Defeat Your Cravings

10/12/2026

INTERVIEW: From Sugar Addiction to Food Freedom - An Interview with Paige Alexander from RealFoodRecovery4u.com. Click below to listen now!

https://www.defeatyourcravings.com/BlogMePlease/blog/2026/10/12/real-food-recovery-with-paige-alexander/

Interview Summary

• Can you overcome a lifetime of sugar addiction, even after decades of binge eating? And can you maintain your recovery through overwhelming stress, personal tragedy, and grief?

• In this inspiring conversation, Dr. Glenn Livingston interviews Paige Alexander, founder of Real Food Recovery, about her journey from more than 50 years of struggling with sugar cravings and uncontrollable binges to discovering a sustainable, satisfying relationship with food.

• Paige shares how she eventually escaped the cycle of dieting, bingeing, and compensatory exercise by embracing whole foods, building powerful daily routines, and developing practical tools for managing cravings. She also reveals how these strategies helped sustain her recovery through her husband's devastating illness, double amputation, and eventual passing.

• Together, Glenn and Paige explore the psychology of food addiction, the importance of creating reliable recovery systems, and why learning to face cravings rather than fear them can be transformative.

• The central message: It's never too late to recover, and you don't have to wait until life gets easier to begin.

Key Takeaways

• It's never too late to change. After struggling with sugar addiction for more than five decades, Paige discovered that even deeply ingrained eating patterns can change. Understanding her problem gave her the motivation to pursue lasting recovery.

• Sometimes none is easier than some. Paige initially replaced sugar with plant-based sweeteners, which reduced her binges but kept her cravings alive. Eventually, eliminating these substitutes and emphasizing whole, minimally processed foods helped her dramatically reduce her desire for sweets.

• Recovery is not another diet. Paige emphasizes that focusing exclusively on weight loss misses the underlying problem. Sustainable recovery means changing your relationship with food rather than simply finding another way to restrict calories.

• Your taste preferences can change. Foods that once seemed insufficiently sweet can become genuinely satisfying. Paige now enjoys naturally sweet foods like berries, bananas, and apples without feeling deprived of her former favorites.

• Don't let hunger undermine recovery. Glenn and Paige discuss why restrictive eating schedules and intermittent fasting can be counterproductive for some binge eaters. Consistent, adequate nourishment can make cravings easier to manage.

• When life gets harder, double down on your recovery systems. During her husband's prolonged hospitalization and rehabilitation, Paige protected her recovery by preparing and bringing her own food. She identified four cornerstones of recovery: food, sleep, movement, and spirituality.

• Systems matter more than willpower alone. Successful recovery requires routines, preparation, supportive environments, and strategies for predictable obstacles. As Glenn explains, binge eating isn't one habit but a collection of interconnected habits that must be unraveled.

• Replace artificial highs with sustainable pleasures. Boredom, restlessness, and the desire for stimulation can contribute to cravings. Paige recommends movement, nature, music, reading, creativity, journaling, relationships, and service to others as alternative sources of satisfaction.

• Sometimes the best way through a craving is to face it directly. Paige describes an unusual technique for intense cravings: opening her arms, welcoming the uncomfortable sensations, and allowing herself to experience them without acting on them. She reports that the intensity gradually dissipates when she stops fighting the feeling.

• Keep building your recovery toolbox. Different situations require different strategies. Paige recommends experimenting with techniques such as self-soothing, planning ahead, food preparation, and handwritten schedules to discover which tools work best for you.

• Celebrate progress instead of obsessing over mistakes. Glenn encourages developing a positive cycle of pride by recognizing every meaningful improvement. Even a small victory can strengthen motivation and build momentum.

• Never, ever give up. Paige's most important recovery rule is perseverance. Glenn summarizes the same principle beautifully: "The name of the game is staying in the game until you win the game."

Paige Alexander on FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091698670987

Real Food Recovery

INTERVIEW: From Sugar Addiction to Food Freedom - An Interview with Paige Alexander from RealFoodRecovery4u.com. Click below to listen now!

https://www.defeatyourcravings.com/BlogMePlease/blog/2026/10/12/real-food-recovery-with-paige-alexander/

09/15/2026

INTERVIEW: Breaking Up with Binge Eating with Georgie Fear! (A critical conversation between two long-time dedicated binge eating help experts)
https://www.defeatyourcravings.com/BlogMePlease/blog/2026/09/15/breaking-up-with-binge-eating/

"Reward" Squeals can be reversed by redefining the reward. Instead of "I deserve cake because today was difficult," both Georgie and Glenn redirect attention to what the person actually deserves: health, energy, sleep, confidence, freedom, and progress toward the life they value. Glenn's additional reframing is that a binge may feel like a reward briefly but function more like a punishment afterward.

"Comfort food" is partly a labeling problem. Georgie suggests deliberately redefining comfort as food that genuinely nourishes and pleases you. Glenn adds that describing hyperpalatable eating as "comfort" can obscure the intense stimulation being sought and inadvertently encourage continuation.

Choice blindness is the belief "I had no choice." Georgie's central answer is YAHOO—"You Always Have Other Options." Glenn's complementary insight is to manufacture those choices upstream: think through tomorrow's meals, carry appropriate food, and avoid arriving in vulnerable situations extremely hungry.

Difficulty is not impossibility. Georgie's concept of "difficulty aversion" identifies a major cognitive error: "This is hard" gets unconsciously translated into "I can't do this" or "I shouldn't have to do this." Glenn's contribution is that some discomfort is normal during behavior change, while also noting that people sometimes create unnecessarily difficult plans by making them excessively restrictive.

The goal is not maximum discipline; it is a sustainable standard. When a plan really is too difficult, the answer is not "screw it." The answer is to reduce the bar to something realistic enough to maintain even on a low-motivation day. That distinction is one of the strongest practical ideas in the conversation.

Past failure is not evidence of permanent incapacity. The food monster interprets "I failed before" as "I will always fail." You contrast this with virtually every other type of learning: walking, language, mathematics, dating, and habit acquisition all depend on repeated attempts and adjustment. Georgie connects this directly to Carol Dweck's growth mindset.

The questions you ask after a mistake shape your identity. "What can I learn, and how can I do better next time?" directs attention toward evidence of growth. "What's wrong with me?" directs the mind toward evidence of incapacity. This may be one of the cleanest bridges in the interview between cognitive technique and identity formation.

Avoid turning a behavior into an identity. Thoughts like "I have sometimes binged" or "I sometimes experience strong cravings" leaves room for change, whereas "I am a binge eater" can make the behavior feel fixed, essential, and self-defining. Georgie similarly prefers describing someone as a person who has struggled with binge eating rather than making it their identity.

Comparison with other people is usually irrelevant. The useful question isn't whether someone else eats more, weighs more, or meets a diagnostic threshold. It is: "Am I sometimes eating beyond my own best judgment, and is that serving me?" That puts agency and personal standards back at the center.

Guilt can be converted into responsibility. Glenn's "hot stove" metaphor frames psychological discomfort as information: identify what went wrong, correct the conditions that produced it, and then release the guilt instead of using it for self-attack.

Georgie adds an especially useful distinction: "Is this even my guilt?" Before obeying guilt, ask whether you violated your own values or merely an introjected value inherited from parents, culture, or other people. Georgie's speeding-ticket metaphor is memorable: if the camera photographed somebody else's car, don't pay the ticket. If it really is yours, make the correction.

Trying to satisfy everyone's value system creates exhaustion. You cannot simultaneously prioritize every cultural "should." Georgie connects chronic exhaustion with binge vulnerability: knowing your own values allows you to let lesser priorities go without unnecessary guilt.

Many people who struggle with binge eating may need less self-attack, not more. Glenn and Georgie both describe clients as often caring, conscientious, generous people who turn aggression inward, accumulate too many "shoulds," and become harshly self-critical. Recovery can therefore involve strengthening behavioral responsibility while simultaneously softening self-condemnation.

Outside perspective matters. Glenn's story of the woman devastated over being six pounds above her ideal weight illustrates how distorted subjective suffering can become. Georgie points out that coaches, communities, and supportive others can supply perspective that is difficult to generate from inside one's own head.

Weight loss and binge recovery don't have to be opposing goals. The shared position near the end is that people may legitimately pursue weight loss, but making the scale the overriding objective can provoke restrictive "fast/feast" cycles. Your proposed hierarchy is: stop binging first, build an appropriate food plan, and allow weight change to occur within that healthier process.

The biggest unifying insight: The conversation keeps returning to agency without self-condemnation.

Glenn and Georgie both reject two extremes: "I'm powerless, so nothing can change" and "I made a mistake, therefore something is fundamentally wrong with me." The middle position is much stronger: I have choices; difficult things can be learned; mistakes contain information; I can take responsibility without turning the mistake into my identity. That theme is especially clear in the discussion of choice, growth mindset, identity, and guilt.

Georgie's "don't pay somebody else's speeding ticket" metaphor and Glenn's "turn guilt into responsibility" formulation are probably the two most distinctive, reusable ideas in the entire interview.

https://www.defeatyourcravings.com/BlogMePlease/blog/2026/09/15/breaking-up-with-binge-eating/

NOTE: The final enrollment for the Defeat Your Cravings Pro coaching program ends this month. For details: http://www.DefeatYourCravingsCoaching.com

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https://www.defeatyourcravings.com/BlogMePlease/blog/2026/09/01/long-term-practices-for-success/

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