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How much power have you given your body image to determine whether you're going to have a good day? If your pants fit comfortably, your eating feels under control, or the scale says what you want it to say, maybe everything else feels a little easier to handle. But when those things don't go your way, the whole day can feel compromised. In this shorter episode of Full But Not Finished, a morning with my nine-year-old daughter and our dog gets me thinking about how we develop our "morning sense" of safety, and what happens when we become dependent on one thing to feel okay. I also share what five weeks away from Instagram have taught me about my own dependence on external reassurance, and why finding other sources of meaning in our lives may be an important part of changing our relationships with food and our bodies. Because sometimes food and body image are being asked to carry far more responsibility for our well-being than they can realistically sustain.

Why does dinner feel so much harder than breakfast when it comes to binge eating, overeating, or feeling out of control with food? Maybe you can eat breakfast without much thought, but by dinner you're picking at food while cooking, struggling to feel satisfied, or experiencing a level of urgency around eating that wasn't there earlier in the day. In this episode of Full But Not Finished, I explore five reasons evening eating can become more complicated, including the buildup of hunger throughout the day, decision fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and the way our nervous systems respond to the transition from daytime activity to nighttime stillness. If you struggle with nighttime binge eating, emotional eating, or feeling like a completely different person around food after 5 PM, this episode offers a more specific way to understand what's happening and where you might begin to make changes. https://iamstefaniemichele.com 01:46 Openings Versus Closings 04:24 Zoom Out Your Timeline 07:36 Ghrelin And Hunger Build 11:05 Eat More And Snack 14:30 Satisfaction is the New Ghrelin 16:08 Decision And Emotional Fatigue 21:27 Make Dinner Easier 25:23 Daylight Versus Dark 28:50 Stillness Brings Feelings 33:05 Wrap Up And Next Steps MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Somatic Experiencing Practitioner & Binge Recovery Coach Coaching: https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele Contact: [email protected]

If you've been feeling more impulsive with food, more critical of your body, or unusually impatient with everyone and everything, you may be dealing with a capacity problem. After unexpectedly stepping away from Instagram for a couple of weeks, I noticed some surprising changes: more patience with my kids, more attunement with food, less impulsivity, and more...lightness. It made me look more closely at how stress, stimulation, and constant demands can take up space in the nervous system without our awareness. In this episode, I explore nervous system capacity and the window of tolerance, and how reduced emotional bandwidth can show up through food impulsivity, body image distress, and everyday reactivity. I also look at why recognizing that something is affecting you doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to change it. Sometimes food and body image feel harder because they're happening inside a system that already has very little room left. MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Somatic Experiencing Practitioner & Binge Recovery Coach Website: https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele Contact: [email protected]

Therapist and binge eating recovery coach Becca Robinson joins me to talk about the ways sexual trauma changed her relationship with food, her body, and herself. For Becca, bingeing, purging, and restriction became much more intense after her assault. Fullness could feel physically overwhelming and bring her back into sensations she wanted to escape, while restriction created a sense of distance from her body and a feeling of agency she was struggling to find elsewhere. We also talk about how trauma shaped the way she saw her body, including the shift toward seeing herself as a sexual object, and why behaviors that looked confusing or self-destructive made more sense once she understood what they were doing for her. Becca shares how trauma education, therapy, and somatic work eventually changed both her eating disorder recovery and her relationship with her body, and what it has meant to move from feeling disconnected from her body to experiencing it as her own. Content note: This episode discusses sexual assault, binge eating, purging, restriction, and trauma responses. There are no graphic descriptions of sexual violence. Becca is an integrative, relational therapist who uses her lived experience, therapeutic knowledge and experience in the field of eating disorders to help people find food freedom and body acceptance so they can give a more authentic life. Becca is also the host of the Food and Body podcast where she has conversations with guests about breaking free from food rules, the binge-restrict cycle and make peace with their bodies.   Website - www.beccrobinsonchinntherapy.com (coming soon)  Email - [email protected]  Instagram - becomingwithbecca_therapist Podcast instagram - thefoodandbody_podcast Email - [email protected]   MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Website: https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele Contact: [email protected]

If you've ever thought, I know why I binge. I know what triggers it. I know what I'm supposed to do instead. So why am I still doing it? I wanted to talk with clinical hypnotherapist Emelia Armstrong-Crews about this. Can hypnosis be useful when talking and insight have only gotten you so far? We ended up having a much bigger conversation about how people change. Emelia talks about what it means to stop trusting your own instincts, which felt especially relevant to eating disorders, and how hypnosis may help someone have a different experience without needing it to make logical sense. I share some of my own experience with this too, including how hard it used to be for me to relax enough to feel anything during embodiment work, and how different that is now. So can hypnosis help with binge eating? What becomes possible when we stop assuming that understanding the problem is the same thing as changing it? CONNECT WITH EMELIA ARMSTRONG-CREWS Clinical Hypnotherapist Institute of Applied Psychology Australia Website: https://hypnotherapywithemelia.com Email: [email protected] MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Somatic Experiencing Practitioner & Binge Recovery Coach Website: https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele Contact: [email protected]

