Advertise on podcast: Truce with Food with Ali Shapiro, MSOD, CHHC

You can know what to eat, understand what would support your health, and still find yourself stress eating at night, skipping meals and then overeating, or falling back into old patterns. That’s frustrating when you’re the person living it, especially when you’ve already gotten plenty of information about what you “should” be doing. It can also be frustrating for the health coach sitting across from you, because caring deeply about helping someone can make it really tempting to rush in with another suggestion, another tool, or something from the latest training. That’s where the difference between knowing a lot and actually being able to coach starts to matter. Some health problems are technical and have a relatively clear answer. Others are adaptive challenges, where the person already knows what to do and the harder question is why they aren’t doing it. Those situations require slowing down enough to get specific about what’s happening, asking why the behavior makes sense, and looking at what feels hard about changing it instead of immediately assuming the answer is more information. For coaches, that can also mean noticing what a stuck client brings up in you and whether your own urge to fix is helping or adding more pressure. In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Kate Solovieva, a master coach and Director of Community Engagement at Precision Nutrition, to talk about what makes a good health coach from both sides of the coaching relationship. We talk about what to do when another tip or tool isn’t helping, why coaching real people is different from studying case examples, and how to tell when more training is actually needed versus when it’s time to stop collecting information and practice the craft. We also get into what to look for when you’re hiring a coach, how scope of practice comes into play with questions about GLP-1s, and what AI may change about coaching without changing the human part of the work. This episode is the third stop on the For Coaches Path in the Truce with Food Podcast Library, a set of conversations meant to be heard in order. Start the Path here: For Coaches Path. 1:53 – Who this episode is for and how to recognize a good health coach 2:10 – What happens when a client knows what to do but still isn’t doing it 4:21 – Why coaches need to notice their own urge to rush in and fix 6:59 – Why the health and wellness industry still feels like the Wild West 8:31 – Where health coaching has matured, from strength training to a more holistic view of health 14:37 – Where the industry still falls short on fatphobia, morality, and personal autonomy 16:43 – The gap between being good at coaching and being good at selling 20:32 – The difference between technical problems and adaptive challenges in behavior change 25:58 – Why coaches have to manage their own discomfort when a client is stuck 29:26 – How compassion and support help when old food patterns keep repeating 34:14 – How to know when more training will actually make you a better coach 36:35 – When learning becomes anxiety instead of professional growth 40:11 – Why you can’t become a great coach without actually coaching 44:30 – What separates a great coach from a really good student 45:57 – What to look for when choosing a health coach 50:51 – How to identify the specific skill gap you actually need to train 54:10 – GLP-1 questions, scope of practice, and the role of a health coach 58:53 – What AI, GLP-1s, and industry changes may mean for the future of coaching Mentioned In What Makes a Good Health Coach with Precision Nutrition’s Kate Solovieva Kate Solovieva | Instagram Super Coach Diaries Precision Nutrition | Coaches Connect Truce Coaching Certification For Coaches Path Pros and Cons of Health Coaching with Courtney Townley Hailey Rowe on Building a Sustainable Coaching Business When Tips and Tools Aren’t Enough to Create Lasting Change with Christen Conly How to Close the Knowing-Doing Gap with Food Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

