The Hunger Crushing Combo Method: The Simple Secret to Eating Well Without Ever Dieting Again

by Abbey Sharp

With the Hunger Crushing Combo, you can finally feel full and reduce food cravings without ever dieting again. And yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Discover registered dietitian Abbey Sharp’s groundbreaking approach to eating that smashes diet culture and breaks through the food noise. With her Hunger Crushing Combo, you’ll banish fear foods, guilt, and cheat days, and finally get off the diet rollercoaster that’s defined so much of our lives. Abbey’s proven method is a simple way to effortlessly build out balanced snacks by combining two or more of the Hunger Crushing protein, fiber, and healthy fats. By distilling down the latest science and research into an easy three step framework, you’ll learn how to crush physical hunger and emotional cravings effortlessly without second thought. No counting. No tracking. No restricting. The Hunger Crushing Combo Plan helps simplify nutrition with a structure that you can easily adapt to your own goals and unique needs, while restoring joy and pleasure to eating. Discover freedom from diet culture and become your healthiest happiest self.

Genres: Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 13, 2026

Reviews

[Suzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, it was all about not being a diet book and I know (I KNOW) it's a framework but I've read this because I'm overweight and lost 10 stone (again) and still have more to lose, then I need to keep it off because regardless of how many times I've lost it... It always comes back -with lots of extra friends in town 😭- so I am here for a diet book, if I'm honest.

This gives loads of great tips without being condescending, rude or holier than thou. I already follow alot of it, but I do have a terrible fear of white carbs, infact, i have dropped the stones by avoiding them religiously for nearly 2 years now, so it was nice to see a book that didn't try to make you fear any one food.

[January · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hunger Crushing Combo Method
The Simple Secret to Eating Well Without Ever Dieting Again by Abbey Sharp RD (2026)
11h 47m narrated by the author - Abbey Sharp RD RD, 400 pages

Genre: Health & Wellness, Diets, Nutrition, Fitness, Weight Loss & Weight Control, Healthy Diet

Rating as a movie: PG-13

Featuring: Introduction - The Road to Abundance, Diet Culture, Information Overload, Negative Emotions, Influencers, Orthorexia, Eating Disorders, Anxiety, Nutrition By Addition, Fear Foods, Scarcity Mentality, Binge Restrict Cycle, Hunger Crush Compounds - Proteins, Fibers, and Healthy Fats; Food Lists, Naked Carbs, Goodbye Diets, Satiety, Your Healthiest Weight, Language For Bigger Bodies, Wellness Culture, Body Positivity, Homeostasis, Appetite Hormones, Creating a Calorie Deficit, Digestion, Breaking Down Gut Bacteria, Blood Sugar Management, Swiftie, Diabetes, Vitality and Immunity, Mixing Up Meals, Picky Eating and Neurodivergence, Vitamins, Body Neutrality, Health at Every Size (HAES), Intuitive Eating, Food Freedom, Hunger and Fullness, HCC Goals, Obesity, Why BMI is BS, Fat Burning Bust, GLP-1 Agonist, Food Noise, Supplements, Registered Dieticians, Lifestyle Strategies, Healthy Movement, Sleep Hygiene, Stress Management, Insulin Resistance, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), Hypothetical Example Days (Not a Meal Plan), Medications, Sports and Fitness Nutrition, Macronutrients and Micronutrients, Healthy Aging, Perimenopause and Menopause, Raising Happy Healthy Eaters, Generational Diet Culture, Naked Carbs and Kids, Put Dessert on the Dinner Plate, Supplements to Consider for Kids and Adolescents, Lifestyle Considerations For Kids, Cheat Sheets, Visual Cues, Recipes, Acknowledgments

Songs for the soundtrack: "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift, "You Need to Calm Down" by Taylor Swift, "Honey" by Taylor Swift, "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus, "The Fate of Ophelia" by Taylor Swift, "All Too Well (Taylor's Version) (10 Minute Version)" by Taylor Swift

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½🍗🧈🥦🫒🥑🍑

My thoughts: 📱38% 7h 15m left Chapter 5 Healing Your Relationship With Food - This book is pretty enjoyable so far and very informative. Although I don’t plan on adding Oreos to cottage cheese or yogurt.
📱61% 4h 37m left Chapter 8 Strength and Endurance: The Hunger Crushing Combo for Sports and Fitness Nutrition - I'm definitely going to have to revisit this via print.
📱84% 1h 52m left The Recipes - The kid feeding advice was on point.

