered me a normal kind of store bought chocolate, such as Reese’s pieces, or Cadbury’s, or any of those, I wouldn’t need it. It doesn’t tempt me. I don’t get any joy from it. It’s just so sickly sweet to me. It doesn’t taste good. I feel terrible after it. But I have a recipe for something called Nutbox, which are like almond butter cups or packs, we refer to them in Canada. And if you eat them, you’re a nut pucker that has just a little touch of maple syrup in them for the sweetener or maybe some of the kuma as the sweetener, and they are so delicious. And the thing is you just need two of them. Because every single ingredient in there is something that nourishes, energizes and protects the body. It’s something you thoroughly enjoy, but it’s nourishing your body. You don’t need a lot of them. And every single person who tries this recipe says it’s superior to the chocolate that they have, and that it doesn’t actually create more chocolate cravings. If that can make sense to some people. So it’s truly satisfying. Our bodies are naturally drawn towards anything that raises our blood sugar or alters our state.

Kim Sutton: Sherry, I’m still laughing at it. Okay, my littles go to a daycare. I have a three year old twins and a four year old. Their classmates have birthdays and their parents bring in Ziploc bags full of whatever favorite candy they pick out. And at the time of this recording, we’re about to approach Easter, so we had a huge Easter egg hunt at our church last weekend, and 50,000 easter eggs, no joke, each one with candy inside. So we’ve been having to hide the candy because they will rip open the bag and rip it all apart. And I’m still laughing about nut pucker, because I would love to introduce my children to a healthier alternative. But I’m laughing because I could imagine them running around the house saying, nut pucker. With my kids, it would easily turn into something else because they’re testing us every single day. Is that a cuss word mama? Sorry, I know that’s a tangent, but I’m going to ask you, would you be open to providing that recipe so we can include it in the show notes?

Sherry Strong: I would love to.

Kim Sutton: I will seriously provide a video of my children with that because we totally need something healthier in our house. And actually, I’m just cracking up thinking about it. I can’t wait until I can get them to say that. That would be so awesome. My husband will say, great, great Mama. This return payment for him buying lightsabers for Christmas.

Sherry Strong: I promise you. So the actual thing is called a nut pack and a person who eats it is a nut pucker. I promise you, your husband will gladly become a nut pucker.

Kim Sutton: Okay, yeah, yeah. I am so interested in that. They sound delicious.

Sherry Strong: They are.

Kim Sutton: And I agree, I would rather live to 100 with chocolate than to 110 without.

Sherry Strong: I said I don’t know about past lives or future lives. But if there is such a thing, I came to this incarnation for the food. And Kim, I love food. I was a chef in Melbourne. I worked in some of the best restaurants in the world, and I still love my food. I still cook every day, cooking real food. But on the weekend, I will have a cinnamon croissant at the Farmers Market. It’s just my thing, and doesn’t happen every weekend, because you know what? It loses the more nourished, again, these foods lose their hold on me. And then I have upgraded choices like the Nutbox. So I don’t need to have a commercial brand of chocolate because it tastes so much better. And you can start to do that with everything, and understand that your palate will change as you get more and more nourished, it will acclimate. And it’s not just physically. So in the Sweet Freedom Program where we work with people to end sugar addiction, four weeks into it, we ask them to give up sugar. But we don’t dream of having them give up sugar until we’ve gone through a process of hyper nourishment, which really helps them to identify where in their lives they are toxic mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. Start to eliminate and replace those toxic influences, or substances, or behaviors with nourishing ones. 