A GLP-1 can quiet the food noise and give you hope again. Then you hit a plateau, the food noise starts creeping back in, or you see someone else having a completely different experience. That’s when the old thoughts can show up fast. Here we go again. I’m failing. What’s wrong? Why isn’t this working for me like everyone else? We’ve put GLP-1s into the same magic bullet fantasy we tend to put everything else into. We want the straight line forward and the happily ever after. When that isn’t what happens, it can be easy to make the plateau mean something about you instead of separating what’s happening from what you’re making it mean about yourself. In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with clinical nutritionist Jessica Brown, author of Beyond the Shot, to talk about what happens emotionally when GLP-1 progress stalls or the food noise comes back. Jessica is also a certified compassion teacher, and she has used a GLP-1 herself for more than two years, mostly for reasons beyond weight loss. We talk about the difference between feelings and beliefs, how comparison and self-judgment can shape the way you see yourself, and why self-compassion matters when the old story says you’re the problem. She also shares NICE, her practice for meeting that moment with kindness, especially if part of you worries that going easier on yourself means you’ll just give up. This episode is the fourth stop on the GLP-1 Path in the Truce with Food Podcast Library, a set of conversations meant to be heard in order. Start the Path here: GLP-1 Path 7:47 – Why GLP-1 plateaus can feel so unexpected and what happens when progress stops being linear 9:05 – Jessica Brown’s reasons for using a GLP-1 beyond weight loss 15:35 – What can come up emotionally when food noise returns on a GLP-1 18:08 – The difference between feelings and beliefs and why it matters when you start blaming yourself 24:35 – How comparing your GLP-1 experience to other people can make you feel worse 28:52 – What makes support actually supportive when judgment is everywhere 34:40 – How to know when returning food noise needs emotional support, a medical conversation, or both 45:35 – Why the old story that you’re failing can come back so quickly during a plateau 50:56 – Jessica’s NICE practice for responding to old beliefs with self-compassion 52:38 – Jessica’s personal story of using NICE to change a belief she’d carried since infancy 59:19 – What emotional plateaus can reveal when food is no longer doing the same job 1:02:13 – Redefining progress when success is no longer just about weight or avoiding regain 1:11:00 – When to seek more support and what to know about GLP-1 microdosing claims Mentioned In Your GLP-1 Plateau Doesn’t Mean You’re Failing with Jessica Brown The Loving Diet | Instagram | YouTube Beyond the Shot Truce with Food Consistency Truce with Food Podcast Library Truce with Food Podcast Library: GLP-1 Path A Holistic Approach to GLP-1s with Mayo Clinic Dietician Tara Schmidt How to Use GLP-1s Without Losing the Muscle You Need with Ashley Fillmore The Body You Were Always Meant to Have with Sas Petherick [Body Stories Series #6] Episode 77: Your Green Juice Doesn’t Make You Worthy Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

You finally understand what’s been driving your food struggles. You change how you eat, you feel better, maybe you even think, okay, I’ve got this now. Then months or years later, the cravings come back, your body changes, or you find yourself eating when you’re not hungry again. It can feel like all that progress disappeared and you’re somehow back at the beginning. After more than 10 years of this podcast and 330 episodes, what I keep seeing is that you may not need another answer. You may already have the right information, just at the wrong point in your own change process. The blood sugar episode that feels life-changing when you’re first realizing your cravings aren’t a willpower problem may not help two years later when you already understand the physiology and what you’re wrestling with is why you still want cookies when you’re alone on a Thursday night. Same information, completely different need. In this episode of Truce with Food, I explain why timing and sequencing matter so much when you’re changing your relationship with food, and why feeling like you’re starting over doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost your progress. I’m also introducing the new free Truce with Food podcast library, built from more than a decade of episodes and organized around the problem you’re actually trying to solve now, so you can find the right next conversation for where you are. 2:42 – Reflections on the good and bad of what happened during the summer season  8:06 – Disillusionment with what’s currently happening in the wellness world 11:19 – The pitfalls of relying heavily on AI for written content 19:28 – The inferior-superior cycle that keeps you ping-ponging between all-or-nothing thinking 23:09 – What I mean by “right information, wrong timing” and why the order of things really matters 31:00 – A newly organized, decade-in-the-making tool designed to guide you toward solutions based on your situation 35:20 – Demonstration of how the new podcast library works using three people as examples 45:54 – How to use the library (including curated paths, how to search, and how it links with your food quiz)  50:38 – Asking for two favors when you use the beta version of the podcast library Mentioned In Why You Keep Feeling Like You’re Starting Over With Food Truce with Food Podcast Library Email: [email protected] Find Your Food Stage Quiz Content with Carlos Episode 233: Quitting Alcohol and Managing Sugar Cravings with Laura McKowen | Books by Laura McKowen Episode 330: How to Make Habits Stick When Your Life Is Unpredictable with Monica Packer Episode 321: Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don’t with Erin Holt Episode 267: Esther Blum Demystifies Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for Perimenopause and Menopause Relief Episode 266: Dr. Stacy Sims on How “Women Are Not Small Men” (especially at midlife & with exercise) Episode 188: The 4 Weight Loss Willpower Myths Sabotaging Your Results Body Story Series with Sas Petherick: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