Eckhart Tolle says a dog doesn't have body image issues because a dog doesn't have an image of itself. My first reaction was basically: okay, but we're not dogs. We know what we look like. Other people see us. Our bodies exist in a world that assigns meaning to appearance. We can't just opt out of all of that. But there is something useful in what he's saying. How much of our body image distress is intensified by the amount of attention we give our image? In this episode I talk about mirrors, photos, technology, aging, body checking. There is a difference between avoidance and choosing not to always look at yourself, and why moving your attention away from your body can actually feel unsafe. I also share how I use non-attention when I get pulled into that tunnel myself, and a simple practice for getting better at moving attention between threat and the rest of your life. MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helps people understand the deeper psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns shaping their relationships with food, body image, and themselves. Instagram : @iamstefaniemichele Substack : @iamstefaniemichele 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie (apply for January 2027) Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele

A listener wrote in about something I know a lot of people experience in recovery: hearing someone talk about cutting sugar, seeing a weight-loss commercial, or coming across an article demonizing certain foods, and then feeling almost compelled to do the opposite. Not because you suddenly want the food more, exactly. Because something in you is saying, absolutely not. You will not take this away from me again. That rebel response makes sense, especially if restriction has hurt you before. But it can also become its own kind of trap if someone else talking about their diet ends up changing what you eat. This week on Full But Not Finished, I'm talking about how to stay with yourself in those moments, without complying with the message and without having to prove anything to yourself (or the universe at large). MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helps people understand the deeper psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns shaping their relationships with food, body image, and themselves. Instagram : @iamstefaniemichele Substack : @iamstefaniemichele 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie (apply for January 2027) Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele

In this episode, I'm joined by Suanne to talk about a recovery story that began in a fairly textbook way: regular meals, consistency, and learning to stop bingeing. But stopping the binges didn't automatically resolve everything underneath them. Food choices could still be shaped by ideas about weight, volume, and what counted as "healthy." Years later, a kidney cancer diagnosis complicated those ideas even further, forcing Suanne to reconsider some of the rules she had relied on and what taking care of herself actually meant. We talk about the difference between behavioral recovery and a freer relationship with food, how health concerns can intersect with restriction, and what recovery can continue to ask of us long after the most obvious symptoms are gone. Learn more about Suanne: @suannebd on Instagram MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helps people understand the deeper psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns shaping their relationships with food, body image, and themselves. 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/coaching Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele Website https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Still having food noise even though you've stopped dieting? Mental restriction can keep binge eating and overeating going long after you've stopped counting calories or labeling foods "good" and "bad." In this episode, I share a client story that explains mental restriction a little differently than we usually talk about it. She wasn't afraid of cookies, worried about calories, or judging herself for wanting dessert. But underneath was still an expectation that, if she were fully recovered, she should eventually stop needing cookies emotionally. We talk about this subtle form of mental restriction that can remain after dieting and how even recovery or intuitive eating ideals can accidentally become another standard to live up to. If you've ever thought, I'm not restricting anymore, so why can't I stop overeating? this episode may help explain what might still happening. MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helps people understand the deeper psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns shaping their relationships with food, body image, and themselves. 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/coaching Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele Website https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Why does a travel day, a Sunday night, or the first day back after being away sometimes make you want to graze, overeat, or binge? Transitions can do strange things to our relationship with food, especially in the hours when one routine has ended and the next one hasn't quite begun. More free content in weekly emails Instagram too

In this episode of Full But Not Satisfied, Stefanie shares four hidden behaviors from her 25 years with disordered eating and an eating disorder — things she assumed were evidence of bad character, but were actually nervous system threat responses. From neglecting hygiene and hoping for a hospital stay, to feeling jealous of other people's diets, to stealing and lying about food, these are the parts of eating disorder recovery that rarely get talked about. Using nervous system regulation, polyvagal theory, and parts work, Stefanie unpacks why these behaviors happen — and why shame, not the behavior itself, is often the thing that keeps people stuck. This episode is for anyone in eating disorder recovery, disordered eating recovery, or body image healing who has ever done something they didn't want to admit out loud. Stefanie's Mailing List >> Topics covered: eating disorder recovery, disordered eating behaviors, binge eating shame, nervous system regulation, polyvagal theory, parts work, body image healing, jealousy in eating disorder recovery, food and shame. 00:01 Shame, Shame 02:33 Hygiene And Not Wanting to Care Care of Myself 09:58 My Routines Now 13:02 Feeling Resentful Of Friends Who Lost Weight 17:18 GLP-1 Comparison Triggers 21:55 Anything For A Reset! Even that. 28:36 Stealing And Lying For Food 35:37 Safety And Recovery 36:58 Closing Thoughts   More From Stefanie Instagram Website