So when it finally gets to the point where you’re actually giving up that thing that’s not serving you, if I had a chocolate addiction that I couldn’t resist and I was eating every day and I was dreaming about, and I was waking up eating it, and going to bed eating it, then it’s not serving me. But as I have it now, I can have an epoch or two a day, and I feel satiated, happy and satisfied. And it’s not interfering with my health. But if I did have something where it was going on where it was toxic in those areas, I need to start to remove the influences that are creating what we call in psychology cognitive dissonance, or just disturbances within our human algorithms to kind of extrapolate on a phrase that I’ve used before. But what happens then is as you start to have more upbuilding experiences spiritually and you’re removing anything toxic in your spiritual world, when you start to mentally put more positive input like a podcast, Positive Productivity, right? So you’re listening to something and you’re very clear when you interview, and the notes that you send to us ahead of time that this is about positivity. If you’re looking for an argument, cancel the show. I thought that was brilliant. You’re really setting the tone for the parameters in which you want to engage with people.

And I think what happens and what I’ve noticed working with clients for many years is that they will not even be aware that the mental stimulus is actually creating this anxiety within them. So they get addicted to shows where people are always dying, or they’re being arrested, or there’s crime, horrible deaths. And then they don’t realize that when they’re eating later on late at night after watching it, that those two things are actually connected. And when they start to put more positive mental input into their body instead of reading crime novels, they start to read some more uplifting material, whether that’s nonfiction for personal growth and development, or just novels that are really inspiring, true life stories of people overcoming adversity, that all those little things that happen to us mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically impact our sense of level of well being, and how we actually feel about the world. And as we start to remove more and more areas of discomfort or we learn to deal with our discomfort in a much more healthy way emotionally, we’re no longer using substances and behaviors. We’re actually starting to build strength and resilience so that when it comes to that time where someone says, okay, we’re going on a 30 day challenge and you’re not gonna have any sugar, you’re in a very different place, then had you not addressed those things.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. You just made me aware that since I’ve shared on the podcast before that I have drastically changed the people that I’m following on social media. I’ve unsubscribed from numerous newsletters and unfollowed people who were not in the same lane that I’m in now. And yeah, when you were just talking about that, I’ve realized that my post dinner snacking is very rare. And I had never thought about that before. But I also have to share, while you were just saying that I got a pop up notification from my grocery store that Nabisco Oreo Cookies are on sale for $1.49. What a convenient timing, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. I’m not a cookie person. I just find it so funny. It’s like always right there in front of us. And if I can see that, actually, I’m struggling with our, I don’t know if it’s changed in the eight years since I divorced him. But when I was married to my ex, he watched a lot of NYPD, and all those types of things, and he was a stacker.

Sherry Strong: And it’s amazing how we completely disconnect and think that this negative programming doesn’t impact us. And it absolutely does. Even little insidious things like, I’m Canadian, I live in Canada. And when Trump was elected, I felt kicked in the stomach. Now, it had nothing to do with Hillary. It had more to do with his views on women and racial, and all those other kinds of aspects that I just felt I was so saddened by it. And what happened was, the next day, I put on my Facebook page, I just felt like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. Now, that’s all I put. And then I had people who were so mean. I didn’t even say anything about your president or anything like that, but I had such vitriol, like I couldn’t believe it. And I remember for a time I was engaging in that, defending myself, explaining and also gleefully engaging with people in anti Trump sentiments, it took me quite a few months before I realized this is toxic behavior, Sherry. No matter what beliefs or political things, anytime you speak negatively about another human being, it’s toxic. You can disagree with things, but to take apart another person, no matter how diabolically different their belief system is to you, or their behavior is to you, no good can come of it for me. There’s subtle little things that you can actually think are perfectly acceptable. But when you start to realize how they impact your body, is it making you stronger or weaker? 

