Why is it so hard to get real answers about your health?

If you've been told that everything looks fine, but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.

That's why I created Vitality three sixty to help you better understand what's going on inside your body so that you can take the targeted action needed.

With a functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to uncover the root causes of your symptoms.

I've teamed up with Doctyasmina, an incredible integrative GP, and together we will help you decode your body's signals and answer questions like why am I always exhausted?

What's really causing my stubborn weight?

Am I inflamed?

Insulin resistant?

Or maybe missing key nutrients?

Because when you understand your body better, you can transform your health.

Visit v three sixty dot health or check out the show notes for more.

This is Healthy Heir with Amelia Phillips and welcome to my monthly Ask Me Anything episode where I answer, listen to question uestions, and give you my personal take on the top health issues us Mum's face.

Well, look, today's a little different because I'm only answering one question as I got asked this same question multiple times last month.

You see in last months Ask Me Anything episode Lovely, Lauren McRae asked me what daily habits have made the biggest difference in my health, And so I went through about four or five of these habits that have helped me the most.

And one of the habits I spoke about was getting off my sugar addiction, which I have had.

Pretty much my entire life.

And I spoke about the difference getting off sugar has made to my energy, my body shape, my mood, my cravings, and just my overall health, both physical and mental.

I have to say, but the one thing I didn't talk about was how I in fact kicked this addiction to the curb.

And since that episode went live, I've had a bunch of you dm me on Instagram wanting to know how I did it.

So today's episode is dedicated to all of those who asked me and to those of you that have that pesky, sweet tooth that rears its ugly head multiple times a day as it did for me.

So before I dive into that, let me give you a little bit of an update on what's happening in my world.

I'm sitting here right now in that very messy school holiday period where I pretty much fail at everything.

I'm a bad parent, I'm a bad worker.

Sorry if I've got emails I meant to be getting back to you from.

I'm a bad wife.

It's just you'd think after this.

Time, i'd work out how to do school holidays, but I still don't.

I just end up dropping the ball.

I need to either just stop work for two weeks or.

I don't know, go away on a holiday.

Anyway.

I did have an amazing five days up at the Gold Coast with just Charlotte, my eleven year old.

We had the gymnastics nationals and so us mums all went just with our one daughter, so it was a real mum's daughter week.

It was really really special, and we were saying how lovely it was because the girls are at that really sweet age where they're still innocent, but they're lots of fun to hang out with, and they don't think we're cringy.

Well a few eye rolls, but on the whole they don't think we're cringy yet.

So we're just enjoying this time while it lasts and then poor little Angus has broken his collar bone, so he's been stuck in a sling.

He fell over in the playground at school just before school got out, so he's yeah, he's unfortunately pent up and got a lot of energy, but we're just trying to get that out with handball.

The amount of handballs he's using on his good arm against the side wall of the house is about.

The only thing that he can do.

Poor thing.

So that's what's happening in my world.

And then our Inner Vitality Program is off and running.

We haven't run one of these since March, and so we had lots on the wait list, and we had a really really popular webinar recently, in fact, it broke zoom.

We had four and a half thousand people booked and then people some couldn't get in the door on the So I do apologize if that was you, But we're running another webinar on low energy, stubborn weight and inflammation in about a week, so I'll pop that link in the show notes if you were one of the people that couldn't get in, or you're interested in our Inner Vitality Program, which is our flagship program that I run with dot Dasmina an amazing integrative GP and we measure fifty five key blood buymarkers.

So you get a blood test and then over eight weeks we teach you what your results mean and show you if your body's got signs of things like inflammation, pattern of being over fed, cholesterol, micronutrient insufficiencies and deficiencies, insulin resistance, basically all the really important things for proactive and preventative health.

So it's really really fascinating.

Great if you're impairmentopause as well, I'll pop that link in the show notes and then a little book up date.

We are madly writing away.

Dot Dasmina and I were right in the messy middle in what the school team tell my kids is called the learning pit, where you're kind of in this big dark pit of mess and you're not sure which way is the right way forward, And we keep kind of wrestling with concepts and ideas and we don't want to be too sciencey and textbooky, but we also want to give really clear strategies, so we're just trying to find that balance.

