Danielle Daem is known as the go to expert in helping women heal their addictive relationship with sugar and discover a deep sense of peace and freedom with food that lasts. As a Sugar Addiction Expert and Somatic Embodiment and Breathwork Facilitator, Coach Dani is passionate about helping women rid themselves of the shame, guilt and unhealthy patterns that keep them in unhealthy cycles with food. She has dedicated her life to helping women step into their power, find their authentic voice and heal the childhood wounds that keep us stuck in addictive cycles. She is the founder of the Break Free From Sugar Program among other programs and the hostess of the top rated Beyond Sugar Freedom Podcast.
Danielle Daem, Sugar Addiction Expert & Somatic Embodiment Coach
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
Hey, I'm Dani, Sugar Freedom Expert and Somatic Embodiment Coach. I live on beautiful Vancouver Island, Canada with my husband and two kitties, and I love everything outdoors. Anything from camping to backcountry hiking, gardening, and even yard work. If it involves being outside, count me in.
You may be surprised to hear that I didn't always live and eat healthy. My journey to health actually started only nine years ago after waking up to the dangers of processed food on my current and future health. At this time I began diving deep into my own healing path with sugar and myself. Fast forward to today and I’m so honoured and grateful to get to work with women to help them find their voice, heal their addictive patterns and learn to love themselves again.
What inspired you to become a Sugar Freedom Expert, Breathwork Facilitator, and Somatic Embodiment Coach, and how do you integrate these different modalities into your approach to helping women heal their relationship with sugar?
My path and journey to working in this way with my clients has unfolded through my own struggles with sugar and food over the last 9 years. Well, let’s be honest, my addiction to sugar and dysfunctional relationship with food started at a very young age. The more I dive deep into uncovering the root causes that kept me turning to food and hating myself for it, the more I’ve been able to liberate myself from the shackles of these unhealthy patterns.
Every year I am continually inspired to dive into deeper and deeper layers of what is really at the root of our addictive patterns with food and our guilt and shame that we carry as women around food. Which, let's face it, is really just a reflection of how we see ourselves.
After healing my addictive patterns with food and learning how to overcome the limiting beliefs and traumas that kept me in these unhealthy patterns, I became excited and passionate about supporting other women walking this path in a way that wasn’t as difficult, challenging, lonely, and exhausting as it was for me.
As I’ve added more tools to my skill set and begun bringing somatic practices like breathwork, guided journeys and deep emotional processing work, I’ve noticed the massive shift and transformation in my clients beyond what my old way of coaching would do. It’s allowed the women in my programs to finally break through old blocks and feel at peace with themselves, and with food, from the inside out.
These somatic based tools are really a backbone of understanding that our relationship with food and sugar is ultimately just a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. And by understanding this we can finally do the deep inner work that is needed to create lasting peace and freedom from within.
How do you address the root causes of sugar dependency in your coaching practice, particularly in terms of somatic healing and trauma-informed approaches?
My practice focuses very deeply on supporting women in reconnecting to their body. Because as I mentioned earlier, our relationship with food is simply a reflection of what is lying under the surface within our body, within the wisdom of our body. And more specifically within our nervous system and the old energetic beliefs that were hard wired in our childhood.
Whether you were told it wasn’t OK to express emotions or you were told to keep quiet and be a good girl, these old beliefs are still controlling you today. And more likely than not they are preventing you from feeling safe in your body and knowing how to handle life when it gets hard. So perhaps you turn to a vice (maybe sugar?) to “feel better” and to escape or numb out what pain lies below.
When we look at the actual addictive patterns that lie in all of us, we can begin to stem these back to trauma, back to our early childhood experiences, and back to the deep dysregulation that lies in all of our nervous systems. This is the root of addiction and the path out.
As the host of the "Beyond Sugar Freedom Podcast," what topics do you explore, and what do you hope listeners gain from tuning in to your show?
On the Beyond Sugar Freedom podcast, we dive into a whole holistic variety of topics from sugar addiction to mental health, to psychedelics, emotional health, hormones, mindset tricks and emotional eating.
Ultimately every topic that we bring to the show is rooted in the understanding that this deep healing is all about working with the inner wounds that are at the root of our unhealthy patterns with food. Listeners of the show often share that they come away with a new sense of awareness and empowerment as to how much they actually have power over when choosing to heal their relationship with food. It gives them hope and clear steps to move forward.
In your experience, what are some common misconceptions or challenges that women face when trying to reclaim control from sugar addiction?
There are so many misconceptions and more specifically mistakes that I see so many women making as they attempt to break free from the control of sugar cravings.
The first misconception that I want to clear up for everyone right now is that maple syrup and agave are in fact sugar. It still blows my mind that the general population believes that there is such a thing as “healthy” sugar. They have been tricked to think things like honey, coconut sugar and agave are not actually sugar.
Many people believe this, but it's simply not true. When we look at the actual impact of simple sugars in our body, we can clearly see that even maple syrup, honey and any other “natural” sugar is in fact still sugar. It’s still made up of a combination of simple refined sugars glucose and fructose and when you ingest them you get a massive blood sugar spike. Don’t be fooled just because a sugar is natural doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect your body and blood sugar health!
The second biggest misconception I see is people believe that sugar addiction and cravings are just a physical and brain addiction problem. Yes, physical addiction is a very real part of our experience with these heavily processed foods, but they are not the root of addiction. They are an amplifier of an addictive pattern that already existed.