This book is pretty good. I didn't give it 5 stars because although the information was great, it could have had more details and it wasn't mind-blowing as half of the ideas are in other books, but it had a great vibe and is presented in a non-threatening way. I definitely recommend you get the print to accompany this audio. I didn’t take any points off for all of the references to TS. I think the author came off as very relatable and likable. I plan on using the information and will be getting the print version. Thank you to NetGalley for this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Recommend to others: Yes! This is a very good book about eating healthy while avoiding diet culture

[Shona · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a long-time viewer of Abbey Sharp’s YouTube channel, I went into this book genuinely interested but cautious. Nutrition books often promise inclusivity and balance, then quietly default to one-size-fits-all frameworks that fall apart the moment hunger cues, hormones, or real life get messy. I’m happy to say this book largely avoids those traps.

What stands out most is how accessible and genuinely inclusive this approach to nutrition feels. Abbey doesn’t just acknowledge common “edge cases” — she meaningfully engages with them. Neurodivergence (including disrupted hunger signalling and practical ways to add nutrition when appetite is unreliable), children versus adult nutritional needs, hormonal fluctuations and transitions, and different goals such as weight maintenance, gain, or loss are all addressed without moralising or exclusion. I particularly appreciated that intentional weight loss is discussed in a neutral, non-shaming way rather than being sidelined or dismissed.

The framing throughout is calm, additive, and achievable. Rather than demonising foods or prescribing rigid rules, the focus is on building balanced nutrition in ways that can actually fit into real lives — especially for people overwhelmed by conflicting nutrition advice. Abbey has clearly moved away from traditional “intuitive eating” language, acknowledging how it’s been co-opted by the wellness industry, and instead centres practical nourishment without turning intuition into another impossible standard.

From a lived-experience perspective, as someone who is neurodivergent and perimenopausal, I found this book refreshingly grounding. The information is thorough but presented in a way that reduces overwhelm and makes “good enough” nutrition feel realistic rather than aspirational. This is very much a book for people who feel like square pegs in round holes when it comes to conventional nutrition advice.

My criticisms are relatively minor and largely format-dependent. The repeated emphasis on the “Hunger-Crushing Combo” became a bit distracting in audiobook form, and the mentions of Abbey’s protein powder occasionally pulled me out of the listening experience — though to her credit, alternatives were always clearly presented and no single product was positioned as essential. These issues may be far less noticeable in print.

The audiobook production itself was excellent, and having the author narrate added warmth and clarity — it genuinely sounded like Abbey explaining nutrition, not reading a script.

Overall, this is a thoughtful, inclusive, and highly accessible nutrition book that cuts through noise without oversimplifying. It’s not about perfection or compliance — it’s about making nourishment feel possible again. I’ll likely be purchasing a physical copy to keep as a reference.

4.5 stars (rounded up to 5 stars)
Docked slightly for repetition and audiobook-specific distractions, but the substance, tone, and inclusivity are strong enough that I would confidently recommend this to others — particularly those overwhelmed by nutrition culture or living outside the “default” physiology most books assume.

[Kimberley · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This book does a great job of compiling all of the current research on nutrition and weight loss. It’s hard to figure things out with all the info dump online so I appreciated being able to have a resource that delivers a wide view with lots of specific info. I’ll have to refer back to this as I didn’t take notes while listening! So much of what she covered helped clear up some confusion on issues I’d read about before and left me feeling both reassured about things I was already doing while also giving me some great ideas about what to focus on and include going forward.

[Brady Browning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishing team for the opportunity to listen to this title in advance of its release.

Home run! Abbey Sharp is the perfect voice of reason in today’s diet obsessed world. The Hunger Crushing Combo Method was a fun read, while also learning so much about nutrition.

As a long time subscriber to Abbey’s YouTube channel, I was beyond thrilled to realize Abbey is narrating this book herself!

Can’t wait to implement some of these ideas in my day to day life!

[Vickie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been following Abbey’s Instagram for at least a year now. I love her straightforward way of combining the science (something so many others are missing!) with real-life strategies. It is never all or nothing. This book does that and more. It starts with the science and gives great strategies for a variety of concerns or needs people might have. For example, there are chapters focused on those who have diabetes, athletes, kids and those of us in perimenopause. Each one of those chapters gives easily applied strategies. I also love the idea of not having to track or count. At the back are cheat sheets and recipes. I’m trying the cauliflower mac & cheese tonight. Thanks for all the research and time that went into this book! I will definitely be recommending it to friends. Congrats Abbey!