You might think that being angry and expressing vitriol to whoever opposes your political belief system, but that anger itself after a certain point is only going to start to weaken your body. And I did notice that it did impact my eating behaviors that arted to return to emotional eating. And conversely, when I moved into a place of starting to understand how might he have been raised, and what kind of environment, and what kind of parenting, what kind of fathering did he have that would allow him or contribute to him having those beliefs. And when I started to approach it from that viewpoint, I started to have compassion for another human being. I still disagree with a lot of things, but when I approach dealing with my understanding of the world from a more compassionate place, it helps me out. I know that I’m a more peaceful person when I’m thinking things from a more compassionate place. And then that ripple effect of being more peaceful to my neighbor, you know what I mean? We’re all energetic beings. And energy ripples out not just internally, but to the people in our families, and our friends, and our communities. And it’s only through having nourishing, positive and healthy input mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically that we’re going to shift and make those changes.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I can totally see that. When I made the shift of who I was following, my husband coincidentally at the same time was reading pastor Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, and he works in retail. My husband does. He’s a manager, it’s easy to get caught up in gossip. My husband’s not much of a talker, period. But I started to talk to him one night about some things that were going on in my business. He looked at me and I remember that he said, is this gossip? Because if it’s gossip, I really don’t want to participate in it anymore. And right then, I realized how much drama I was bringing into my own life. And negativity by talking about people, and I wasn’t even doing it that much. But the more I started looking around, I realized that there was so much drama out there, and so much gossiping. So as I’ve been scrolling through social media, I’ve actually started unfollowing, unfriending people who are only bringing the gossip and the drama into their feeds. As a result of doing that, I’ve also reclaimed so much of my time because I wasn’t getting caught up in it myself.

Sherry Strong: Oh, absolutely. And it’s a human behavior, it’s toxic behavior that’s very socially acceptable. It’s like the sugar of the mental and emotional world, this root spiritual sugar. And at least you might feel good in the moment, like the sugar rush, but at least some bigger low and a bigger hangover for having done it, then it leaves you with that positive feeling. So it impacts everything. We’re an amazing, amazing species. And I think we’re just starting to scratch the surface of understanding how we actually work efficiently as a species.

Kim Sutton: Oh, yeah, so toxic. And what’s been even more amazing to me is just becoming more aware of how much I’m talking about other people, or how much I’m not anymore. Because what I find myself getting ready to type something or to say something, I’m much more aware of it, and I stopped myself. But I’ve also realized that the people who do continue to do it, even about me behind my back, get caught and never work out well. And the same can be said for eating food in secret, the stuff that we know that we shouldn’t have been eating. What we do will catch up with us one way or another. So I want to actually bring this back to our original conversation away from gossip. But I’m curious, how we can be more aware of what’s going on with our body without being hypochondriacs. I think that’s the right word. How can we be more aware of the effects of the food that we’re eating without being overly concerned and making stuff up? I hope that makes sense.

Sherry Strong: You actually brought up the award that’s really important, and it is awareness. It’s not about hypochondriacism. So what happens? And this is so important you brought this point up because we’ve got so used to eating a toxic diet that’s not nourishing. We just kind of get used to a feeling of malaise and symptoms of pathology. We get used to it, we think it’s normal life. But when you start to observe and study, you become aware, you start to realize, oh, my goodness, when I have this, this happens 20 minutes later. When I have this, this happens the next morning. And when I eat this thing, I burp it up, and I repeat the same flavor each time. So you start to observe, come aware of how these things are impacting your body. That’s why with Sweet Freedom, we don’t have you give up sugar right away. We want you to be aware of, number one, how much sugar you’re having, because awareness is really important than if you just switch the next day to also becoming aware of the triggers. So when I have this conversation, I gossip with so and so on the way home, I’ll go pick up a muffin, or a cookie, or a doughnut. And you get to levels and layers of your awareness. 

And for me, I had this. When I used to get up, speak and give a presentation that was self righteous, or just too pure, if that makes sense, so there’s philosophies I teach. And they’re understanding what we’re meant to be eating in nature. It’s very purist. But I don’t live like I live in nature. I use those philosophies to understand what it is I meant to be eating, and I aspire to live that way. But if I used to get out and I would be speaking, it was subconscious. I wasn’t trying to say I’m this perfect person because I’m not. But I would be teaching the philosophies. And if I represented it, or myself in a way that was just kind of too pure, and not exactly reflecting how I live, on the way home, I would be craving something sweet, or a doughnut, or cookie. It was almost like I was trying to balance things out. So it’s amazing how subtle the levels and layers of our awareness can actually start to work. But when you become aware of the triggers that cause you to have sugar, or gluten, or any of those foods, and then you become aware of what happens after you have those things and how they can have many different effects from your mood, to your energy levels, to your brain fog, there’s 144 diseases and chronic conditions associated with just sugar alone. That’s not gluten, that’s not a lot of contaminants like dairy in our food. 