How many times have you been in the middle of a habit challenge and quietly given up? You make it to day 19 of 21, then your kid gets sick, your period starts, or life blows up and you don’t have the time or energy to do the habit that day. The problem is that so much popular habit advice teaches consistency as doing the same thing, the same way, day after day. As Monica Packer puts it, what we’ve actually learned is perfectionism, not habit change. Monica is a recovering perfectionist and the author of Sticky Habits. Her work looks at something most habit advice misses. Women often have less predictable time and energy because of caregiving, invisible labor, hormones, and the million moving pieces they’re managing. That doesn’t mean habits can’t work. It means we need a model for lasting change that accounts for how our lives actually work. In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Monica to talk about how rethinking consistency can help you build habits that actually stick. She explains what she calls gentle diligence, why doing your best isn’t the same as doing something perfectly, and how creating a baseline gives you a version of your habit you can maintain when life doesn’t go according to plan. We also get into what long-term social change can teach us about our obsession with quick results and why sustainable change requires measuring something different than speed. 3:36 – A short overview of Monica’s background 6:33 – Why the habit advice that works for men can quietly set women up to fail 12:37 – A solo trip that revealed how much invisible work it takes to keep a family running 15:17 – Male-centered authority and leadership in the habit change industry 18:49 – Why a habit challenge stalls out right around day 19, and the redefinition of consistency that has nothing to do with perfection 24:07 – How to establish a baseline version of your habits for less-than-ideal days, and what shifts when you start to believe in it 30:00 – An example of how showing up matters more than doing it right, and how Monica’s perfectionism inspired her book 36:17 – The point of habits and the flexibility to renegotiate them when circumstances come up 39:48 – Reframing what "fast enough" means for your own change, and being sold the lie of overnight success 44:47 – Two things Monica often says to her clients who are worried about consistency and doing things right 46:27 – Monica’s hopes for how she wants her book to impact both women who read it and the self-help and wellness industry overall 47:28 – Monica’s message for you if you fear you can’t change Mentioned In How to Make Habits Stick When Your Life Is Unpredictable with Monica Packer Sticky Habits by Monica Packer About Progress podcast | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon Truce with Food: Consistency Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

Jenny first learned to connect thinness with acceptance when she lost 30 pounds before eighth grade and returned to school getting attention she hadn’t received before. That connection shaped the next four decades of restriction, bingeing, bulimia, treatment, and trying to make peace with food. By the time Jenny found Truce with Food, she already knew her struggle wasn’t really about food. What she didn’t understand was what kept pulling her back into the same patterns. Identifying loneliness as one of her eating triggers and recognizing the deeper need for belonging underneath it gave her a completely different place to start. In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Jenny, a client who completed Truce with Food: Consistency, to talk about how her urge to binge fell away without more food rules or another plan to follow. We also get into the role perfectionism played in keeping her stuck, what helped her close the gap between knowing and doing, and what changed when she started building a life she genuinely wanted to be part of. 6:35 – Jenny’s history with disordered eating and body image 9:55 – Loneliness as Jenny’s emotional trigger for bingeing 19:22 – Valuing peace above thinness in our culture 21:18 – "C plus effort" in the group breaking Jenny’s perfectionism cycle  25:56 – Attuning to yourself to satisfy the emotional trigger underneath the food struggle 28:47 – The "knowing" but not "doing" gap that kept Jenny stuck for years  31:49 – Shrinking the gap by learning how to set up for success or for opting out 41:25 – Movement as a door opener to new friendships and more fun 46:01 – Bingeing as betrayal and Jenny’s refusal to let restriction run her life 50:16 – Why the urge to binge can disappear without explanation 55:23 – Bringing your body online to notice what feels good and what triggers you Mentioned In How Jenny Stopped Binge Eating Without More Food Rules Truce with Food: Consistency Free Workshop: Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

You know you’re not hungry, but there’s still this urgent, buzzy energy around food. You find yourself standing in front of the fridge needing something, even though you can’t say what you’re looking for. Maybe you wait until you’re alone to eat, or decide the diet starts tomorrow. You know what to do, so why can’t you do it? The problem isn’t that you need more information or haven’t tried hard enough. When that knowing and doing gap shows up, your survivor self is in the room. Its job is to protect you from a change that feels too risky, and food almost works. It soothes you and makes you feel less alone without asking you to risk failure, rejection, criticism, or looking bad. In this episode of Truce with Food, I’m sharing a masterclass I taught inside my client Diana Feinstein’s community about why eating when you’re not hungry makes so much sense. We talk about why starting habits and stopping habits require different strategies, why the survivor self can’t be coached or white-knuckled into changing, and how growing your healthy adult self helps food become obsolete as a coping strategy. Diana also shares how these patterns showed up in her own life and what changed when she finally understood what was happening underneath the food. 1:42 – How this masterclass supports everyday eaters and the coaches helping them 7:30 – Why health coach Diana Feinstein turned to Ali despite knowing what to do 10:05 – Why what looks like self-sabotage may actually be self-protection 12:27 – How the hidden “why not” can outweigh your reasons for changing 18:33 – Why hearing other people name the same food patterns helped Diana feel less alone 20:28 – Why starting a new habit and stopping an unwanted habit require different strategies 23:50 – Why the knowing and doing gap isn’t a character flaw or personal failure 26:43 – How the survivor self creates resistance to change and why it can’t be coached 31:41 – Why food is such a powerful coping strategy and the deeper need it almost meets 35:26 – How hustling and overworking show up in your patterns with food 42:22 – How growing your healthy adult self helps close the knowing and doing gap 45:29 – The four stages of closing the gap between knowing and doing 51:16 – How compassionate witnessing helped Diana stop fighting her feelings 55:17 – What compassionate witnessing looks like and why it isn’t the same as fixing someone 1:00:08 – How food noise can signal that your survivor self is active Mentioned In How to Close the Knowing-Doing Gap with Food MaxPact Health | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn Diana Feinstein on LinkedIn What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track Get Clients Unstuck and Why Another Tool Isn’t the Answer Truce Coaching Certification Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

You can know exactly what to do and still find yourself repeating the same behavior. You make the plan, feel motivated, and get going, only to hit that point where the novelty wears off and the old pattern comes right back. Then the question becomes whether you need more discipline, a better tool, or someone else to finally tell you what you’re missing. That confusion is the messy middle of change, and it’s where both clients and coaches can start to lose the plot. What gets you started isn’t always what gets you through this part, especially when shame, identity, and old protective patterns get involved. It’s also where coaches can start wondering if they don’t know enough, if the client isn’t ready, or if they should be doing more to fix what’s happening. In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Christen Conly, a yoga teacher, holistic health and embodiment coach, and graduate of my Truce Coaching Certification, to talk about what changed when she stopped relying on more tips and tools. We get into why falling off track can make sense, how the urge to fix clients creates its own problems, and what becomes possible when change is treated as a process to navigate rather than something to eradicate. 6:34 – What led Christen Conly to Truce Coaching Certification 12:48 – Why starting and stopping behaviors require different coaching skills 16:17 – The client Christen wishes she could support with what she knows now 17:58 – When helping clients becomes entangled with approval 20:20 – Reframing self-sabotage as a protective response 23:10 – Shame-based motivation versus sustainable motivation 27:12 – Letting go of the responsibility to fix clients 32:21 – How Truce Coaching Certification helped Christen coach with more confidence 37:04 – The difference between mindset, identity, and story 39:26 – Technical versus adaptive change and creating safety to experiment 41:41 – How Christen’s coaching changed after certification 44:45 – Using the emotional immune system with clients Mentioned In When Tips and Tools Aren’t Enough to Create Lasting Change with Christen Conly Christen Conly | Instagram Get Clients Unstuck and Why Another Tool Isn’t the Answer Truce Coaching Certification Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

