The Why, When, & How to Go Sugar-Free: Breaking Free from Addictions, Brain Fog, & Physical Illness with Mike Collins

The Why, When, & How to Go Sugar-Free: Breaking Free from Addictions, Brain Fog, & Physical Illness with Mike Collins

David Pasqualone: [00:00:00] Hello, friend. Welcome to this week’s episode, the Remarkable People Podcast with our friend Mike, the sugar free Man Collins. Today is an episode that hits home in a good way. It’s something I’ve literally thought about every day. For the past almost 10 years. It’s something that I’ve thought about most of my life and it’s super important.

We talk about the why, the when, the how of breaking free from sugar, the addictiveness it has. The pain it causes our bodies, the deterioration of our brain, and how more and more research is coming out every day to show just how bad high fructose corn syrup is. The sugars they pump in our food and so many more toxins.

It’s going to give you not only the facts. But it’s going to help kind of connect [00:01:00] your life and what maybe the motivation is of how and why you got started. And I got started. I’m not trying to be a hypocrite, right? I’m in this boat with you. But the beautiful part is Mike shows us how to not only acknowledge the bad cycle that we’re in, whether it’s sugar, caffeine, nicotine, drugs, alcohol, whatever, the addictive behavior.

He also gives us a framework. For moving forward. And then if you want to reach out to him how you can continue the conversation to clean your system and purge your mind and body, and to start that healing that God puts in all of us. We can all regenerate inside and out, and it’s a blessing, but we need to take the steps on earth on our part.

So at this time, check out this Remarkable episode with our friend Mark Collins. Now. 

Welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast!: The Remarkable People Podcast, check it out,[00:02:00] 

the Remarkable People Podcast. Listen, do Repeat for Life,

the Remarkable People Podcast.

David Pasqualone: Hey Mike, how are you today? 

Mike Collins: I’m well. I’m well, David. Thanks for having me, man. 

David Pasqualone: It is an honor. I just spent about 60 seconds explaining to our listeners all over the world, a little bit about you, but straight from the source.

If they are a first time listener or if they’ve been with us for seven years of the show, what do you guarantee that they’re going to be able to learn from your story and apply to their lives to be even more successful and a better human? 

Mike Collins: Yeah, no, again, thanks for [00:03:00] having me. So the study of my life has essentially been.

The evolutionary wrong turn that man took, uh, in discovering substances of abuse. And the one that I focus on now mostly is sugar, where people are literally don’t realize what they’re doing to themselves. And that science has caught up to this. You know, you can give a baby sugar kind of ridiculousness.

Um, and at the end of the day, the science is very clear now that this is a neurotoxin, this is a toxin, and we all know about the body, the, the, um, the diabetes, the weight gain, the, uh, you know, and possibly Alzheimer’s. They’re calling type diabe or Alzheimer’s type three diabetes. So I’m going to try and show the folks that [00:04:00] A, you can get off it, and B, you don’t really need to use sugar.

In your life. You’re sweet enough. How’s that? 

David Pasqualone: No, I think that is incredibly important. And people who talk about this, you know, the Bible says, uh, false balance is domination to the Lord, but adjust weight is his delight. And a lot of people who jump on the no sugar, no preservative, they actually have a lot of truth in are Right.

But they go so far with it that people don’t want to hear ’em. Right. And you have other people who eat everything under the sun and they’re going to die soon. But a balance is where it needs to be. And I personally, I don’t know if I told you this in our pre-call, but I had a tumor in my head. I was sick my entire childhood and teenage years.

They took it out, it grew back, they took it out, it grew back. I had radiation and what stopped it from growing and why I’m still here today other than God’s grace 

Hmm, is he 

showed me I had to cut out all dairy and sugar. Wow. [00:05:00] At least for that period of my life. Okay. And were shrunk and shrunk and shrunk and never had an issue with it.

So I know firsthand how evil sugar can be. So ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to come back with Mike. You’re going to hear his story, how he became so passionate about it, how it affects you in your everyday life, and how you can work around it and still have a full life. And honestly, even better, right after this. 

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David Pasqualone: Alright ladies and gentlemen, welcome back Mike. I can’t wait to hear your story. Sugar. I think the only thing worse than eating all the sugar they jam in our foods is eating the stuff they say is safe.

The chemical version of sugar. Right, right. That that’s even more carcinogen and, and toxic. But let’s start off. Where did your life begin? How did this become so passionate to you? 

Mike Collins: Yeah, no thanks. So look, I, this probably started a generation ago, uh, maybe two. Um, [00:07:00] my grandmother died when my mother was only eight years old.

And it was a terrible thing. I mean, she was the youngest child. Uh, her mother was a little older anyway, but not that old. She died at 48. And, uh, sadly my grandfather and my mother, the last child, had to move in with his sister, my great aunt. And here’s the problem. They owned the country store across the way, and, uh, my grandfather made a deal with his cousin Jim, that anytime that little 8-year-old girl walked into that store.

She could have any candy she wanted and just put it on his tab. And uh, and that was a beautiful thing to do for an 8-year-old child that just lost her mom. They thought. And everyone thinks that today even. But the, the, the real problem is that that set up a, a, a thought process in my mother’s mind, that sugar is love.

And I believe my mother [00:08:00] died. Uh, people say she died of Alzheimer’s, the doctors say, but I believe she died of sugar addiction. I was there. Um, so in our entire life, my entire childhood was all about how much sugar we could eat. My mother was our main sugar supplier ’cause she just loved everything. Sugar.

We could put as much sugar on the, the, uh. Uh, corn Flakes or Cheerios as we wanted. We had complete, imagine this today, complete and utter access of any kind to that sugar bowl. Sometimes we were scraping up half an inch of sugar with the milk at the end, okay? And we had candy and cakes and we made cookies every Saturday.

And, you know, uh, every kind of like ice cream that you can think of, Kool-Aid with three ti we wished to make our own Kool-Aid and no one bothered us. Uh, three times the rest me [00:09:00] three cups of sugar with the Kool-Aid recipe, right? I mean, it was just a, and a couple things that I really wanna do. One of the things that I work on is, uh, transformational change.

A lot of people know some of the stuff that I’m going to talk about, the dangers of sugar, the diabetes, the weight gain. Uh, the heart disease, the fatty liver, it, it goes on and on. Rheumatoid art, there’s so many, we’ve had so many remissions of fatty liver, so many weight, uh, a hundred pound weight losses from people who just quit sugar.

So I wanna kind of discuss this idea that I didn’t know that sugar was changing the way that I felt. I didn’t realize that it was like the emotional eating folks say, numbing me out, the comfort food that is sugar and. Flour and bread and cakes, and I didn’t realize [00:10:00] that that comfort food was actually working on my dopamine receptors, working on my brain to groove a neural pathway, like the time that you touched a stove when you were four years old, and that wiring is still there.

20, 30, 40, 50 years later, you don’t touch a stove. Well, the same thing happened when you started ingesting sugar as a child, right? I wanted to get that part in because it’s very important part of the story. Anyway, fast forward to about 13 or 14, and I run into beer now. I knew that beer changed my state. I knew it changed how I felt about.

Everything. We used to call it liquid courage, right? I would, we would drink behind the high school and I could talk to the, the girls. I was a little bit shy. Anyway, fast forward and I am happy to discuss any of this part of the story. [00:11:00] Um, but maybe people aren’t listening for that. But I got sober at 28 years old.

Okay? So I went to college and I ran the popular nightclub in college and I ran the popular nightclubs when I got out. Um, and it was just the one huge party for a decade, right? And I got sober at 28 years old, and I started to realize that my friends who were getting sober with me, those folks were. You know, gaining weight really fast.

You’re the freshman 15 when you go off to college, these guys are gaining, you know, guys and girls are, are gaining like 50 pounds in a year after they quit their drug of choice. Right. And, you know, recovery rooms, I’m sure you’ve seen ’em, celebrate recovery. All of the, you know, all of the groups, they have the cookies and the cakes and everything in the back and, uh.

We have a lot of recovering folks that are, you [00:12:00] know, they could get off their drug of choice, but they couldn’t seem to get off of the, uh, the sugar. So anyway, that’s, uh, you know, that’s kind of the personal part of the story, but I, it, it, well, I guess the personal part continues a little bit, but I, I somehow talk my wife into, uh, raising kids sugar free, right?

As I was pretty into it. So we did that and they didn’t have sugar in the womb until they were six years old. And that experiment worked. Now, scientifically, there’s a lot of nonprofits, first a thousand days and a few others that really look at that first thousand days as, you know, the brain development.