But we want to bring a lot of heart and warmth and real member stories in so it's a really interesting time as we're wrestling with all of this, and I do wish I was on my writer's retreat in a beautiful cabin with a log fire overlooking a bubbling book and my typewriter.

That's how I imagined I would write this book.

The reality is like super early, up early, or stealing moments in between my day job or staying up late at night.

But look, I am enjoying the process as much as I can in the middle of.

The school holidays.

But I not to let the.

Stress of it make me crave more sugary comfity foods because I have worked so hard to kick my sugar addiction to curb and that's what today's episode is all about.

So I reckon, we need to dive into it.

Now.

You notice that I have been using the word addiction, and look, apologies.

If those of you are listening and kind of rolling your eyes a little bit and going, that is not an addiction.

I'll show you what an addiction is, and you know you've experienced that in other really dangerous forms, then I do apologize.

But I also looked up.

The definition of addiction because I honestly felt like this sugar was an addiction.

And when I've read the technical definition of addiction, I'm going to stick to my guns.

And I was addicted to sugar.

Let me read you what.

The definition of addiction is a chronic condition where a person compulsively seeks and uses a substance i e.

Sugar, alcohol, drugs, or a behavior i e.

Gambling sex, despite harmful consequences, driven by changes in the brain's reward system.

And that's what really struck for me.

I could tell that this sugar had changed and these hyper palatable foods, which are these highly processed foods, had changed my brain's reward system.

And so manufacturers are so so clever they have worked out that fat, sugar, and salt absolutely trigger and change the brain's reward system and a fun fat.

That reward system that I'm talking about is the same reward system that lights up with drug use.

So in one of the workshops we run, we show a brain scan of someone on cocaine versus somebody that is addicted to sugar, and you literally can't tell the difference between the two brains.

They look identical.

So I guess the thing you could question is Amelia, Well, you mentioned harmful consequences, and you're not really being harmed by sugar.

Look at you, You're a picture of health, Amelia.

But what I will say is my dad is a type two diabetic.

My dad also has thyroid.

He's had half his thyroid removed about twenty years ago.

My sister has had thyroid issues.

So there's metabolic stuff going on in my family.

And so maybe the harmful consequences hadn't kicked in yet.

But you know, I'm only halfway through my life.

I'm forty six, got a long way to go.

So I could feel that if I wasn't getting a handle on this, the harmful consequences would continue to grow and develop.

And I have to say it was having a harmful consequence on how I felt.

I felt like something had a power over me.

It made me feel helpless, hopeless.

I felt like I wasn't being true to my values.

You know, here I am walking my talk.

I'm a nutritionist for goodness sake, and I've got this sugar addiction.

I felt like I wasn't being my authentic self.

And I also felt like I wasn't modeling the behavior that I wanted for my kids.

In fact, because a lot of the sugar I was having was after the kids were in bed.

I remember this one night, think it was Locky came down to see us in the lound room and I had, you know, my big bowl of popcorn and my big dessert there, and I fully tried to hide and I jumped, and I kind of tried to hide it under my blanket, and I.

Just thought, who am I?

Who is this person?

So let me paint the picture of what my sugar addiction looked like.

Two years ago.

So it's been about two years since I've kind of been on this journey.

I was having dessert every night of the week, seven nights a week.

And I'm not talking about just you know, a little square chocolate or something like that.

I'm talking about a full blown dessert.

So I would have either one of those full bags of cobs popcorn, you know, those big cobs popcorn, and sometimes a what I would do is have the bomb as well, which is where I would get some dark chocolate covered nuts or fruit and I would put that in the bowl and then I would pour the popcorn on top.

So you're sitting there eating your popcorn, You're starting to get sad.

Bec near the bottom of the bowl and then suddenly the bomb appears and you get that extra chocolatey hit.

Or I would have ice cream, or I went through a phase of rice pudding.

Harris Farm cells this amazing.

I think it's called Big Roy's or Royan Joe's rice pudding.

Sometimes I'd make it anyway.

I was having that seven nights a week.

But then on top of that, I had to have something sweet after every meal I ate.

After breakfast, i'd have what I call breakfast dessert, which was a piece of toasted jam.

After lunch, I'd be halfway through my lunch thinking about what sweet things there are in the house to have after lunch, and it would never be anything too bad, like it didn't drink Coca cola, or I didn't have the big chocolate bars from the servo.

