.png)
The Two-Week Experiment That Changed Everything
Netta Gorman used to call herself the world's number one sweet tooth. Chocolate was her best friend, her comfort, her reward: every night she'd declare the kitchen closed, and five minutes later find herself back in the pantry unwrapping something she'd promised herself she wouldn't touch. By her mid-forties, her jeans were tight, her stomach was bloated, she was constipated and sluggish, and by 3pm she needed a sweet snack just to function. She thought this was normal. She thought she just needed more willpower.
Sound familiar? It's basically my own story, word for word, and Netta, host of the Life After Sugar podcast and author of Break Free From Sugar Cravings, told me she hears the same story from nearly everyone she works with. We're not alone. There are millions of us who thought we were the only ones sneaking back to the pantry.
Her turning point wasn't a dramatic rock bottom. It was reluctantly agreeing to a two-week experiment cutting sugar and processed food, not forever, just fourteen days. She was scared, and she resisted, because she genuinely loved her sweets. But by the end of those two weeks, her energy had come back, the bloating eased, the cravings softened, her pants fit looser, and, this is the part that stuck with her most, she wasn't fighting herself anymore. That two-week experiment was almost eleven years ago. She never went back.
A few things from our conversation I want to pass along directly:
Why we're so afraid of discomfort in the first place. Netta's theory is simple: in the comfortable Western world, we rarely have to sit with genuine discomfort. Cold? There's heat. Hungry? Food is everywhere and immediate. So when a craving hits and we feel that pull, we have almost no practice tolerating it, we've always had a way to make it go away instantly. Sugar is one of the fastest, most available tools we've got for that. Learning to sit with a few seconds of discomfort, she says, is a skill like any other. You're not bad at it. You just haven't practiced.
Cravings are "a first-world problem," and that's not a judgment, it's a reframe. Netta pointed out that people experiencing real hunger don't have the luxury of a sugar craving. That's not meant to shame anyone; it's meant to put the craving in its proper size. It feels like an emergency, but it isn't one. It's a very loud, very convincing false alarm.
The detox symptoms are real, but they're temporary, and knowing that helps. When Netta cut sugar, she went through what she describes as a mini depressive state, because sugar spikes dopamine, and without that spike, you're left with whatever you were actually feeling underneath. Headaches, peeing more often, mood dips: not everyone gets all of it, but most people get some of it. The discomfort is real. It's also short.
"Abstainer" versus "moderator," and why it's not a moral question. Netta borrowed this distinction, and it's one I use constantly now. Some people can have one cookie and stop. Others, Netta, me, maybe you, genuinely cannot moderate, and it's not kind to ask us to. Neither camp is better. The only failure is not knowing, or not respecting, which one you are.
Sugar hides in places that have nothing to do with dessert. Netta told a story about grabbing a bag of sea-salt roasted peanuts at the grocery store, nothing fancy, nothing marketed as a treat, and finding herself lit up like a Christmas tree after the second handful. She checked the label. Sugar was the second ingredient. She hadn't even thought to check, because it was just peanuts and salt, or so she assumed. It's a good reminder that "not sweet" doesn't mean "no added sugar."
Once sugar and flour left her plate, hunger itself changed. This surprised her most. She wasn't hungry every two to three hours the way diet culture had trained her to expect. Real food, protein, healthy fats, kept her full longer, and the constant food noise of "what am I going to eat next, how much can I get away with" simply went quiet. She now eats when she's actually hungry, which turned out to be a genuinely new concept for her.
Recovery is a zigzag, not a straight line, and that's not a personal failure. Netta mentioned something called the 33-33-33 principle, applied loosely across addiction recovery broadly: roughly a third of people quit and never look back, a third cycle on and off for a long time before eventually landing it, and a third struggle the whole way through. Most of us are in that middle third, and that's not abnormal, it's the norm. Her only rule for the people she works with: please don't give up.
If you're standing at the start of this, staring down "forever" and feeling overwhelmed by it, don't. Netta's advice, and mine: don't commit to forever. Commit to two weeks. See what your body tells you. You can always decide again after that.
You are not alone. Healing is possible. Your story matters.
You’re not broken, and you’re never alone. If you want ongoing encouragement, practical resources, or a supportive community of women walking this path, join my email list or grab our book, Real Food Recovery: If Food Isn’t the Answer, What’s the Question? And catch our weekly podcast here!
You are strong. You can do this. And we’ll walk it together.
Comments