You find yourself standing in front of the kitchen counter, not knowing why you’re there. Or you’re out at a work event already thinking about when you’ll be able to get home and be alone with food. You’re not actually hungry, but you feel pulled there anyway. It’s urgent, buzzy, and hard to talk yourself out of, even when some part of you knows this isn’t really about the food. What we often call emotional eating is usually a message from your nervous system. Food can soothe. It can give you the almost-feeling of being comforted, supported, and cared for. But as Dr. Deborah MacNamara says, “There’s nothing as addictive as something that almost works.” When the deeper need is safety or belonging, managing the behavior without understanding what it’s protecting only keeps you stuck in the same loop. In this episode of the Truce with Food podcast, I’m sharing my conversation with dietitian Tara Schmidt from Mayo Clinic’s On Nutrition podcast to walk through the first step of my Truce with Food framework and what it reveals about emotional eating. We talk about why food noise can feel so urgent, the patterns that keep people from getting their needs met, what our food memories reveal about belonging, and how to begin breaking the cycle without turning it into another perfectionist project. 4:00 – How Ali’s interview on Tara’s podcast came together, and why I wanted to re-air it on Truce with Food 10:07 – The next best step you can take after listening to this episode 14:03 – What inspired Ali to specialize in helping people heal their relationship with food 17:15 – Four main triggers (and the unmet needs within) behind emotional eating 22:11 – How your physiology and psychology can influence each other due to the tiredness trigger 23:41 – The types of food emotional eaters go to, and the relationship between food noise and emotional eating 30:02 – Three behavioral patterns of comfort eating and how they serve as protection strategies  35:25 – Those who don’t eat based on their emotions, and why some people mindlessly overeat 37:36 – How to support someone who you think struggles with emotional eating without making them feel uncomfortable 39:28 – How to pause the reflex of emotional eating (and the one time you shouldn’t) 42:37 – How one client went from decades on medication to selling her business and feeling at home in her own body by ending her emotional eating cycle Mentioned In Mayo Clinic on Nutrition: The Four Triggers Behind Emotional Eating A Holistic Approach to GLP-1s with Mayo Clinic Dietitian Tara Schmidt Mayo Clinic on Nutrition Podcast with Tara Schmidt, RDN Institute for Integrative Nutrition | Dr. Mark Hyman Dr. Deborah MacNamara | Nourished: Connection, Food, and Caring for Our Kids (And Everyone Else We Love) by Dr. Deborah MacNamara Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

Women are hearing a lot right now about eating more, building muscle, healing their metabolism, and using GLP-1s for weight loss. But so much of the conversation still skips over what actually matters for women’s bodies, especially in perimenopause and menopause. If you’ve ever tried to nourish yourself more and immediately watched the scale go up, it can feel like your body is broken. It’s not, but your metabolism may need repair before it’s ready for fat loss. That’s why I wanted to talk with Ashley Fillmore, founder and president of Metabolic Fix. Ashley is a leading expert in sustainable weight and fat loss with over 20 years of experience helping women heal their metabolism, balance their hormones, and change their body composition without staying stuck in chronic dieting. She also brings something I always appreciate, real client data, real lived experience, and a clear-eyed take on the online muscle-building and GLP-1 claims that don’t match what actually happens in women’s bodies. In this episode of the Truce with Food podcast, I sit down with Ashley to talk about how to use GLP-1s without losing the muscle you need, and why they can support weight loss but can’t replace metabolic repair. We get into her Repair, Rebuild, Results framework, why eating more can feel so scary when your body has adapted to under-eating, and what sustainable fat loss actually requires if you want results that last. 6:27 – Defining metabolism, what the repair phase does, and the impact of hormones on your metabolic health  12:57 – Why you might be stuck even if you’re doing many of the right things 17:25 – How the reverse diet in the repair phase helps your metabolism safely adapt to more calories 25:28 – How long the repair phase lasts, and why Ashley’s took longer than average 32:03 – What happens during the rebuild stage, and why it’s crucial before entering fat loss 36:19 – Debunking media claims and setting realistic expectations about muscle gain 47:02 – Why lean muscle is the body’s currency for longevity, not just an aesthetic bodily upgrade 50:06 – Why GLP-1s should be a supplement, not your primary weight loss strategy 53:22 – The importance of careful GLP-1 microdosing usage and greater metabolic health knowledge among doctors 1:03:19 – Why not all weight loss is a good thing, and the problem with overfocusing on protein alone in your diet 1:06:25 – Ashley’s free tool for estimating a healthy calorie target based on your weight loss goals Mentioned In How to Use GLP-1s Without Losing the Muscle You Need with Ashley Fillmore Dr. Stacy Sims  Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Metabolic Fix | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | YouTube Metabolic Fix Weight Loss Calculator  Cheers to Your Success Podcast Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