But as we start to cut them out, we start to realize, oh, my goodness, I think so much clearer. I am not on this emotional roller coaster, I’m not anxious all the time. There are foods that I have that create intense anxiety within my body. And just by cutting some few things out and upgrading them, so making healthier version swaps for them, you can be cutting out rainfall, mood swings, you can sleep better, you can wake up more refreshed, you have more positive interactions with people, you’re not having the slump at 3:00PM, you’re not having headaches and chronic pain, and there’s just so many things that you start to realize that you’re not actually giving stuff up. You’re trading and you’re liberating yourself from this general malaise that we just get used to and we forget. Or in some cases, we don’t even know what it’s like to live in a natural live, healthy body that’s at homeostasis, which is our factory settings, which are off the charts. Energy, happy, joyful predisposition and ability to work through problems and through stress. And really, a groundless strong way.

Kim Sutton: Wow, Sherry. I don’t know what to say besides, well, because now I’m going to be taking it much harder, I don’t even know how to say it properly. But a much better look when I eat and what I’m eating, just to start looking deeper at my habits because I do want to be getting healthier. I realized that I have not been getting healthier as I’ve been getting older. However, I definitely want to get healthier. I want to see so much more of my life, so thank you. Thank you so much for coming on today, I’m sure that the listeners have gotten just as much out of the conversation as I have. So on that note, where can listeners find you online and connect with you, get to know more about you and your programs, and everything else great that you have to offer.

Sherry Strong: Oh, thanks. So probably one of the stops is sweetfreedom.ca, because the site is in Canada. But we have over 50 blog posts over 50 recipes. The YouTube channel is Sherry Strong. We’ve got over 60 videos there with just tips, strategies and tools to help you not only get off of sugar, but live that sweet freedom lifestyle where you actually do feel. You can have all the sweet things in life bring us joy without the sweet things that actually bring us the downside and feel like we’re in a prison in our bodies, in our lives.

Kim Sutton: Great. And listeners, just the you know, all the links and resources that we talked about in today’s chat will be in the show notes, which you can find at thekimsutton.com/pp318. Sherry, do you have a parting piece of advice or a golden nugget that you can offer to listeners?

Sherry Strong: Yeah. I studied nutrition a lot, and I think it’s brilliant, it’s wonderful. And I think it’s really important for us to understand how it is we’re meant to be eating as the human species. But one of the things that I learned that you don’t often find in nutrition books is that the social context in which we eat is as powerful as what we’re eating. And I’d much rather have a greasy bowl of noodles with people or kind, positive, loving and upbuilding. Or some pizza roll ups with people that are kind, positive and upbuilding than to have the most gourmet nutritiously prepared meal with people who are angry, depressed and negative. But saying that, I want to plant the seed of, imagine having food that is nourishing, energizing and protective. Have conversations that are kind, loving and upbuilding. And to share that meal and give thanks for not only the food that’s at the table, but to just go around the table and start to think about what you’re grateful for that day.

Shauna, core happiness researcher has shown that a child who is genetically predisposed to depression, lifelong depression, can actually become a lifelong optimist by just sharing three things. They’re grateful for the evening meal. And I think if we can actually make that switch, if we can start to come together and prepare food that seasonal, local, organic and whole, and we can share that food, being grateful for it, being grateful for one another, reestablishing our connections as families and communities, that sugar addiction in effect, all addictions really will be things of the past.