Right? And so the kids, um, you know, they said, dad, you should write a book. Um, and I was working, I had a real life, regular life, you know, career and everything. So I did write a book in 2018 and. They, you know, it was pr, it did well on Amazon’s and still there. But [00:13:00] the, uh, you know, I was kind of semi-retired at that time and I started coaching people.

So I started coaching and, uh, I, I knew one thing was important that in order for people to actually make this transformational change to actually do what they wanna do, I mean, every diet book on the planet says quit the white stuff, right? But the problem was, is that most people can’t, the numbers are very, they’re staggering 95% of people that lose any amount of weight gain at all back in the first year, which is very easy to explain in the paradigm that we work within, which is a recovery program, a change process.

And so anyway, I’m doing about two meetings a week with my private clients and the people that have bought my book and everything. And then the pandemic hits. The pandemic, all hell broke loose. And we [00:14:00] went from two meetings a week to two or three meetings a day in an 18 month period. And, and you saw the newscast.

There’s literally, um, pictures of shelves with nothing on them, no sugar, no candy, no cookies, no alcohol, no ice cream. Everything’s gone until they got the, you know, the supply chain stuff fixed. Anyway, um, so that’s where we are. We’ve been approved now by the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches.

Uh, we’ve got 26 coaches manning, like I said, three or four meetings a day now, um, during the pandemic, this somebody called me, the Sugar Free Man, and that stuck. So anyway, that’s the podcast version. That’s how I got here, how I ended up as the sugar free man. And, and, uh, it Pro usually brings up more questions than it answers David.

But, uh, um, that’s the short 

David Pasqualone: version. No, let’s go back. So we got the, the [00:15:00] overview. Now you go back, your family is feeding you a lot of sugar and sadly, there’s people who have it. That might be the national average. Now there’s people who have it worse. There’s people who have cleaner lives. But sugar is a just built in part of our society, at least in America, most of the world.

Right. 

So now you’re growing up and then you talk about beer and you talk about, would you say you were an alcoholic till 28? Well, there’s no, I was definitely 

Mike Collins: an alcoholic. 

David Pasqualone: There’s 

Mike Collins: no 

David Pasqualone: doubt. I’m alcoholic. So how did you get into the alcoholism, and more importantly, what were the steps you took to get out?

Mike Collins: So I grew up in a hard drinking, hard fighting, uh, factory town. And that was what people did. That’s what I, I thought men did anyway, to have fun. And so that starts like, uh, early, you know, mid-teens, 14, 15 years old. And that [00:16:00] continued for me through, like I said, till I was 28 years old. And, and I, I had fun with it, don’t, don’t get me wrong, but, uh, it didn’t have fun with me.

You know, I was wet in the bed and crashing cars and, you know, God forbid I would’ve hurt someone else, it was only me that I hurt. But, uh, you know, I just, I knew that I couldn’t drink alcohol and then I ran into drugs as well. So I quit drinking pretty early or. I, I drank like three or four times between the time I was 23 and 28.

But I was also into, you know, I smoked pot every day and cocaine. And I was literally running the largest nightclubs in the state of Florida, um, at that time. Um, by volume, by liquor, alcohol volume, the largest clubs in the country, uh, in the state for sure. And, uh, [00:17:00] so, you know, and the reason I got promoted so fast is because I didn’t drink, quote unquote, but meanwhile I’m selling co, you know, or doing cocaine in the office kinda thing.

So it was quite a wild ride. Um. Uh, you know, we’ve had the Super Bowl. We had Super Bowl people there. We had cheap trick in the, I mean, it was a big place. The, the last place that I worked was a big place and it was a lot of fun and I was the manager and, you know, basically I was just in the back using drugs.

Anyway, long story short is that I got sober. I started try and get sober in my late, mid, uh, twenties, but it wasn’t until I walked into a room of 12, a 12 step room in the Christian world. It’s really Celebrate Recovery. I’m sure your folks are familiar with that. It’s pretty much identical, uh, 12 step program.

I get a little bit of grief sometimes for not being anonymous, which [00:18:00] is theoretically an anonymous program, but I think that the programs has some deficits in the anonymity of it all. I think at this place it’s now a healthcare issue, a pretty severe healthcare issue in the United States. And back when, 60 plus years ago, when these programs were founded, being an honest was important, but not so much anymore.

It’s really a healthcare issue that’s really spiraled outta control. Um, and that really also gave me my understanding of, uh, things we ingest to change how we feel. That was a real, imp is a real important part of the, my message, my work with the sugar addicts, et cetera. So again, I can fill in anything there, but.

Um, I’m not shy about it anymore because I know that I’ve changed a bunch of folks in the alcohol [00:19:00] world just by talking about it. When I’m talking about sugar. I have such a huge group now, a support group that no exaggeration because of my honesty. Uh, with this, uh, I have a lot of people who were, are sober, quote unquote, from their drugs and alcohol, but they were a hundred pounds overweight.

They had type two diabetes, et cetera, et cetera, and they could not, these are very experienced, very mature, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts who could not put down the sugar. And that’s why I continue this work because when you’re on this side of the fence, you understand how difficult it is. To quit sugar, even though you’ve tried, if you’re, there’s about a, excuse me, about a third of the population who biochemically cannot ingest sugar without setting up cravings [00:20:00] for more sugar.

Even though they try, even mentally, they know they need to, they can’t. So it becomes literally the definition of addiction. And this is the message that I proffer in the world. This is the message that, um, most people don’t want to hear. ’cause nobody wants to be an addict. I get it. I understand, but you don’t.

You have to live life, not as what you wish it could be, but what it truly is. And if you struggle for many, many years and this resonates with you, um, you know, listen up as we progress through the rest of it, I guess. 

David Pasqualone: Yes, absolutely. And so we may have listeners now who have loved ones who are addicted to drugs and.

But we might have listeners who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Sure. And many of us, myself included, even though I have a history of, and I was free, I still ingest tons of lousy sugar. And it’s [00:21:00] unhealthy. So let’s go back in your life. ’cause this isn’t just a show about telling your story, it’s reverse engineering the steps you took to succeed.

Yeah. So hopefully our listeners can too. 

Yeah. 

You know, we can talk about what drove you to quit. ’cause most people, if they’re partying, having fun, they don’t stop till there’s an issue. Right? So if you wanna talk about what caused you to even try to quit alcohol, what caused you to try to quit drugs?

What caused you to to quit sugar. Right. The specific, like that something happened, I got drunk and drove and almost killed a kid. Whatever it is. But then the main thing I want to cover is, you know, this is what I did. It may not work for everybody, but here’s step one, step two, step three. This is how I change.

You mentioned one was go to the Celebrate recovery. Yeah. So what are the other things you did, Mike, to get well in the sense of getting free, we’ll start with alcohol and drugs. 

Mike Collins: So this is important. It’s a good, a good question. Um, and it’s important that people understand that. Um, abstinence is important.

[00:22:00] Okay. You’ve gotta, let me, let me back up and tell you the reason I quit or the reason, because the main thing was, you know, I would, I did well in school, you know, I’m a pretty smart guy and those boys that I mentioned that I razed sugar free or card carrying geniuses, literally. Uh, and so, you know, I, I did, well, I had the intellect, I had some success in different things, but I felt that I was going to die with my music in me.

In other words, I, I was not going to achieve my highest potential. Right? In the early days when I quit drinking, I was crash. I crashed a car, almost killed my friend. Um, and, you know, got arrested for drinking, driving, you know, I mean, there was some real consequences. We, I was wet in the bed like once a week, you know, it was like, ’cause I drank so much beer, I passed out and.

Couldn’t get to the bathroom kind of thing. So it was, it was really, there was a lot of [00:23:00] consequences that I just couldn’t live with. And when it got to the drugs, it was the same thing. It is like, um, but here’s the thing. The real work of both alcohol and drug recovery and sugar starts post abstinence.

Let me repeat that. The real work of both these recoveries starts post abstinence. That means after you get off of the substance, you have to re, you talk about reverse engineer, you have to understand why you would numb out to such a large degree. And I grew up in a pretty tough place. Or not, not, you know, in a tough home.

My father was a decorated marine, uh, like he was the, uh, president of the local prison guards union. Honestly, I think he had PTSD from the Korean War and, uh, was likely an alcoholic, was [00:24:00] an alcoholic himself, and he was pretty violent, both emotionally and physically. And so there was some trauma that I went through, some, some difficult times that I went through, um, you know, growing up, right?