"What's wrong with me?" You've probably asked yourself this after another night of eating when you weren't hungry, scrolling when you meant to go to bed, or saying yes to something you had no energy for. The late-night sugar, the people-pleasing, the crashing after weeks of overdoing everything. You're not lazy and you're not broken, but you are asking the wrong question. The real question is what's happening in your body because so much of what we chalk up to bad habits or weak willpower is actually driven by biology. Your nervous system is keeping you in familiar patterns because familiar feels safe, even when it's not working. Your cortisol is spiking your hunger and blunting your fullness signals, and if you're in perimenopause, all of it hits harder because the hormonal buffer you used to have is disappearing. In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Amber Romaniuk, an expert in emotional eating, digestive health, and hormonal balance with over 12 years of clinical and lived experience, to discuss the biology behind the behaviors we call self-sabotage. We get into how chronic stress and cortisol reshape your hunger and cravings, why everything from sugar to people-pleasing hits differently in perimenopause, and what it actually looks like to stop fighting your body and start understanding what it's telling you. 7:16 – Why mindset work fails when you ignore your body's role in behavior 9:27 – Why your nervous system keeps you stuck in familiar patterns even when you want to change 15:22 – How cortisol changes your hunger, cravings, and capacity to handle stress 21:55 – Why everything from sugar to stress hits differently in perimenopause and menopause 28:34 – How low progesterone drives people-pleasing, overworking, and chasing the next accomplishment 34:19 – Getting off the addiction to intensity and what to do instead of chasing cheap dopamine 41:17 – Amber's cortisol test recommendations and what to actually do with the results 48:19 – What guilt does to your amygdala and why it keeps you from prioritizing yourself Mentioned In Your Sugar Cravings Make Sense When You Understand Your Hormones with Amber Romaniuk Amber Approved | TikTok | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn Book a Body Freedom Consultation with Amber Hormone Imbalance Quiz No Sugarcoating Podcast Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

For many of us, the body has long felt like an inconvenient, separate entity. Our intellect does the heavy lifting while our physical selves get relegated to the background. You know how to think your way through problems, build a career, figure things out. But when it comes to looking down and asking your body what it actually needs, there's a tight ball of feelings most of us would rather not touch. My dear friend and developmental coach Sas Petherick used to live that way. Over the past year, through a process she describes as one of the most vulnerable experiences of her life, Sas has gone through a complete identity shift in how she relates to her body, her marriage, and herself. She's lost 52 pounds and built her most developed muscle mass as an adult. But what surprised her most wasn't the physical change. It was that figuring out her body stuff required more growing up than changing careers, getting sober, or losing a parent. Sas returns to close out a year-long conversation about what it actually takes to change your relationship with your body. We get into why body image lives in the brain and not the mirror, how the padding she carried was protection against vulnerability she wasn't ready to feel, and what it means when your insides finally match your outsides. This is what it looks like to move from self-monitoring to true self-awareness and become more fully yourself. 7:21 – Why Sas ranks this body journey alongside sobriety, grief, and career change as one of the most identity-altering experiences of her life 13:00 – Difficulties of the journey and how much Sas’s relationship with her body has impacted her nearly 20-year-old relationship with her partner 19:08 – Highlights of the journey and what Sas noticed while watching a stranger at dinner that revealed just how far she's come 32:50 – Why maintenance (which everyone says is the hardest part of this journey) has actually become easier for Sas 46:23 – Why Sas’s relationship with food is more difficult than her relationship with exercise, and how she’s learning to work through it 50:11 – Why body dysmorphia might have a root emotion that doesn't get talked about enough 1:00:07 – Defining body image, embracing the body positivity movement, and why grief isn’t just about loss 1:02:37 – Sas's honest take on GLP-1s: what’s missing from the conversation, what she'd do if she were taking them, and what everyone should be asking before they decide 1:09:12 – How exploring her relationships with food, movement, and her body are no longer tied to the scale for Sas How to Lose Weight and Love Yourself (because you can do both!) “We’re the Brave Ones” – Discipline vs Devotion, Macros & Being Sporty Emotions & Embodiment for Sustainable Weight Loss How to Hold Your Weight Loss Goals Loosely (for better results) How to Finally Stop White-Knuckling Your Weight-Loss Journey Sas Petherick  Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