For every woman I’ve ever worked with, it’s clear that there's a deeper root behind our cravings for junk food. It is the actual emotional, energetic, and spiritual cravings that keep us using these substances to cope and escape when life gets hard.
This is why anyone who has ever tried to give up sugar for 30 or 90 days inevitably falls back into the old patterns/ways after a few months – even if they’re feeling amazing and on top of the world. Those “self-sabotaging” patterns are really just deep wounds we all carry that keep us reaching for something to make us feel better.
Getting off sugar is not about just willpowering yourself long enough to clean up your body and feel great physically. It’s much more a journey of self discovery and healing our past in a way we can finally step forward in a loving and empowered way.
Why is sugar addiction becoming a bigger problem than ever before?
There are so many reasons that sugar struggles are becoming a much bigger problem every single year. For starters, sugar is hiding in more foods than we can even imagine. Food manufacturers now have hundreds of different names and combinations of molecules that they hide in our foods, let alone all of the chemicals, processed seed oils that are also being added.
So the fact that we don't even know we're overdosing on sugar is a really, really big problem. The billion dollar food industry has tricked us with fancy marketing tactics to lean on their heavily processed and chemical laden foods thinking they are “healthy” or we “deserve” them.
Another piece here that is important to honor is that we now live in a world that is becoming more and more stressful, especially for women taking on more and more, never resting, never honoring their bodies. Continuing this cycle of nervous system dysregulation is keeping our bodies chronically stressed and exhausted.
We’re in these cycles that keep us hidden from our true selves and miserable. So no wonder we want to binge and cope with sugar!
And another big piece to notice is that we are now living in a world where we have less support and community than we ever had before. This is a really big component when we understand the root cause and the emotional needs we have of feeling supported, belonging and feeling like we have people we can lean on and talk to when life gets hard.
We just don’t have that anymore. We have this false sense of support and a false sense of community that isn't real. This void is something that we are filling now more than ever with sugar and with food or any other addictive substance. Connection and true community are meant to support us emotionally and physically when life gets hard.
Instead we’re now in a world where we’re all lonely and miserable on our own when we go through difficult life ups and downs. So we turn to junk in an attempt to get comfort and support.
What’s the best advice you’d give to someone just getting started on their sugar journey?
The first thing is the reminder that you are not broken. There are so many women out there walking around believing that it’s their fault they can’t seem to get off sugar or kick the processed food addiction.
There’s nothing wrong with you. You are not a failure.
The truth is we’re all up against a billion dollar industry that strategically wants you to be addicted to sugar. So there is a lot at play here that is really fighting against you. The fact that big companies have studied the exact combinations of molecules to hit your dopamine centers at the right amount and overwhelm your taste buds… should be illegal!
Now even understanding it’s not your fault that you’ve been overconsuming sugar since childhood, it IS your responsibility to decide to do something about it. To learn how to make better choices and to arm yourself with the right information.
A great place to start on your sugar freedom journey is by beginning to be aware of where sugar is hiding in your life. Awareness is always step number one. Where is sugar hiding in your house? Where is it sneaking into your diet where you don't even know? You’ll be surprised once you start label reading and learning what products actually have sneaky sugar in them.
Next up, start bringing awareness to how you feel before you eat anything.
This is a powerful trick to help you connect the dots between your emotional and mental cravings as opposed to actual hunger cues. This easy practice also helps bring deep awareness to your unique sugar triggers so you can start to find new tools to get what you’re really craving.
Can you share any resources or tools that were particularly helpful to you during your journey to overcoming sugar addiction?
Over the last nine years, I have been on a deep dive into my own inner healing, personal growth and nutrition. If I were to pull out the most powerful tools for me I’d have to say that the best investments have always been the ones I made in coaching, somatic therapy and trainings.
The other modalities that have been massively beneficial in helping me heal my trauma and work with my nervous system are psychedelic therapy and conscious connected breathwork. These practices are something I’m deeply passionate about and have seen first hand the lasting life changing effects of these powerful modalities.
Something that has also been really important in my journey is surrounding myself with healthy friends and people who support me in my health and in my healing. Being around people that lift me up and help make me a better version of myself every day has been vital to my ongoing success. I didn’t always have this in my life and actually had to shift social circles when I started becoming a more authentic and healthy version of myself. It’s been such a rewarding adventure!
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
There are so many things I would love to change about our food industry in general, but thinking specifically of the sugar addiction support industry and the coaching that is out there, I would really love it if everybody could understand this root cause approach and stop focusing just on the food part of the journey. I wish people would stop only looking at what to eat and begin actually understanding that our relationship with food is a mirror of our relationship with ourselves. That we must start at ground zero in the inner work and healing asking WHY we eat what we eat first.
Looking ahead, what are your goals and aspirations for the future of your coaching practice and podcast, and how do you plan to continue making an impact in the lives of women seeking to break free from sugar dependency?
I have so many exciting plans for the future. Over the next few I’ll be buying and building up my own homestead where I’ll host retreats, bring women together, raise children and continue connecting with the land and where my food comes from.
I look forward to continuing to find ways to bring women together in community to reconnect to each other and themselves in deep and meaningful ways.
I will be continuing to expand my online programs and offerings so I can reach even more women who need this deep support through live talks, in person events, and even more episodes on the podcast. I can’t wait to see what the next few days has in store for me and the women I support!
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