And I covered it up with alcohol. I covered the hurt and the pain up with sugar and alcohol, right? And this is what people do. The problem is, and everybody’s heard about this, and it kind of pisses me off. I don’t know how, if I could swear on this thing, but it, I won’t. But it, it, it makes me like upset that there’s a group of people, the emotional eating crowd.

Who kind of gets half of the equation right? And they’re right that they’re covering up their old trauma. God forbid it was capital T, sexual trauma or uh, physical trauma. My physical abuse was real. Um, my mother’s deal that he made with my father was just don’t hit ’em in the head. You know? And that, [00:25:00] and she was afraid herself, let’s be honest.

Okay? So she, she didn’t have much sway there. So I grew up and numbing with sugar and alcohol till I was, you know, in my twenties. And this is the part, and you made, you don’t have to have grown up with physical abuse. You don’t have to have trauma that you’re overcoming. This transcends into everyday life.

This transcends into just. The boss is a pain. The, uh, the kids are a nightmare. The spouse is, you know, being a jerk. This train, you don’t understand consciously that you are helping yourself soothe emotionally by the substances. Okay? Now, in the alcohol world or the drug world, if it’s a Friday and you’ve had a rough week, you know in your heart [00:26:00] that you are having happy hour, you’re having a couple of beers.

’cause you just wanna block out the week. You wanna chill out, you wanna, and you understand what you’re doing. Sugar, however, doesn’t manifest This way. It doesn’t manifest like I gotta have a chocolate bar to forget about it, right? It manifests. Wouldn’t, wouldn’t some ice cream be nice? Wouldn’t a chocolate bar be nice?

Wouldn’t a soda be nice? Right? It manifests. Emotionally in a different way because it’s so ubiquitous. You can give it to a baby and 90% of parents will thank you. It’s just a cultural thing that has been outrun by the science. I’ve interviewed over 400 of the world’s leading experts on a summit that’s been going on for a decade, and it, it literally is a poison, it’s a neurotoxin.

It destroys your liver. We have an epidemic of five-year-olds with fatty liver, an epidemic of children [00:27:00] with type two diabetes, okay? And obviously, at least I’m a little older than you, but when I was younger, there were no overweight kids. Now it’s like 20 or 30%. Okay? And so we’re in the middle of a crisis that no one is willing to accept, right?

But on a personal level, if the folks are willing to accept the possibility that they have used any of these substances to soothe, to self-soothe, either consciously or unconsciously, and this message is resonating with ’em, then it’s time to move on and to get some help, right? And here’s the thing about help.

Here’s the thing about addiction recovery. You can’t do this alone? No. Very few, almost. And the people that do it alone, they have a name for it. It’s called the dry drunk. Okay? Very few people can do this alone. It’s just not, it’s the only thing that’s ever worked in substance use disorder [00:28:00] recovery meetings.

Uh, I love the phrase meetings are, uh, treatment is discovery and meetings are recovery. Even if you’re a cancer survivor, you know, we’re, we’re group true, we’re tribe animals. If you’re a cancer survivor and you join a support group, your chances are like triple, that you will survive long term as opposed to someone who tries to go it alone.

That comradery, that support system that you build, uh, whether it’s drugs and alcohol or sugar, is super, super important, right? And so, you know, there are little nuances. There are little tricks, but most people are hungover. By the diet industry that says eat less and exercise more. Right? That 95% of people that Jo, uh, gain their weight back, that lose any amount of weight, gain it all back, and no, and only fi less than 5% keep it off, is because of this [00:29:00] phenomena, right?

They get like three weeks in, four weeks in, five weeks in, they lost 10 pounds and they figure, ah, I, I deserve it. I’m at my sister’s wedding. I can have a little cake or whatever. It’s not true. You know what I mean? If you don’t substitute a holistic method of self-soothing, understand that that’s what you were doing, and then substitute walking, running, um, uh, yoga, get a hug, call a friend, get a massage.

There’s a, just Google self-care. There’s a, it comes up with lists of hundreds of things you can do. If you don’t get out of the substance use and abuse cycle of self-soothing, you’re bound and determined to repeat it, whether it’s alcohol or sugar. And in the Celebrate Recovery stuff or the, uh, 12 step stuff, the steps walk you through this, right.

Um, in a kind of [00:30:00] a, a decent way. It’s not great, but it’s a decent way. Anyway, I could go on forever. It’s a, it’s a, it’s different than people think is the message. 

David Pasqualone: So I totally agree. I’ve heard so many people say physicians, people who are in this field, and it makes sense, but it’s hard to believe because how we’re programmed, like you said, since children, it’s like McDonald’s and the Kool-Aid man, and eat what you want.

It tastes great. Taste is what matters Now. Nutrition is what matters. We should, you know, eat to live, not live to eat. Yeah. So when we are consuming all of this trash, it’s reprogramming our brains. It’s reprogramming our bodies. That’s right. And not in a good way. So how do you recommend the steps? Like, like really, Hey, if you’re struggling with this, try this.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Because for me, [00:31:00] when I gave up, I, I went overnight totally. I was going to die. So it was like I had nothing to lose. So I had fear and necessity as my motivational factors. So I, when I say I had no dairy, no sugar, I mean, I didn’t even have ketchup, I didn’t have bread, I had nothing for two and a half years now, natural sugars, I figured the way I look at it’s, if God made it, it’s fine, but you still have balance, right?

Yeah. I’m not going to eat 300 apples, but people get confused and they get lied to about the danger of a Snickers bar versus a danger of an apple. It’s like all sugar is bad. No, an apple sugar is natural. Right. And then same thing with fat. You had the chick during the eighties, you know, no fat, no fat. Our brain runs off of fat.

Yeah. But it’s good fat, not crap fat, right? Correct. So maybe talk about the difference of natural sugar versus regular sugar, or I meant regular versus the, the [00:32:00] chemical sugar that’s in all our foods. But then I really want try step one, step two, step three steps to help people have freedom. 

Mike Collins: Yeah. Great. So one of the things that happens when people come to me is exactly kinda your question there is like, they say, what do you eat?

You know, what, what can I eat if I don’t, if I can’t eat flour and sugar? ’cause flour turns to sugar in your stomach. Okay. And it keeps the craving, you’re going to hear me say this a lot and I, I, I apologize in advance, but it keeps the cravings alive. Okay? And the last thing you wanna do in this process is that, you know.

To have cravings. You wanna be free. Freedom is the goal, right? Freedom is the goal. To not think about sugar, not to have that little angel on one shoulder, devil on the other shoulder saying, it’s okay, it’s okay. No, go ahead and have it. No, you can’t. You know what I mean? Nobody [00:33:00] wants to have that continuous mental battle with it, right?

That’s the, that’s the worst way to live, right? Um, so you wanna be free and you don’t wanna keep the cravings alive by ingesting something. And there is a little bit of error in your, um, in your, in your logic, simply because of, man, okay. So. Uh, the apples that God created were these little crab apples, right?

And the little harry, or these tiny things, blueberries that you can barely eat because they’re almost, they’re kind of hard. And over 300 years, they have hybridized these products, uh, to be what? A sugar bomb. High in fructose. Okay. High in the sweet molecule fructose. And for your audience, the glu the table sugar molecule is half glucose, which we need, and [00:34:00] half fructose, which we do not need.

And that back th over 300 years ago, we only got. Fructose once or twice a year. A year Now, when those bushes were ripe, when those trees were ripe, and now the hybridization process has got the fructose so high in these things, especially the seedless stuff, seedless grapes, seedless water watermelons, et cetera, that they can’t, and seedless oranges, they can’t propagate in nature.

They have to be manmade and man cut. And so they, again, they’re these big, beautiful, colorful packages that have been a process of hybridization over decade, over, you know, hundreds of years to come Where we are today, and the science is very clear now on fructose being a, I call it a psychoactive drug.

Some of the MDs and stuff that study, it [00:35:00] stops short of that because, you know, there’re not a hundred percent, but there are is a lot of. Research that says when you ingest a lot of fructose, you have behavioral changes. I have another tick, or I tell people to write that down. You have behavioral changes, one of which is foraging.

You eat more. Your vli literally grow. These are the, the little fibers or whatever in your intestine that really bring the food into you, you know, into your body. They grow and make longer. They get longer, so you’re more hungry all the time. You also experience risky behavior taking, you take risks that you shouldn’t normally take, you wouldn’t normally take, and this has been proven with animals and believed extrapolated into humans, and so.