The world is a lot right now. Globally, personally, often both. And when things are this intense, it can be easy to feel like your relationship with food is a first world problem, or that nothing matters, you're just going to eat. To dismiss the battle as something to deal with later, when things calm down. But this is exactly when it matters most. We can't all collapse at the same time. If you're hungry, depleted, or consumed by overriding your cravings, you don't have the energy for your own life, let alone for showing up with the values you want to see ripple out into the world. And the conditioning that tells you investing in yourself takes from others, that you should be able to power through, that your needs are too much, is the same conditioning that keeps the cycle going. In this episode of Truce with Food, I walk through three reasons your food battle matters more in hard times, not less. I cover why you need to be physically nourished to show up for what you care about, why the all-or-nothing thinking that says investing in yourself takes from others is the same conditioning we need to change, and why most weight and food struggles are really about a complicated relationship with power. Healing your relationship with food isn't a distraction from the work of this moment. It's part of it. 5:47 – Why overriding your hunger actually robs you of the rebelliousness and energy needed for your life 11:17 – Why learning to connect how you eat to how your body works is revolutionary 13:52 – The cultural conditioning that makes you believe investing in your own health must come at the expense of your family or work 17:23 – How this zero-sum cultural conditioning trap exists on every level 19:55 – How a client learned the emotional work of tending to her needs, instead of trying to fix issues for her daughter 21:13 – Your food battle as a doorway to examine where you’re still sacrificing yourself to unsustainable norms 24:01 – How that guilty feeling you get for overeating or not working out is often a symptom of internalized capitalist productivity 26:42 – Backlash as a sign of actual progress and how “slow and steady” keeps you in the game 31:41 – How stubborn weight issues are often linked to an unconscious resistance to dominative power, and the need to redefine power as collaborative 36:03 – The yin archetype’s association with food and body issues (including eating disorders) Mentioned In Healing Your Relationship With Food Is a Rebellious Act Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don’t with Erin Holt What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term Freedom from Cravings course Truce with Food Food Stage Finder Assessment Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

Twenty years ago, functional medicine changed everything for me. My IBS cleared. My skin cleared. My depression lifted. And for the first time, I understood food as medicine instead of just calories. But somewhere in the last five years, functional medicine started looking a lot like what it was railing against. A supplement for every lab marker. A protocol for every person. A business model that profits from making you feel more broken than when you walked in. So I stopped talking about it much here. But I still believe in root cause resolution. And I wanted to bring on someone who practices it the way it was meant to be practiced. That's why I brought Erin Holt on the show. Erin is a seasoned clinician, clinic founder, and trainer of other practitioners who has been vocal about what's gone wrong in this industry while still believing fiercely in what it can be. She practices what she calls intuitive functional medicine, a framework that starts with the physical body and refuses to stop there. In this episode of Truce with Food, Erin and I get into what's actually broken in functional medicine right now, why data can never replace discernment or lived experience, and how her five-phase formula bridges the physical, mental, emotional, and energetic aspects of healing. We also talk about why you can't rewire an inflamed brain with mindset work, and what it really means to self-source your health instead of outsourcing it to someone in a white coat. 2:48 – Introduction to Erin and how she and her trainees help one-on-one clients 7:56 – The shift in functional medicine over the last five years that’s recreating the exact problem it was designed to solve 11:25 – Defining functional medicine and comparing it to more conventional medicine 16:46 – What intuitive functional medicine is and what it looks like in Erin’s practice (and her training of other practitioners) 24:08 – Self-sourcing vs. outsourcing your health and the long, underexamined history of the loss of self-trust in so many people 34:09 – A basic example of how Erin helps her clients rebuild their self-trust (without forcing it) 39:55 – Why too many choices in the name of empowerment can actually cause someone to freeze in response (and what skilled practitioners do differently) 44:11 – The real point of fear-based marketing and how to spot it before it sells you something you don't need 47:00 – Why the nocebo effect, medical hexing, and the labels a practitioner puts on you can quietly become the ceiling on your healing 49:15 – Functional labs that are actually worth it and the very contextual, individualized way Erin administers them as a practitioner 51:43 – Erin’s framework for whole-person healing, why the starting point doesn’t matter, and what needs to happen before you can rewire your brain using mindset work 1:00:42 – The importance and meaning of self-compassion and why you must only work with those who see your potential to heal Mentioned In Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don't with Erin Holt Manifest Your Health™ The Funk’tional Nutrition | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest Funk’tional Nutrition Academy (FNA)  Funk’tional Nutrition: How Belonging, Not Willpower, Shapes Your Eating Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