But it might be dark chocolate covered nuts or fruit or lots of dried fruit.

It was a lot of sugar throughout the day.

And I did wear a CGM continuous glucose monitor for a little while, and that was that was actually one of the triggers that also made me want to focus, because I could see how many times a day my blood sugar was spiking because of these sweet treats.

Why is it so hard to get real answers about your health?

If you've been told that everything looks fine, but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.

That's why I created Vitality three point sixty to help you better understand what's going on inside your body so that you can take the targeted action needed.

With a functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to uncover the root causes of your symptoms.

I've teamed up with doctor Asmina, an incredible integrative GP, and together we will help you decode your body's signals and answer questions like why am I always exhausted?

What's really causing my stubborn weight?

Am I inflamed?

Insulin resistant?

Or maybe missing key nutrients?

Because when you understand your body better, you can transform your health.

Visit v three six dot health or check out the show notes for more.

So that's where I was about two years ago, and I guess you might think, well, how did you get there?

Amelia?

You're a healthy person and you've lived an adult life of health.

Well, as with all things, I'm going to blame my mother.

Hi Mom, if you're listening, sorry, but Mum, you made the best desserts growing up, and we had dessert every night of the week.

I mean, my mum.

She should have had a petisserie or a bakery because she would make the best desserts.

So she would do a mean apple crumble, Oh my gosh, so good, or apple and rhubarb crumble.

She still brings it up and delivers me one every now and again.

Cheesecake.

Don't get me started on mum's cheesecake.

Remember there were these chocolate biscuits back in the day.

They were so inappropriate they.

Were called golliwogs.

I just can't even who would call a biscuit a golliwog, But anyway, they tasted amazing and she would crush them up and that would form the crunchy base of the cheesecake.

She would do.

Bread and butter puddings, summer puddings, she would do rice pudding, and then us kids used to argue over whether it's better with or without currants, so she would do half the rice pudding with currants in it and half without.

She would do just a simple bowl of jelly with vanilla ice cream and maybe some hundreds and thousands if there's some in the cupboard, and if she couldn't be bothered to bake it from scratch.

She would then have those yummy cream caramels that used to have come in a plastic container and you'd tip it upside down and break this little air tight seal and then all the caramel sauce.

Would come out.

So that was me.

So that's how this whole thing started, I believe.

And then you know, in my twenties it just continued on.

You know, you can eat and pretty much do anything in your twenties and your right.

And then when I met Tim, I went through my marathon training era about five or six years.

You know, when you're training between eighty to one hundred k's per week, you can eat anything you want, so that was my excuse.

Then then we went through our baby making era.

Four kids in five years, so it's pretty much pregnant or breastfeeding for five years.

So that was my.

Excuse, all those extra calories, and had a lot of banana smoothies.

And then in Sydney there's this great restaurant called Bills, a couple of Bills in Sydney and they do the best fluffy rocotta and banana pancakes.

So used to have that every Sunday with lashings of butter and maple syrup.

But then, yeah, a few years ago, Ela was about four, and I guess I kind of ran out of excuses, didn't I.

And I was starting to get those icky feelings.

And I just remember this one night looking over at Tim and there he is sitting with a single apple, and here I am with my massive bowl of popcorn and the bomb in the bottom of it.

And I just thought, this isn't right.

Meals, what are you doing?

So I'm like, tomorrow night, I'm just going to have an apple.

So the next night comes around, grab my apple.

I'm not having dessert.

I'm not having dessert.

I'm not having dessert.

Sit down, We start watching our show, hoping that the suspense of the show is just going to make me forget about it.

Could I concentrate?

Could I relax?

The apple didn't cut it, absolutely not, And all I could think about was this kitchen and the pantry and what's out there?

What is there?

What is there?

There's got to be sweet stuff there.

And it was almost like my skin was crawling.

And within about fifteen twenty minutes, jumped off the couch, ran raided the kitchen and found something sweet.

So then I hear you say, well, you idiot, Amelia, just don't have anything sweet in the house.

That's such a great idea.

But there's this thing called uber Eats and guess what they deliver magnums, literally deliver magnums.