The offending molecule is fructose. That’s what people need to think about. When I tell people to quit sugar, I tell ’em to study [00:36:00] fructose. It’s also pronounced fructo fructose. You can pronounce it both ways, but fructose is really a problem. Um, the problem, and, and no one really knows like the COA leaf. If you were to, you know, chew on a COA leaf, it’s like a caffeine buzz a little bit.

And the, um, you know, the South African, south Americans who used to kinda chew on on it so they could go on long walks and long hunts and everything. But when you process sugar into half a fr a powdered fructose or a granulated fructose, no one knows the effect that that is has on the brain, which is substantial, believe me.

It’s, it’s substantial. Um, and. So anyway, I, you know, I, I, I tell you all that the science is very clear on this. It’s just not caught up with the general public. The public is not really understanding the nuances of what the studies are today. Right. And here’s [00:37:00] another important part that you brought up just before you, you know, you asked about the steps, and I will get into more of the steps, but one of the things that’s happening in the world today is called metabolic psychiatry.

And metabolic psychiatry is the ascension of people studying. How to change, like bipolar, depression, all these kind of things by diet, by eliminating the thing, the very things that you and I are talking about here today. And I want people to understand that this exists and it’s getting pretty substantial.

Um, very substantial. Okay. Now, the everyday steps that you would take to get off sugar is a number one. Get some support, you know, even if you have to start a small group at your church. Get some support so that you have three or four people that you trust, um, to be [00:38:00] so that you can talk with them. So you, because you’re going to be, let me put this very clearly and stress it, you’re going to be the odd person out, especially if you try to do abstinence of any sort.

If you try to do no sugar, zero sugar, which I would suggest no sugar, no flour, and in our program, no caffeine. Um, I have a story about an Olympic athlete that I can tell you if you want, but we found about six or seven years ago that caffeine keeps the cravings alive. There’s that phrase again. Well, now how does that happen?

Well, coming up, chocolate, tea, coffee, cocoa, um, all of these things were mixed together. The phrase is in metabolic psychiatry, wired together, fired together. So if a body gets black coffee, it thinks to itself, where’s the other part of the equation? Where’s the sugar? You know, quick [00:39:00] story about the Olympians.

So this person had placed in the Olympics, shot a bronze medal in the Olympics and swimming. And she is now, by now a chiropractor and had two or three kids. And, but we worked, I as our coaching group, a coaching assignment with her and I for 12 weeks. Now, this is a woman that can do anything with her body.

She was still swimming and very thin and, you know, not weight was not the issue. But she started to see that her kids were starting to use sugar. And so we kinda, I I star, I stopped at 12 weeks, stopped charging her. ’cause I wanted this to ha well, for, let me be honest, I wanted a, a, a testimonial from an Olympic athlete.

But, but the, you know, I kept going. And so what I found out was. The coaches had been giving her coffee at 10 years of age for performance in the pool, and no child is drinking that product without sugar. And so her body, her brain wiring [00:40:00] said, uh, caffeine, sugar, caffeine, sugar. And so when we let go of the caffeine, she let go of the sugar and she got, you know, got past it and she, you know, helped her kids get off it as well.

And so it’s these psycho, these legal I put down emphasize that these legal psychoactive drugs that have now scientifically been proven to hijack. Now look, this is not everybody, I’m going to be transparent here. Everybody has a friend who can’t drink. Like either they’ve already quit or you know, they probably should quit.

It’s just that a certain percentage of people biochemically and, and I used to be the chairman of the board of the Food Addiction Institute, a nonprofit who’s been working with folks like this in late stage food addiction, three, four or 500 pounds and still can’t get off the products for 20 years.

[00:41:00] Right. And they found over the years that about a third of people, biochemically can’t ingest these products. And about a third of people, because of the food system, because of what we have, um, you know, 90 or 84% I think it is, of things you see in the grocery store have sugar in them. They’ve kind of adopted this way of eating that’s like everyone else.

And they are having trouble. They’ve maybe gained a pound a year since high school and now they’re. You know, a little upside down, but if they just, you know, cut back, they’ll be fine. And then there’s a third of people that we, we all hate. No, just kidding. That they can take it or leave it. They can take it or leave it.

But it’s, I work with, if you will, I work with the third of people who’ve tried everything. You know, my clients are traditionally women between, I like to say 45 and 80, but it’s really 90 or [00:42:00] 50 and, uh, 80, uh, premenopausal or men, you know, 50-year-old women and above who have tried everything. They’ve, they’ve, they’ve tried diets, they’ve tried whatever, and they can’t seem to get off the sugar.

It’s their achilles heel. And so those are the kind of people that have been attracted to our work. Now, I do wanna get it down to childbearing age women, but it’s just been difficult ’cause they’re not, I guess, ready to hear the message. But step two in the process of getting off sugar is to, is your abstinence first, get the support and then you’re going to go through a detox.

You know, I’ve been doing this long enough to own sugar detox.com. You know what I mean? You gotta detox from the sugar and detox is real. David detox is real. You will have headaches, you will be emotional, you will, you will be weepy, you’ll be irritable. You’ll have possibly [00:43:00] breakouts, skin breakouts. Um, there’s just a, you know, it’s a weird time because most adults in the, in the developed world have never gone four or five days, let alone 10 days, and somewhere between days 10 and 20, the sweet spot is right.

About 15 people just start. They don’t understand what’s happening to them emotionally. Why is this? This is because they’ve taken away that self-soothing method that we talked about before. They took it away. You know, you’ve taken it away voluntarily, and now if you don’t quickly substitute some type of exercise or whatever, the reason the people gain all their weight back is because the brainwashing of the diet industry is eat less and exercise more.

Right. People were exercise, exercise, exercise, eat less, restrict, restrict, restrict. And then about day 15 or 20 they get injured and [00:44:00] or they just get bored and they don’t wanna work out anymore. And so they’ve taken away that soothing method, right? But there’s a lot of soothing methods. You can walk the dog, you can do whatever.

There’s a lot of ways. And if you don’t figure out those holistic ways to soothe yourself and use it during the, in ingrain it during the detox, then you end up in a place where you have muscled it, you have willpower it, and that will not work. It will not hold, and you will eventually fall back. Right?

And so number one, get support. Number two, uh, understand that your abstinence is the lead in to the emotional change process that you have to make the work, quote unquote. People are always asking me, and I always train my coaches. We are. Like I said, got approved by a national Board of Health and wellness coaches to provide their continuing education courses.

Right. And what we teach them is [00:45:00] do not let a client drag you into what do I eat? What do I, because that’s all people wanna hear about. How do I make pasta with this? How to blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, can I have this kind of flour? And that kind of, can I have this kind of sweetener? And we can talk about sweeteners if you want.

Can I have this kind of sweetener? Can I have that kind of this, that and the other thing, if you dwell, if I would were to dwell even on this messaging, dwell in that area, the folks wouldn’t get the right gist of the thing. They would keep their cravings alive by trying to find substitutes for this sweetener and that sweetener.

The work, the understanding that I’d like to have the folks leave with, and the step that is really all of the work besides getting support and detoxing, is that you have to realize that’s likely in the womb. But since you were a child, you’ve been using unconscious, not your fault, not your fault unconsciously, you have been using [00:46:00] sugar to, um, self-soothe for decades.

And when you take that crutch away, when you take that method away and don’t substitute it for another one, you will end up right back in the sugar, right back in the alcohol, right back in the soup. Uh, that’s the work. The work is the recovery of your emotional life via natural, holistic, healthy methods.

If that makes sense. Again, a short list. Obviously there’s a ton of nuance in all this. Example is the Olympic athlete with the caffeine. You know, there’s a ton of nuances and you know, that’s kinda what we teach. And I can’t, I don’t have time to go into a, uh, my 30 day challenge is, uh, uh, 20 minute videos for 30 straight days.

And we definitely don’t have whatever that is, that’s a lot. That’s, uh, 600 minutes of time. So there are nuances, but the [00:47:00] main message is the, uh, um, support detox and the emotional work after detox. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Yeah. So for someone who wanted to get ahold of you, continue the conversation, check out your website, look at resources to maybe get serious and start this journey, what’s the best way to reach you, Mike?