[Tori DeFazio · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is exactly what I would expect from the Queen of no-BS evidenced-based nutrition, Abbey Sharp. I’m familiar with Sharp’s work on her YouTube page where she offers real life tips that focus on nutrition, body neutrality, and creating a healthy and realistic food and nutrition plan that actually works. This is the first “diet” book (and I do struggle with calling it a diet plan as Sharp merely gives us the tools to create meals using her simple Hunger Crushing Combo method) that was written positively and without any triggering words and/or content. I learned so much about food and the components that work together to create a healthier body- and not just physical health, but mental health and soul health (as Sharp says, a world without cake is sad!). I highly recommend to anyone wanting to learn about nutrition in a judgement and guilt-free way. 5⭐️

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to the audiobook The Hunger Crushing Combo Method. I love that Sharp read it- it was like listening to an extremely smart and positive friend!

[Yaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hunger Crushing Combo Method by Abbey Sharp, RD
Audiobook publish date January 13, 2026
Narrated by the author

I requested this advanced copy on a whim. I am a runner and always hungry. Lake many people out there, I always feel as though I can lose a few pounds, and it's a new year. I didn't care for the cover nor the title, but I requested anyway. It pleasantly surprised me.

I love non-fiction books, and a big part of the appeal is learning something new. In this book, most information was already familiar to me - as an athlete, I try to eat well in general. So if you are a person like me who is interested in nutrition and have done your own research, you may not learn anything new. What this book gave me instead was validation. The author, a registered dietitian and a mother, knows that eating doesn't happen in a lab. We all have busy lives and often need to juggle many stresses in our lives. Many days, planning healthy eating is the last thing on our mind. And we have to keep eating (hopefully) until we die. What she wants us to know is how to prioritize. Sure, the information is not new but it's a sane and sustainable one, the one you can keep on doing for the rest of your life (or some new technology gets discovered to simplify our lives). I especially liked the section about feeding children, even though I personally do not have children. Also the recipe section has some that I definitely want to try. Also, the author narrates the book, and it's excellent.
This book is not for someone who wants to lose x pounds by the summer. It's for everyone else. We all eat. So let's do that right.

An advanced copy of this audiobook was provided courtesy of NetGalley and Hachette Audio. My opinions stated herein are my own. Thank you.

[Holly Dyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75// It's tricky to write a nonfiction book when you have a social media platform, because it seems like the content can be so similar that followers are getting repeat content. I've followed Abby Sharp on her YouTube channel for a few years, so I was familiar with her Hunger Crushing Combo framework. But I still really enjoyed this one, and while it was a good refresher on many of her main tips, there was some new information and science that I haven't heard of before. Sharp delivers evidence-based nutrition advice through her Hunger Crushing Combo framework, which is to build your meals and snacks with protein, fiber, and healthy fat. She knows how to give advice tailored for different health goals and situations, such as weight loss, managing blood sugar, exercise performance, menopause, and for feeding picky kids. I appreciated how Sharp was inclusive of various dietary restrictions (I am vegan and was able to get lots of plant-forward nutrition guidance), and is also aware of the ways that marginalized communities can be excluded or criticized in the wellness world. The audiobook narration was great, and she knows how to deliver the science with humor, sass, and fun. In terms of the content, most of the book translated well to audio, but things like the numbers, serving sizes, and especially the recipes were more awkward to listen to. I hope that an enhancement is included with the audiobook. Overall, this is a great resource for anyone looking to level up their nutrition and health goals.

Many thanks to Hachette Audio and Net Galley for the Advanced Listening Copy.

[Charlotte Chan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a loooot of nutrition books, and this is hands down the best. Unlike nutrition books of the past, this one does not make any grand one-size-fits-all claims or promise to cure your chronic disease. In fact, it does quite the opposite: the Hunger Crushing Combo is meant to be a gentle approach that one adjusts to support their individualized needs and goals.

I'm currently working on my second degree in nutrition, so I already understood the basic principles in this book, but there was still a thing or two I learned. I can see this being a handy reference book for dietitians or nutrition professionals in practice, and I would 100% recommend it to future clients, patients, or just friends and family who want to learn about nutrition in an easily digestible format.

Oh, and did I mention it's rooted in science?💅 Unfortunately, that seems to be missing in a lot of the nutrition info these days.

Definitely recommend picking up a copy of this book if you're confused about food and want to separate fact from fiction!