Did I pay fifteen dollars to get a single magnum delivered to my house?

Hell?

Yeah.

If that's not a sugar addiction, I don't know what is.

So so I was really at a loss, and I was starting to feel quite frustrated, as you can imagine, and just really down on myself.

So it coincided with a period of research into behavior change for one of my programs.

I was really looking into some of the well studied methods for changing behavior and I came across the tiny Habits method and I think this was kind of the trigger for me.

It was this combination of Tim eating the apple, me running out of excuses, and just the ickiness all catching up with me.

And then this really delving into behavior change and why some people can find healthful behaviors like exercise and.

Eating well so easy and other people struggle.

So I ended up getting the creator of the Tiny Habits method, Linda Fog Phillips.

So it was Linda Fog and bj Fog that developed.

This Tiny Habit's method, their behavior scientists, and there's so much research behind this, and so I got Linda onto my podcast and that was real game change.

It was such a fascinating episode.

So I'll pop that link in the show notes.

And so the way the Tiny Habits method works is that basically breaks behavior change down into a really simple, manageable structure.

And they have this free five day program that you can follow, and you know, you sign up to it for free and you get an email delivered every day, and so I'm like, I'm going to give.

This a try.

And so the concept is three main things.

Number one, you have to anchor your new habit to something you're already doing.

Then the second element is you have to make this new habit so tiny that it's really really easy to start.

So, for example, people with exercise, it seems silly, but they would say things like just put your shoes on, just have your shoes out and put your shoes on, and actually don't exercise.

And that's kind of like the start of it, and then you know, you develop from that.

And then the third key element of the Tiny Habits method is all about celebrating success.

So once you've done this new behavior, you've got to celebrate.

And it can be super simple things like literally doing a happy dance or patting yourself on the back or saying yay me, or it could be something else, you know, spraying some a roma therapy that you love, playing a song that you love.

And so that's the Tiny Habits method, and so I'm going to talk through kind of how I use that, but I also combine it with another behavior scientist, Charles Jurig, who talks about something called the habit loop, and it's this idea of que, routine and reward, so saying that.

All habits are triggered by a que in your environment.

And that really landed for me because my cue was kids in bed, it's my time, it's my relaxed time.

Tims are my time together.

It's the couch, it's the lounge room, it's the TV.

That was the trigger for my big sweet tooth.

And then he talks about this routine, there's always a routine attached to it.

So if you want to change your behavior, you have to change the environment, and then you have to change the routine.

And then, similar to the tiny ha It's method, you've then got to anchor it with a reward at the end, some kind of satisfying feeling.

So I pulled all that together and I went, right, I'm going to do this.

So here is the strategy.

Here is what I decided to do.

First of all, I committed that I was not going to have dessert three nights a week, and it was Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.

So at the start of every week, I set my intentions for the week.

And this is something we do in our programs.

I highly recommend it.

Start of the week, when you're planning out what your week's going to be like, you set one to three intentions.

So one of my intentions was no dessert Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night.

So I made this commitment and I'd stick it somewhere on my desk, so that on a post it note.

So there it was.

Then when it came to those evenings, I had to change my environment.

So completely changed my nighttime routine.

And at first I was really annoyed about it because I loved watching TV with Tim, but it's just three nights a week.

Our lound room's downstairs and kitchens downstairs.

Rooms are upstairs.

So I would literally.

Turn off all the lights downstairs, kitchen, clothes shop shut upstairs bedtime, put the kids to bed, and I would walk straight into my bedroom as soon as the kids were in bed.

And then I created this new self care ritual in my bedroom and so I got beautiful bath salts, I got a candle, I stopped up on some books, and I just shifted the routine and I made that self care ritual and that wind down routine as attractive as the couch.

At first I didn't think it was, but then over time, I just actually ended up enjoying the bedtime ritual more than I did the couch ritual, which was really interesting and surprising.

So that's what I did, and it was hard.

The first couple of weeks.

I felt resentful that I didn't get that TV time.

Tim was downstairs watching TV for the first few weeks, but then he's kind of ended up joining me up in the bedroom.

Surprise, surprise.

I found it hard for the first couple of weeks, but very interestingly, and very quickly it became easy, and it actually became even better than the couch.