Sugar detox.com 

Mike Collins: or sugar addiction.com doesn’t matter, but sugar detox.com is where most of the stuff, and it’ll lead to. We’ve got a little quiz there, uh, that you can take for to see if maybe sugar’s a problem with you. We’ve got, we brought my Amazon book home there. So you give it away free. Uh, you don’t have to pay for, you can get a hard copy at Amazon, but you don’t have to pay for it.

I think it’s even free on Amazon now if you’re in the United States [00:48:00] and have Prime. Um, okay. Well, lemme ask 

David Pasqualone: you a couple questions if you don’t mind. Yeah. Help yourself Damage to the brain from sugar. I believe that God can heal anything and our bodies are made to restore, but there’s different timelines and different parts.

If you were 48 years old or you said the average customer you work with is over 50. But if you have a lifetime of fi like, you know, sugar abuse Yes. Can within a reasonable time period, what do you see in the healthy recovery of the brain being like, 

Mike Collins: I love this question. So it’s kind of my fascination right now because it’s so prevalent.

Really? Yeah. 

David Pasqualone: And you’re not, God, you don’t know for sure, but we’re asking for your opinion. 

Mike Collins: Well, there are some guys who do, I think, and you know, uh, one guy’s, Dr. Dale Breen, who has a book out now called, uh, survivor’s book. He’s got a bunch of ’em. But, um, [00:49:00] where 12 people tell their own story about descending into Alzheimer’s and then coming back, not all the way, some of them, but some of ’em came back.

But more importantly, there’s a guy who has done, I think 57,000 brain scans. And what happens is when you are on the standard American diet. Your brain. And, and, and David Perlmutter also says that the brain is shrinking and it is with sugar. But this other guy I, amen. He has like, uh, pictures of brain scans where there’s holes in the brain, like literally holes in the brain.

Like, uh, the brain is smaller, uh, than the average brain of that person’s age. And if they change exactly to your question over a year or two, they come back and do the same scan the holes have filled in. So yes, you can heal, I believe you can heal from this. Um, uh, and, and. You [00:50:00] really need to, to be honest with you, if you don’t wanna go the route of everybody’s been ex, been exposed to Alzheimer’s somewhere in their family or their friends, and this, you know, for you folks, you don’t wanna do that to your children.

Believe me, you don’t wanna do that. You don’t wanna have them have to take care of you when your brain is. And I, you know, in my heart, again, I don’t, you know, this, we do not have the diagnostic tools yet to 100% answer your question. But in doing this for so many years and working with so many people, one of this is an important note, uh, that goes directly to your question, is that.

I’ve had people lose a hundred pounds. I’ve had people put type two diabetes in remission, uh, cure fatty liver, cure fatty liver, like eliminate it. And, and, and, you know, rheumatoid arthritis is a paper tiger. It’s literally everybody stops hurting. But when [00:51:00] I do surveys of those success stories, you know what the number one thing is?

It’s not the a hundred pound weight loss. It’s not the type two remission. It is that their brain came back online, that they could focus better, they could remember better. They sleep better. I mean, it’s been, it, it, I wasn’t expecting it. I mean, I knew about my mother, but I wasn’t expecting this to be the primary benefit that people that do what I described here today, do the actual work of recovery, of change, of transformational change.

And stick to it and stick to a support group because you’re still going to be until you’re really confident, which is a year or two into the thing, you’re going to need the support of people that are thinking the way you are, that this is something they wanna do or need to do. Um, but it is truly brain. This is my favorite topic right now [00:52:00] because this only evolved in the last three or four years of interviewing these experts.

Um, is this brain science of sugar abuse and sugar addictions. So, great question. 

David Pasqualone: So now when you are working with people Yeah. And you’re saying, Hey, eliminate the sugars and there’s sugar in almost everything now, right? Things there shouldn’t be sugar. There’s sugar in sugar, right? I mean, it’s ridiculous how much Yeah.

Filth we have in our food supply. And I’m as guilty as anybody, so. I feel actually like I’m more guilty ’cause I know the truth. When you are working with people, how fast do you take them from, like, do you slowly transition or do you just rip off the bandaid and say, Hey, eat clean, get it flushed, and you’re going to go through, like you said, the 15, 20 days of hard detox and then you’ll be golden.

[00:53:00] How? How do you transition most people? 

Mike Collins: Another interesting nuance that’s developed from the 57,000 some odd detoxes we’ve done is that no matter how much you titrate down, no matter how much you cut down, you go from whatever. You know, one soda from three sodas a day, to two to one, to no can, you know, no matter how much you step down, when you stop, you’re still going to have this, pretty much the identical withdrawals and the identical process.

So we just go for it all. My story is that because I didn’t really have, you know, I’ve been sugar free 35 years and because I didn’t have anybody to talk to, my friends in recovery used to call me the weird addiction specialist. You know, the old timers would say, Mike, are you sober today? And I’d say, yeah, well, don’t worry about the damn sugar.

You know, and, but, you know, because I didn’t have anybody to talk to, it took me a year to quit and [00:54:00] this is an order. God forbid somebody wants to try this alone, but I’m just going to tell you the order that’s correct, so they know it. Um, it took me a year to quit caffeine, which you should quit first because you’re going to need the sugar to get off the caffeine.

Uh, then it took me a year to quit. Uh, sugar, because I needed the sugar to get off the caffeine. And then it took me a year to quit flour. So three years. And I just wanna, I wanna cut that time down to, you know, three weeks for people, um, because you don’t, and and it’s happened over and over. And the reason I know a lot of this experience is because, like a gym in January, which I’m sure you’ve seen, is that people join our group and they have lifetime access.

They can keep coming back to these meetings. They kind of go all great guns or whatever. And then in January there’s this huge flood, right? So people try and they try and they try, and then they, they say, I’ll [00:55:00] start again in January. So the same thing happens. You wanna make sure that you know, you know where you are in the process and be honest with yourself.

But, uh, you know, at the end of the day, you’ve gotta, um. Kinda lost the, the train of thought there. But you, you know, you’ve gotta understand that this is, uh, it is a process and that the best way to start it is to rip the bandaid off. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. I, I think that’s, that’s true for most areas of life. Yeah. So let’s do this too.

You mentioned caffeine. Yes. And we talked about how sugar’s on a ton of our food, most of our food, how it deteriorates our bodies in so many ways. Even to the point of, you know, melting holes in our brain. 

Yeah. 

We talked about how you can be and will be healed. Your body will regenerate when you, when clean and it’s a beautiful thing how God made us.

But you mentioned a couple things that I [00:56:00] wanna personally ask about. So I never drank coffee until I was in my thirties. ’cause I heard how bad it was for you. Yeah. And I had doctors trying to pump me full of like, uh, that fricking pri of sex and all these anti. Whatever, indigestion, drugs and all that stuff did was make me worse.

So I had so many doctors tell me, don’t drink coffee. That I started doing the opposite of everything they said in many areas, and I got better. 

Mike Collins: You’re not allowed. 

David Pasqualone: So to this day, I drink coffee every day, but I don’t use sugar. I use either black coffee, but typically black coffee with a little cream. Mm.

What do you think about? And you can, you can, you know, destroy me on camera. I don’t care. I want, what’s truth for me and the listeners is coffee with creamer, like cows milk really bad for me. Is there a better alternative or is it, Dave, you shouldn’t have any caffeine at all. 

Mike Collins: Yeah, I mean, [00:57:00] honestly, so in your 

David Pasqualone: opinion, we’re not going to hold you 10.

You want 

Mike Collins: my opinion? You’re going to get it full Bo Bo, both barrels. So. There’s a lot of biohacking workout bros that’ll tell you that, you know, you use caffeine in a strategic way and you don’t have it till 11 o’clock and all this crap anyway. You’re still drinking. And a meta amphetamine, okay, you have to realize this.

So I have a small caffeine group on Facebook, but I was a member of one and I’ve done a lot of research and now there’s a lot of research coming out. Um, there was a large group on Facebook and it had a couple of Olympians in there. And one of the things I’ve discovered about caffeine addiction is it’s really, really hard to get off of.

For some people, it models a meta amphetamine withdrawal and what, what it, what I mean by that is that it [00:58:00] takes months. You ever hear of this term anhedonia David? So no, anhedonia means the inability to feel joy. Right. And some people, when they, uh, quit caffeine, they just don’t realize that they’re, they’re blue, they’re depressed.