[GINGER BERTRAND · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is one of the most genuinely usable nutrition books I’ve read. Abbey Sharp introduces a simple, practical framework that’s easy to learn and even easier to apply in real life.

What makes this book stand out is how adaptable the Hunger Crushing Combo is. Once you understand it, you can take it with you wherever you go. Abbey shows how to use the framework across a wide range of real-world situations, like busy schedules, stress, emotional eating, low appetite days, and other common challenges that tend to derail people. Nothing feels extreme or unrealistic.

The guidance is science-backed but approachable, and it’s clear this was written with real humans in mind. No guilt, no rigid rules, just a solid structure you can rely on again and again.

If you want a straightforward, flexible approach to eating that actually works in everyday life, this book delivers.

[Terry Linday · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been following Abbey Sharp's content for a long time so I had heardher talk about the HCC before. I expected the book would come with receipts bc she is definetly evidence based, but i didnt expect i would learn as much as I have so far. I am a mom who grew up in the 2000s and I am so desperate not to pass the things i have grown up with onto my daughter, and so i really loved the chapter on feeding kids (and also how neutral and accessible the diet on weight loss is). Also I LOVE the cheat sheets!! It really has made it easy to visualize how to add protein, fiber and fat without overcomplicating it. I havent made all the recipes yet, but I did try the coconut chicken fingers and my daughter actually loved them (which is rare bc shes picky!!)
I would totally recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about nutrition or make healthier choices or lose weight but don't want to fall into the typical traps.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved The Hunger Crushing Combo!!! It’s one of the few nutrition books that actually feels easy to understand and realistic to apply to everyday life, not restrictive or overwhelming like most diets.

It completely changed how I think about building meals and snacks and helped me develop a healthier mindset around food without overthinking everything. The cheat sheets and charts were such a standout, super practical and easy to come back to. Abbey clearly did all the science work for us but explained it in a way that’s simple, clear, and genuinely interesting.

The recipes are straightforward and accessible, and I loved the swap charts for protein, fiber, and healthy fats. In a world of skinnytok and Ozempic, this felt like a refreshing, no-BS approach to healthy eating. The chapter on raising healthy kids was especially meaningful and really helped me think differently about protecting my kids from diet culture!

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book felt refreshingly realistic and easy to fit into everyday life, which is something I rarely find in nutrition content. It genuinely shifted how I think about putting meals and snacks together in a way that feels supportive, not restrictive. The visuals, cheat sheets, and charts were a standout - they made complex ideas feel simple and actionable. There’s a ton of fascinating science throughout (Abbey really went deep), but it’s explained so clearly that you don’t feel lost or overwhelmed. I also loved how approachable the recipes are and how helpful the swap guides are for mixing and matching proteins, fiber, and healthy fats. In the middle of all the skinnytok noise and Ozempic hype, this felt like a grounded, honest take on health that actually makes sense..

[Amie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for the audio copy of this book.

The New Year tends to be a time I like to listen to a few self help books to renew and refresh my personal goals.

This book is very sensible eating and exercise advice for people who struggle with PCOS, pre-diabetes, diabetes, insulin resistance, or have struggled with extra pounds.

Abbey Sharp comes from an up-to-date scientific approach to eating well and exercising. Everything in this book is sensible and the only thing stopping most of us is “food noise.”

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like the way this book was written. It’s sensible, funny and imminently practical. Definitely a good read. The recipes seemed a little complicated with lots of ingredients but they are appealing enough to give them a try. Change the way you feel about your food by embracing the food curiosity this book can lead you too. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.

[Jennifer Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

So happy to have gotten my copy early. This book is a must read! The book offers a lot of super interesting science (Abbey really did the work for us!!) but made it so easy to understand with amazing visual metaphors.
In a world of skinnytok nonesense, this is an amazing no BS guide to weight loss and healthy eating.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book last night - couldn’t stop reading it! Takes the scary out of eating well, simplified and explains it in a way I can follow. Diet culture is a beast - she debunks it with simple explanations. The science is presented in a way that’s super easy and interesting - makes it all click! Plus there’s a chapter on how to apply this to healthy eating for kids!!

[Thebestdogmom · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of the book is super informative. So much good information about the current thoughts on how to eat better and not “diet.”
The second part was recipes. A lot of good ideas in there.

[Kira Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got my copy and it’s such a quick read. Half way through and learning so much!!!

[Julia Carere · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book!