And then, of course, on a Thursday to Sunday in those early stages, I let myself go and have my dessert.

But here's what's really interesting, Very very quickly that brain Q reward loop and that brain reward pathway that the sugar had it dissipated, and suddenly I didn't crave that sugar like that physical feeling really quickly, like within a couple of weeks.

And then what happened was I found myself on a Thursday going.

Oh, you know what, I'm just going to go back upstairs.

I'm not going to go downstairs.

And I added a fourth day really easily.

And so here I am now two years later, and this habit has well and truly stuck.

And not only has it stuck, but it has it's now kind of filtered out into the rest of my twenty four hours.

So a really surprising benefit is that that afternoon craving for that sweet thing after lunch has completely disappeared, and same with after breakfast as well.

So even though I was feeling that craving the most at night, it's improved across my entire day, which has been so good, and so I don't feel like I've got that power over me, and that sugar doesn't have that power over me like it used to.

The other thing that feels great.

I mean my body shape changed, I lost some body fat because of it.

I just didn't feel as puffy.

I am eating a much better quality diet as a result of it now because it was displacing some of the healthier foods.

I've got so much more energy.

So I feel so much better for it, not just physically, but emotionally as well.

I feel like I'm being a much better example for my.

Kids too, which really really help.

So it's definitely been worth it and much easier than I thought it would be.

And I guess the reason why it gets easier is because once you embed a new habit, things that are habitual feel easy.

Things that are not habitual and that are different.

To what you usually do feel hard.

And so as you can see, I had to put a lot of scaffolding and a lot of really strong intention around that first four weeks when I was changing my behavior.

I had the weekly intentions I had to do.

I had the plan you know it all took a lot of effort and focus just for a few weeks.

But then once that behavior and that habit shifted across from intentional just into habitual, now it doesn't feel hard.

And you know, that's that idea when I was saying earlier.

You know, for those of you that can just sit on the couch with an apple and that's satisfying for you, you must look at us sugar addicts and be like.

Just don't eat the sugar.

And you know we look at you and want to punch you in the head because it's like, how can you just be satisfied off an apple?

But that's because that's what the habit, okay, And you don't have that reward pathway that's lit up as strongly as we do when we're having those hyperpalatable foods.

Now you can replace sugar.

It could be fat, or it could be salt.

For you, it might be cheese or chips or hot chips.

Or it could be alcohol.

I mean, there's so many external elements, substances or behaviors that can get that hold over us.

But I do just want to say that it is worth taking the effort to really focus on it.

And it does take effort, and it might be two to four weeks, but once it shifts into habit, it feels so much better.

So there you go.

That's what really worked for me, you know, setting the weekly intention, changing the routine and the environment, and attaching a big reward to it as well.

Okay, and for me it was, you know, the reward of the bath, and that all felt really nice.

But then what I would also do is if I stuck to my three days a week in that first month, I rewarded myself with something bigger, like a massage at the end of the week, or go to the nailbar, or take myself to my favorite cafe for a beautiful breakfast.

So pick a reward in that first four weeks to help.

You get through it.

So there you have it.

That's how I kicked my sugar addiction to the curb.

And don't get me wrong, I still have dessert on the weekends and I still love a bit of sugar, but it doesn't have a hold over me like it used to.

So I hope that was helpful in some way, shape or form.

And look, if you've got any feedback, of course, always reach out.

Send me a DM on Instagram.

Tell me about your addictions, whether it's sugar or something else, whether you were able to resolve it or maybe you're still struggling with it.

Now you can flip me an email.

But as always, thank you so much for listening and for prioritizing your health by listening to healthy podcasts like Healthy Her.

I will see you back in the booth very soon.

Why is it so hard to get real answers about your health?

If you've been told that everything looks fine, but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.

That's why I created Vitality three point sixty to help you better understand what's going on inside your body so that you can take the targeted action needed.

With a functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to uncover the root causes of your symptoms.

I've teamed up with doctor Asmina, an incredible integrative GP and together we will help you decode your body's signals and answer questions like why am I always exhausted?

What's really causing my stubborn weight?

Am I inflamed?

Insulin resistant?

Or maybe missing key nutrients?

Because when you understand your body better you can transform your health.

Visit V three six y dot Health or check out the show notes for more