It’s not that they’re phys, you know, they’re, I don’t believe they’re emotionally depressed if they’re severe cine and caffeine and caffeine actually, uh, sugar is, there’s a couple work groups that I’m part of and I help promote that are trying to get sugar in the DSMC cism or caffeine. Abu Caffeine use Disorder has already passed a few tests and it’s on its way to being, uh, in the, uh, STA diagnostic, it’s called the DSM, the Diagnostical Sta Diagnostic Statistical Manual.

And, you know, my experience is, is that. [00:59:00] The depre depression, the long-term depression. Some people take four and five and six months till the sun comes out again and the anhedonia quits. But here’s the thing, uh, I had two coaches, um, and they’re still around. They’re pretty vocal about it now, is that, you know, they basically thought I was nuts and that’s fine.

I get that a lot. They thought I was nuts. And so they did exactly what you’re describing. They didn’t have flour, they didn’t have sugar. They lost their weight. They put, one of ’em, put fatty liver in remission. You know, they, they, they, they did the thing and they were happy to be off the sugar, but they still drank black coffee and black tea.

And so they said, okay, let’s, this is two years later. Most one was 18 months, one was two years. Two years after being my coach, helping a lot of people, they said, let’s see if Mike really is crazy. I wanna see if I’ll get off the caffeine and what’ll it’ll help. One of them didn’t have too [01:00:00] bad a time. It, it depends who you are, you know.

Uh, but the other one, it took a couple of months before the sun came back out and the results are that they slept better. Their anxiety almost disappeared. Less than completely. That means prob worries, you know, whatever. Um, definitely the sleep was better. The clarity of mind was better, the functioning was better of the mind.

And, you know, they were able to like, think better. They, they believed there was a clarity of thought that was given to them by the caffeine abstinence. So, um. I’m just not a fan of caffeine. I, I, I, I just, I think it’s a, again, it’s a, it’s a, you’re at the low end of the speed spectrum. Uh, you know, John Belushi died of the speedball, which is caffeine and sugar, or I, I said that right?

But he died of cocaine and heroin. Um, and that balance that [01:01:00] people do on a chocolate bar, the reason people have a chocolate bar at four in the afternoon is because it takes the edge off of their jack during the, the morning with the coffee and then their sugar at lunch. And the chocolate bar or the soda that has both in it, take the edge off the legal speed ball, takes the edge off, right, so that you feel okay at three or four o’clock to finish your day and get home, um, or whatever, you know, continue your work.

And so. I’m not a fan. I haven’t had caffeine in 30 some odd years. And, uh, you know, the, the one thing that makes me sad is that my boys who were raised sugar free don’t really eat sugar anymore and they’ve never been intoxicated and they don’t drink, but they picked up a nasty caffeine have at college.

David Pasqualone: All right. Well you brought up another question if [01:02:00] you have time. I wanna make sure ’cause Yeah, I got plenty of time. Okay. So you brought up chocolate. 

Yeah, 

chocolate. Dark chocolate in my mind, they’re two different animals, right. You know, milk chocolate and dark chocolate. I don’t even know if that’s true.

I was actually just asking somebody about this the other day. Yeah. So the first question is, do you see a difference between dark chocolate and chocolate milk chocolate? And then the other question is, what is it about chocolate? Because I know myself after I eat a meal, like a good meal. Man, I wanna have coffee and chocolate and a cigar.

Yeah. Is that a mental buildup that I’ve just established? It’s like, Hey, you had a great meal, now do this. But I’m like, it doesn’t matter. Breakfast, lunch or dinner after I eat. A lot of times I wanna have chocolate. I only eat dark chocolate. So first off, dark chocolate versus milk chocolate. Is there a difference or are they both trash?

Mike Collins: Yeah, they’re both trash it. Again, I don’t like to be, but I can’t [01:03:00] think of a better way to put this, but, so it’s like mental masturbation a little bit. It’s like this is a way that dark chocolate that theoretically does not have caffeine. There’s a lot of research that says some of that has caffeine in it too.

Um, and it’s, uh. Again, it’s kind of that light, uh, edge take, taken, taken off the edge kinda thing. And you know, there is part of the ritual that you described that is ritualistic. It’s not necessarily psychoactive as I’ve described through much of this, this podcast, but, um, but I do believe that, um, there will be some annoyances when you try and quit it.

You know what I mean? When you try and have the no chalk chocolate, no coffee and no cigar. Right. Because you’re, one of the things too is that I’ve, people don’t kinda calculate a little bit, is that the ingestation of these things post meal [01:04:00] helps it mix with the food and you get the initial lift. It’s very light, but as an adult you don’t really feel the lift, but you’ve seen the lift a hundred times in your life because every time the chocolate and the ice cream and the candy and the cake comes out at a child’s birthday, ca cake, you know, all hell breaks loose and everybody’s running around crazy and on a little body.

When they get all that sugar and caffeine, they’re crazy. They’re wild, you know? But then when you get to be adult, all you’re doing is really taking the edge off. You’re just, you’re just honestly getting back to normal with that little ingestation. And what I was saying is that it, it mixes with the food.

So you get the initial lift and then it passes slowly through the evening and it, it’ll settle you for the evening and then you can go to sleep. Um, but. I, I, a hard part is I like to do a try. I would wish I could do a Mr. Spock [01:05:00] mind meld where I could put my, you know, years of experience and all my coaches and all my success stories into someone’s brain, and then they could see and feel the freedom, you know, they could feel the freedom.

It’s kinda like, and I don’t know this much about it, I’m not as, you know, religious maybe as you, but maybe a transformation of being born again or whatever, you know what I mean? This, this, this. And, but, ’cause I’ve heard it thousands of times, and here’s the quote, I didn’t know I could feel this good, right?

I didn’t know that I could feel this way, you know, this way. After they eliminate these quote unquote legal substances from their body and their be and their brain and their, you know, their, their life really. And so, yeah, I mean it’s, uh. It’s a real, I mean, I think in 50 years when we have the [01:06:00] diagnostic tools, I know for a fact they’re going to say, you know, they used to give sugar to kids and, and caffeine to kids, and they used to drink caffeine and eat sugar when they were pregnant.

You know? Uh, I think the diagnostic tools are coming. They’re not here yet, but sadly, my friend, you, you’re, you’re, you’re very honest or you’re very courageous to let me give you both barrels, but no, I 

David Pasqualone: appreciate it. The other thing too is cigars. So I believe based on just chemical science, yes, cigarettes are toxic.

There’s 227 known carcinogens and toxins and one cigarette. Completely trash vaping, I think’s worse. Uh, I mean, there’s all sorts of things, but to me, and I’m not trying to make excuses because I didn’t even smoke, thought I was in my forties. Right? And again, it was a weird situation that happened and I found out, man, [01:07:00] this helps me sleep better.

I feel better. And my blood tests like medically gut better after I started smoking that my, my doctor and the spouse started smoking and they got off those damn pills to sleep, right? So I, I think, okay, it’s a leaf. God made it. It’s completely pure. But again, everything has to be balanced. You can’t be smoking like eight, you know, 800 of a day, right?

But then you look at people, like people who live. I started thinking, people who smoke cigars, who do I know that smoke cigars. Man, they’re some of the happiest, healthiest, well adjusted people, and they live like a hundred years or more. So what are your thoughts on actual cigars, not cigarettes, not vaping?

Do you think that is Dave? No, you’re off. There’s no, it’s a 

Mike Collins: great question. So I think there’s a lot, I, you know, this is a personal thing, but, uh, you know, there’s a lot of science now, and you’ve seen them now in the convenience stores that I think the product name, I shouldn’t probably name it, but, um, [01:08:00] there’s a lot of caffeine.

I mean, nicotine, tablets, nicotine, uh, chew or pouches or whatever, and it becomes and has become a performance drug, right? Uh, nicotine has, and when you eliminate, like you say, all the carcinogens and all smoke and blah, blah, blah, and the vaping. I think it really, if what you’re describing is true, and I don’t doubt you, is that, um, it’s the limited amount.

’cause most people aren’t smoking cigars all day. You know, they’re, they’re not like cigarettes. They’re smoking at once in the evening and, and enjoying the nicotine buzz. Let’s be honest, it’s a nicotine again, the edge taken off the, the, the, the process of mood elevation via sugar, flour, caffeine, or nicotine.

Okay. That little bit of mood elevation, and again, what you’re saying is been proven out in the research of the [01:09:00] nicotine pouches or using nicotine as a performance drug. This has been proven very succinctly, but it’s real. I find, and this is the most important part of the, probably the answer to your question in the message I find many people.