You've tried the plans. The protocols. Maybe therapy, journaling, intuitive eating. And food still feels like a battle. The problem isn't that you haven't tried hard enough. It's that no one has ever shown you where you actually are. I've spent 19 years working with women who've tried everything and nothing's worked long term. What I keep finding is that the approach mismatches the stage. And you can't know what to do next until you know where you're starting from. In this episode of Truce with Food, I walk through I walk through the four developmental stages of resolving your food battle and introduce my free Food Stage Finder Assessment. If you've ever wondered why you're still struggling despite everything you've done, this is where to start. 1:40 – How women's healthcare concerns get dismissed and what led Ali to this work 3:59 – Why food struggles fall into two extremes and why both miss the point 6:26 – What the Food Stage Finder Assessment is and why Ali created it 7:34 – Why more information stopped being the problem for Ali's clients 9:03 – Women's health span post-menopause and why midlife is the time to get this right 11:56 – Taking responsibility for your own body literacy without burning out 13:11 – Why intuitive eating is hard when you've never had healthy eating patterns 14:06 – How adolescent culture shapes our food culture and why quick fixes dominate 19:50 – Why maturity, not more learning, is what actually creates food freedom 22:38 – The four developmental stages of resolving your food battle 25:53 – Stage one: Gathering Evidence 27:04 – Stage two: Breakthrough Ready 29:37 – Stage three: Practicing Freedom 32:48 – Stage four: Trusting in Satisfaction 36:19 – Why most people are surprised by their Food Stage Finder results 36:32 – How to take the free Food Stage Finder Assessment Mentioned In What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term Truce with Food Food Stage Finder Assessment Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

After nearly a decade of conversations about food, culture, and psychology, this podcast has a new name. What was Insatiable is now the Truce with Food Podcast. What started as a rebrand turned into an honest look at how success, ambition, and identity shift over time. Ten years ago, metrics like downloads and productivity felt like the scorecard. Then motherhood happened. Menopause happened. The realities of limited time and energy became impossible to ignore. I had to ask what actually feels like success now. In this episode of Truce with Food, I share how hustle culture quietly shaped my definition of success and how I used my own framework to work through overworking. Because creating a truce with food often means creating a truce with the relentless pursuit of success itself. 4:26 – How a decade of podcasting quietly reveals how cultural definitions of success shape our goals and habits  9:57 – When things began to shift in my energy and capacity regarding hustle culture 13:13 – What the rebrand is about and why a years-long evolving framework involving work with real people matters now more than ever 16:48 – The Truce with Food framework as a way to take back your power and how I used it to stop overworking 23:32 – Re-evaluation of time, energy, and capacity as a result of hustle culture limits in midlife  32:54 – What is and isn’t changing about the podcast Mentioned In What a Truce with Food Taught Me About Redefining Success Truce with Food How Just Showing Up Ended Years of Binging Content with Carlos | my husband, who designed my new website and content strategy Braid Creative | Kathleen Shannon on Skipping One-Size-Fits-All and Experimenting Instead Health, Body, and Business with Ali Shapiro (Being Boss Podcast) Find Your Food Stage Quiz Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library