Why is listening to your body so confusing? You might be trying to follow your hunger and fullness cues but still have no idea whether you're feeling hunger, anxiety, habit, adrenaline, an emotion, or the pressure of paying far too much attention. In this episode, I talk through five reasons body cues can be difficult to interpret, especially after disordered eating or years of overriding them. Cues may still be inconsistent or extreme. Several sensations may be happening at the same time. Anxiety can interrupt interoception, emotions can become wired together with food urges, and the cue you notice first may simply be the one you are most accustomed to following. Even trying very hard to eat intuitively can turn hunger and fullness into another system to monitor and get right. Listening to your body becomes more useful when a cue is treated as information rather than an automatic instruction. By the end of this episode, you'll have a clearer way to think about what your body is communicating without assuming every sensation is telling you exactly what to do. MORE FROM STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helps people understand the deeper psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns shaping their relationships with food, body image, and themselves. 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/coaching Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele Website https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Why do we eat when we're bored, even when we know we aren't hungry?  In this episode, I look at boredom eating through a nervous system lens and question the assumption that boredom simply means we cannot tolerate being alone with ourselves. Stillness can leave us with a mind that is anything but still, especially when the brain shifts into the default mode network and begins revisiting everything we were too occupied to notice before. Food can give shape to unstructured time and offer a "gear shift" of energy that the nervous system may really be asking for. I also talk about the difference between needing rest, seeking stimulation, and sliding into a lower-energy state that we may be calling boredom. Understanding which one is happening can change the way we respond to emotional eating, grazing, or the urge to eat when there is nothing else to do. ABOUT STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helps people understand the deeper psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns shaping their relationships with food, body image, and themselves. 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/coaching Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele Website https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Can you work toward body acceptance while considering a GLP-1 medication? In this unscripted collaboration, body image coaches Kristina Bruce of Unlearning Beautiful and Stefanie Michele of Full But Not Finished talk about what happens when you have spent years stepping away from dieting while the culture around you appears to be moving toward weight loss again. We discuss the pressure on both sides of the GLP-1 conversation, the limits of turning dieting or anti-diet thinking into a fixed belief system, and why body trust cannot be reduced to one universally correct decision. The conversation moves beneath the choice itself into the life, body, identity, or future we may still be attached to—and the difficulty of knowing what self-care means after years of confusing it with self-control. Choosing relief does not necessarily mean abandoning yourself, and choosing not to pursue weight loss does not automatically make you freer. The work is learning to recognize what is true inside your own life without turning today's decision into another rule you must follow tomorrow. This conversation is educational and is not medical advice. Decisions about GLP-1 medications should be made with a qualified medical professional who understands your individual health history, including any history of disordered eating or eating disorders. ABOUT KRISTINA BRUCE Kristina Bruce is a body image coach and the founder of Unlearning Beautiful. She helps people stop obsessing about their bodies and develop greater peace, trust, and freedom. Free Guide to Body Peace https://www.kristinabruce.com/guide 1:1 Body Peace Coaching https://www.kristinabruce.com/private-coaching Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kristinabrucecoach ABOUT STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and somatic practitioner who helps people understand the psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns underneath binge eating, food control, body image anxiety, and feeling trapped in the relationship with their bodies. 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/coaching Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele Website https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

In this Q&A episode, I'm answering two questions about eating disorder recovery. The first is about how to make peace with the years an eating disorder took — the grief of looking back and realizing how much of life was shaped by food, body image, fear, and survival, without blaming yourself for not recovering sooner. The second question is about why body image can still matter, even when part of you feels embarrassed by that or tells yourself it is a "first world problem." I talk about lost time, self-blame, body shame, and the very human wish to feel okay in your body without turning any of it into another reason to shame yourself. More from Stef: Binge Eating to Intuitive Eating (BE2IE) Self-Study Course iamstefaniemichele.com/iamstefaniemichelecourse.com Substack (essays on body image, appetite, and the nervous system) iamstefaniemichele.substack.com Instagram instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele