Canadian food blogger and dietitian Abbey Sharp wants to focus not on what to restrict, but what to add for a healthier diet.Kayla Rocca/Supplied
Never has it been so confusing to know what to eat.
Last year, everyone seemed to be consuming their body weight in protein each day. Now food pundits say we should be “fibremaxxing,” packing as many fruits, vegetables and seeds as possible into every meal. Add all the noise from social-media influencers about what’s hot (cabbage) and what’s not (cauliflower was so 2025), and it’s no wonder people feel overwhelmed by the contradictory messaging about how to eat well.
“For something as primal as putting energy into our body, it’s starting to feel like we need a PhD just to pack a basic lunch,” says Canadian dietitian Abbey Sharp. Her new book, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method: The Simple Secret to Eating Well Without Ever Dieting Again, aims to help people eat the foods they love, without feeling any guilt or remorse, so they can go back to thinking about food as a simple pleasure, instead of a complicated one.
At the core of Sharp’s Hunger Crushing Combo (HCC) is a reframing of healthy eating. Instead of focusing on what to remove from the diet, the popular food blogger and YouTube personality (Abbey’s Kitchen) wants people to add three essential components – fibre, protein and healthy fats. The result, she argues, is greater satiety, steadier blood sugar and fewer cravings, without the deprivation that fuels late-night fridge raids, bingeing and negative self-talk.
Sharp spoke candidly to The Globe about her own experience with the eating disorder orthorexia, and explains how she recovered and why indulging in the odd guilty pleasure helped her become a joyful eater again.
How does the HCC method work?
It’s simple science but with a major mindset shift. Most diets focus on what we need to remove from our diet – sugar, gluten, fat or pleasure even. They keep us trapped in a steady state of scarcity and stress, which always triggers food obsessions, hyper-fixation and often leads to us throwing in the towel and quitting the diet. The HCC method works with our biology and psychology by focusing on what we can add, not take away. Protein, fibre and healthy fats help keep us fuller longer, reduce blood sugar spikes, quiet the food noise and cravings and help us reach our healthiest, happiest weight.
Can you give us an easy-to-understand example?
By adding nutritious food to our meals and snacks, we naturally edge out less nutritious ones. That doesn’t necessarily mean we will suddenly stop craving French fries, potato chips, or for me, sugary cereal, which I love. So, for example, rather than eating a bowl of Lucky Charms – knowing full well I’ll be hungry again in an hour – I will spoon out some plain Greek yogurt, add some berries, a handful of crushed almonds and sprinkle Lucky Charms on top. Then I have what I call the “naked carb” or the “satisfaction” piece (the cereal), and I also have the satiety piece (the fibre, protein and healthy fat). Research shows that, over time, this method naturally edges out the naked carbs, the need for repeat snacking, and eliminates 300 to 500 calories a day from our diet without us even trying.
Social media is rife with misinformation about food. What worries you most?
I have been fielding e-mails from girls, as young as 11, who ask if it’s okay to eat only 600 calories a day. They tell me they’re scared to eat any sugar because of something they’ve seen or read online. Unfortunately, we’re also now entering this era of hunger-suppressing drugs, like Ozempic and Wegovy, and I fear we are reverting back to the super-skinny, waif-like era all over again.
The diet culture is now shifting to a spruced up, sanitized version called the wellness culture. Instead of saying “I’m on a diet,” people say “I’m eating clean.” At the end of the day, it’s a restrictive mindset that makes people, especially young women, feel that their worth is measured by their food choices. My own eating disorder started in my late teens because I was told to remove one thing, sugar. That led to me removing many things, and I ended weighing under 100 pounds.
How did you develop orthorexia, an eating disorder characterized as an obsession with only consuming ‘healthy’ foods?
I had been suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). So I enlisted the support of a local homeopathic naturopath. Her recommendation was simple: Cut out all the sugar because, according to her, sugar was toxic, and it was poisoning my gut and my mental health. Not surprisingly, once I started focusing all my energy on sugar elimination, I began losing weight. I also started receiving loads of praise from people around me. So I took it further, eliminating carbs, gluten, anything I deemed “bad.” Eventually, the adults in my life woke up to the fact that this regimen was not serving me and was, quite possibly, going to lead to my demise.
How did you recover?
With some professional help. I learned to let go of the all-or-nothing thinking, and I allowed myself non-judgmentally to eat what my body needed or wanted. I called it my exposure therapy, and I set out to prove to myself that if I ate a chocolate chip cookie or a slice of white bread nothing catastrophic would happen. It didn’t. My hope with this book is, even if your personal journey with food hasn’t manifested into a full-blown eating disorder, worrying about food has likely stolen years of your life. I want to help people get rid of the guilt they feel around food so they can celebrate it, embrace it and appreciate it for the nourishment it is.
Are drugs like Ozempic being used too freely for weight loss, instead of their intended purpose to help people with Type 2 diabetes, obesity and other serious health conditions?
A drug like Ozempic is a lifelong drug. People need to understand that. If you come off it, studies show most people regain two-thirds of their weight back. There are other risks, too, associated with gall bladder disease, pancreatitis and loss of muscle (which is where much of the weight loss comes from). I worry hugely that these drugs are pathologizing hunger, and hunger is one of the most important biological signals humans have. These drugs feel dystopian to me. They snuff out biological diversity and make hunger something to fear and eradicate.