Do not, are not able addicts, let’s put it to you. That way many people are not able to have just one. Right? They’re not able to use it the way that you are describing. They’re not able to use it in, in methods or, or, or the timeframe. So in other words, they, you know, they have the cigar and then eventually they pick up a package of these pouches at the convenience store and they’re having the nicotine in the afternoon, uh, because they were thinking better at work last time they did it, or last time they had a cigar at lunch when there was a, a celebration.

And then they were just really good at lunch. That after. So they begin this process [01:10:00] of dependency, they begin this process of manipulating their brain, uh, to do what it can do anyway. Faster and quicker and, you know, through the, through the substance, which has basically been the theme of the entire podcast.

And so I worry mostly about the folks who lose control, who don’t, you know, if my boys have an addictive personality, that they didn’t engage in the sugar or the alcohol and they discovered, ’cause it was a peer thing where they, you know, when they went to college that they now use the caffeine in this way.

You know what I mean? And so I think nicotine’s the same. Um, and you just gotta be careful a little bit, I think. 

David Pasqualone: No, I think that’s wise. I mean, anything can be taken outta hand. Yeah. I mean, you can, carrots can be good for you, but you eat too many, you turn orange. Right, exactly. So anything can be taken outta [01:11:00] moderation and be bad.

So I couldn’t agree more. So to summarize everything we talked about today, we talked about sugar, we talked about natural versus the artificial, the fructose. We talked about how our, you know, whether you go slow or go fast, you might as well rip that bandaid off. Yeah. We talked about caffeine, we talked about cigars and nicotine between your birth and today.

Is there anything else you want to talk about, Mike, or clarify or throw a final thought in before we wrap up today’s episode? 

Mike Collins: Yeah, I look, I thank you. That’s a, I’m a little bit of a futurist and a little bit of a, obviously now, you know, I’m, I’m really interested in the behavioral change process that is recovery from alcohol and drugs and now sugar and, and the legal substances.

But I think this happened in drinking and driving. This happened in cigarettes, in use, [01:12:00] and then in public use. And it happened in condoms and bathrooms. What happened was, is that science caught up with culture. Science caught up with, uh, baked in, uh, cultural norms that evolved when no one knew about the science and the smoking.

And, you know, when doctors used to advertise it on TV and, uh, you know, women didn’t smoke till the twenties or the thirties. And, and then they had a big campaign about, um, women smoking and they doubled their, their sales. And, you know, these are things that man, uh, evolved. You know, the, all of the Sugar holidays, they weren’t.

Sugar Holidays, the Easters and the Christmases, they were not Sugar Thanksgiving. They were not Sugar Holidays. Halloween. They had a, they have a, a history, a beautiful history that is being, you know, has been adulterated by people. And look, I don’t blame the merchants, I don’t blame the [01:13:00] folks that, that they had the shareholder value to maximize.

That’s what society was like then. But it’s changed. It changed with cigarettes, it changed with drinking and driving. When I was young for everybody, culturally, the cops were the enemy. And just don’t get caught. Now you’re a pariah if you, you know, drink and drive. And the same thing with cigarettes. You know, they used to smoke in airplanes, you know, it was just a cultural thing.

But the science, and this is important, the science now says the same things about. Uh, sugar as it did about tobacco and, and this evolution, this growth in human knowledge. This I is so important, but the, the, the cultural shift is harder. What I work on is grassroots. I don’t, you know, some of my mentors, they wanna change laws and put sugar taxes in, and that’s all great and I think that might help.

But [01:14:00] we like to work as grassroots from the bottom up, and we work one person at a time with individual process changes, right? But if this message, you know, a talk has resonated with anyone, what I wanna say to them is that you need to lead by example. If you see your kids suffering, if you, you know, everybody wants to fix everybody else, but you need to lead by example and get off the stuff.

Whatever you’re, you’re wanna do is, and get off of it, and then. People will be attracted to you because, and weight loss is very hard to hide. Uh, weight loss or whatever. Maybe you’re, I have a woman that I’ve interviewed 10 times, maybe more. She’s been on every sound I’ve ever done. And, and, and she’s like, still to this day trying to repair her relationship with her daughter.

And because she was a bitch when she was on sugar. And I hear this all the [01:15:00] time. This level of irritability, you know what I mean? So it goes a lot deeper. Anyway, sum it up. I really do. I’m very optimistic about the future, but you know, I think myself and the people that I’ve interviewed that are, that are working in this field need to keep getting the message out.

And guys like you, I thank you. I can’t thank you enough for, you know, being open-minded enough. To hear this story, to listen and, you know, get it out to your audience because it’s the only thing that’s going to work. Right. To change that, you know, you and I have been through it in our lifetime. We’ve been through the change, uh, societally and social norms about drinking and driving and about cigarette use in buildings, uh, or whatever, cigarette use in general.

And we saw it, you know, and drinking and driving. We saw it, you know, we, we felt, we felt it. [01:16:00] We lived it. And I believe that that’s going to happen with sugar in our lifetime. Uh, it may take time, but it’s, and it’s not yet adopted, but. For the folks that are listening, you start with you. And then, you know, don’t try and change anybody else.

You know this, right? Don’t try and change anybody else. Just try and change yourself and, and, and take the benefits for you. And, uh, you know, that hopefully that’ll attract other people to, to, you know, to you. 

David Pasqualone: Excellent. I, I couldn’t agree more. And Mike, let’s say that website again. If somebody wants to reach you, I’ll put in the show notes, but for those driving and listening, going for a run, what’s the best website to reach you at?

Mike Collins: Sugar detox.com really easy. It’s kind of the universal thought process that people wanna detox. Everybody has a detox that’s attached to their shake business or their pill business, or their muscle building pills or their fitness thing [01:17:00] because it’s quote unquote hot. You know, you see it on the grocery store, shelves in the magazine racks and stuff, but.

I’ve been doing this long, so long. Sugar detox.com I got many years ago and uh, that’s where you find us. 

David Pasqualone: Alright. Let me ask you one more question, plenty of time. No problem. People associate thin with healthy. Mm-hmm. That is just not true. Not true. I know some overweight people who are very healthy. I know some thin people who are at death’s door.

Yes. So thin does not equal healthy, so that, that needs to be wiped from our minds. 

Correct. But 

for anybody that comes to you and they’re like, Hey Mike, I want to talk, I want to get clean. Right? 

Yeah. 

I know it varies for everybody, but the quote unquote average, the average from day one to Wow, I feel freaking great.

I’m thinking sharp, I feel better Pain’s, less strength is up. What does that look like? 30 days, 90 days, two [01:18:00] years. What, what’s your average client look like for the weight loss? For the weight loss, the mental clarity, feeling better. Just a real life change. 

Mike Collins: Yeah. Well that’s, I know weight 

David Pasqualone: loss is starting in like seven days.

I mean, weight loss goes fast. 

Mike Collins: Yeah. Weight loss for guys goes fast, goes a little slower for women. Okay. Um, 

David Pasqualone: that I wouldn’t know that because I am a man and I do believe scientifically and biology, there’s only two genders, but that’s just me with, you know, common sense. But go ahead. No problem. But, 

Mike Collins: um, so the question is really well phrased and it’s a good one.

I mean, and I, I don’t wanna throw at you the standard. Everybody’s different and you know, it depends, you know, that’s the answer really. It depends. But, uh, I can tell you that if you’re willing to do the work of the, what I described, the emotional work or the work post abstinence, if you’re willing to go through the detox.

Willing to go through the [01:19:00] social and we help you with this. I mean, the social, uh, I mean, you gotta, it’s like you’re in restaurants, in families. I mean, it’s like, it’s a nightmare, really. People trying to get you back to sugar. I baked this for you, or, oh, you’ve already lost 20 pounds. You can, you can have one, you know, anyway, if you can get Yeah.

Going 

David Pasqualone: out to eat today, there’s almost sugar in the salad. Yeah. Like if you had a lettuce leaf, it’s almost like they bake it on. I mean, everything has sugar. Yeah. ’cause they want you to be addicted. Sugar and the salt and they load it in. But what I’m saying is if somebody really commits, they go through it, the average results that they’re mentally sharp and they feel better.

You know, like you mentioned, a lot of people have joint pain. That stuff just goes away, but just goes away. What, what I experienced, I was. 18 and then I know I need to do it again. But I’m thinking to myself, I know I’m going to feel better. I know I’m going to be better. I know it’s worth it, but I haven’t [01:20:00] done it yet.

Right. But just to help me and many of our listeners, what do you think? Like before we start really feeling a change? It’s 30 days, 90 days, six months. Well, I can tell 

Mike Collins: you, but the joints, it’s like, uh, 20 days. Days now, days 30 at 

David Pasqualone: most, 

Mike Collins: they’re gone. Your, your hands in your, that’s what I hear all the time.

Hands and knees gone. Had one woman, she already had one knee operation, had the other one scheduled. I said, gimme 90 days. And this is two and a half years later. She’d never had that second operation ’cause it just didn’t hurt anymore. Mm-hmm. The pain was gone and the hands and the carpal tunnel and all that stuff.

But as far as the like, uh, what I used to call, what I used to say earlier, I said earlier is when the sun comes back out, when you just start to feel better, you feel a. I don’t wanna say more human, but you feel, just feel better. The, I didn’t know I could feel this good feeling. Yeah. Takes at least 30 days of, of abstinence and work on the, on the [01:21:00] other stuff so that you know when the feeling comes, that you’re a little bit craving, you’re craving sugar, or that you can think to yourself, no, I’ve lost 20 pounds.

I feel better. I have time. You know, you can think it all the way through. You don’t have to act immediately on the instant gratification of the sugar. Right. And so I would say, you know, average about 30 days, because in 30 days there’s going to be skin clearing up, there’s going to be some weight loss, there’s going to be some peace in the brain.

Now you might sleep a lot in the beginning, but you’re going to sleep better. You’re going to have less anxiety, especially if you quit everything at the same time. So yeah, about 30 days. 

David Pasqualone: Well, let me ask you one more question then. Sure. So someone commits to this, they call you up, they go to your website, right?

They rip off the bandaid and they just cut off all this bad. Do you [01:22:00] recommend ever starting with a fast to just like deny everything, just have water with salt, you keep metabolic metabolically stable and then, okay, so transition in. What is your, what is your opinion on fasting? You, you 

Mike Collins: must have like seen my materials or read my stuff.

’cause that is a perfect question and, and it’s a good one for to bring up. Now 

David Pasqualone: I’m honestly just using holy, we’ll, we’ll call it God because I’m just using common sense. It was definitely, 

Mike Collins: it was a God thing because look. Here, here’s important. This is important nuance. So, so these are some of the nuances that we go through and stuff.

So if you came in with, say, an intermittent fasting program, so maybe you didn’t eat till noon and then your window was six or eight hours, that’s fine, you can keep it, but no, no, no fasting in the first 30 or probably 60 days, but at least 30 days because it’s just too hard with the withdrawals. You have to have some [01:23:00] food.

You have to eat your regular three meals a day. You just have to change what’s in ’em, because that will help you get through the, the initial abstinence. Most people fail right there in the early days, 10 day 10, day 15, because of the emotions that start to stir. And they don’t consciously say, well, I’m going to go back to sugar.

They, they say. Well, I, I’ve had enough. Maybe just a little that’ll help. You know, one of the things about diagnostic tools is I’ve never, I don’t know how, and we didn’t discuss it that much, but this limbic brain can translate its need for a squirt of dopamine into a rational thought, like going out in a snowstorm for ice cream.

You know, like it can’t, I don’t know how it does that, but the answer to your question is absolutely not. You need to stay on the same pattern you were using before for eating meals. If it’s three meals a day, then three meals a day, but just change what you’re eating [01:24:00] because it’s just too hard for the de in the, in the detox period.

But I’m a big fan. Lemme put, lemme clarify. I’m a huge fan of fasting and a huge fan of intermittent fasting. But you need to, like, I, it’s, uh, two or, uh, noon and I haven’t eaten anything. So it’s like a big fan of it. But wait until you get some time onto your belt. 

David Pasqualone: Gotcha. Well, Mike, it’s been a true honor.

I appreciate your time and I know our listeners do too. Uh, hopefully, ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, reach out to Mike. If I can help you, I will. But Mike’s the expert in this area. And Mike, before we go, is there anything else that you want to share? A final closing thought with our listeners?

Mike Collins: Yeah. One of the things that I, I, I, I don’t wanna be Tony Robs, or I don’t wanna be a motivational speaker, but I think this is part of the process, is like, if you’ve got a dream of some kind, if you wanna do [01:25:00] something and you feel like your weight or your health, or you don’t even know why, you know, you, you know everything you need to do to write that book or start that business or whatever.

I’ve had so many results where people, you just gain confidence because. You’re not quote unquote letting yourself down. So many people start the day, I’m going to quit sugar, start the week, I’m going to quit sugar, start the month, start the year. This is, this is the year that I go on that diet. And everybody comes to me originally for weight loss, a lot of them.

And if this is the year that you need to change. You just don’t really get or understand the, my again, that my Spock mind build the experiences of all the thousands of success stories we have of not necessarily weight loss or better, you know, type two remission. Um, but that they were able to start to achieve [01:26:00] dreams that they didn’t have before.

Or they didn’t, they just weren’t able to do, they don’t even know why. ’cause they knew everything. They were smarter than their boss. They were, um, you know, they had more to start with, more raw material to start with, and the people that were successful around them, but they just didn’t know why they weren’t successful.

I’m telling you this self-esteem boost of this, what seemingly is a little innocuous thing of quitting these legal substances and getting your health and your brain back. Will change your life Again. I, it’s, it’s just experience. Now, I had a testimonial from a woman you would know her name, who did seminars for 30 years, but carried 30 pounds extra.

She bought a $10 million house on vacation, uh, one day when we were working together. And [01:27:00] she wrote a three year testimonial for me, and what she said was, I finally did my one woman show. In other words, here’s an experienced, proficient, um, intelligent woman. Her mother was runner up in Miss America, I mean really a a just a high producing person.

And she, um, finally did her one person show the thing that she had been writing for 10 years. And so it, it’s like you can do anything that you put your mind to, but you really have to be able to not. To, to not, not lie to yourself, but not let yourself down. This motion of starting on Monday, starting at the first of the month and then not succeeding, damages your self-esteem and your goals and everything.

And this will help put it on steroids and help you out. So try it out. 

David Pasqualone: Absolutely. And that ties into what [01:28:00] our slogan is. Okay. Listen. Do. Repeat. For Life!. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, if we listen to this great content Mike brings, we need to do it. We need to repeat the good each day form positive habits. Yep.

So we can have a great life in this world, but more importantly, an eternity to come. So I’m David Pasqualone. This is our Remarkable friend, Mark Collins. Mark, thank you again for being here today. 

Mike Collins: Thank you for having me, David. It was a pleasure and an honor. You’re a very good listener, which is not the case with a lot of podcasts, guys.

David Pasqualone: Well, thank you very much, and ladies and gentlemen, we love you. We’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you.

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David Pasqualone: Ladies and gentlemen, I sincerely hope this show has inspired you. The whole purpose of The Remarkable People Podcast is to inspire you, to motivate you into action, to help you have an even better life, to overcome things you’ve not yet [01:29:00] been able to overcome or to grow to the next level that you never thought possible.

And all of this, not just to benefit you in this world, but to have you come to a relationship with God where it grows every day stronger. And not just this world is blessed, but your eternity is blessed. And we sincerely want to do just that, and to glorify God. And we hope with this episode we accomplish that.

If we did. Please let me know. It’s great to be encouraged and to spread the word to our Remarkable guests that it helped in your life. If we didn’t, let me know. Write me an email. You can go to DavidPasqualone.com . Go to our contact us page and let me know what you think. I got tough skin. Let it rip.

Anything you can think of to make this a better podcast to help you grow and to glorify, God, I’m in. So that’s it. Thank you for [01:30:00] listening to the podcast. Thank you for sending us feedback. If we can help you in any way, let us know. And if you can spread the word about the Remarkable People Podcast, share the episode to your friends, your family on social media.

It would be a huge honor and blessing. Again, I’m not trying to be the most famous podcast in the world for my benefit, I truly want a podcast that’s the best podcast in the world to help as many people as we can to have a better life, come to know Christ, to grow in the Lord, and to have that salvation so they can be with God and peace and joy in eternity.

And right now we’re together on this earth, so let’s do everything we can to work together and help each other grow. Like the Bible says, love the Lord thy God as a first commandment. And the next command is to love thy neighbor as thyself. So let’s do it together. I’m David Pasqualone. I love you. Not as much as God loves you, but if I can help [01:31:00] you in any way, just ask.

And again, please share this with your friends and family so we can help them too. Ciao and see you in the next episode. 

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