Chatting with Cara - The Relationship with Food Podcast

Ever stood in the supermarket staring at a label wondering what "sustainable" really means? In this episode of Chatting with Cara, I sit down with Professor Nicola Randall, an evidence-based agriculture and agroecology expert, to unpick what's really behind the labels on our food, and how it connects to a healthier relationship with food.

We talk about organic rules, grass-fed marketing, palm oil, ultra-processed food stigma, and why "good choices made consistently" matters more than chasing perfection. If you want sustainable eating habits without the overwhelm, this one's for you.

In this episode I talk about -

• What "sustainable" actually means (and why it's not one thing). Nicola breaks sustainability down into three strands, economic, environmental and social and explains why a label saying "sustainable" often has no legal definition behind it at all.
  

• The difference between legally regulated labels and marketing terms. Organic has to meet strict legal standards (at least 95% organic ingredients, no synthetic fertilisers or pesticides, no GMOs). Terms like "grass-fed" and "regenerative," on the other hand, are far more loosely defined and open to marketing spin.
  

• What certification schemes like Red Tractor and RSPCA Assured actually check. They're not all measuring the same thing, one might be about traceability and British provenance, another about animal welfare specifically. Neither guarantees the lowest carbon footprint.
  

• Why demonising ultra-processed food misses the bigger picture. We talk honestly about the socio-economic reality that whole-food, "perfect" eating isn't accessible to everyone, and why shaming people for their food choices only adds more stigma to an already loaded topic.
  

• The uncomfortable trade-offs consumers face. You often can't have local AND fair trade AND organic AND affordable all at once. Nicola's take: it's about awareness of what matters most to you, not chasing an impossible ideal.
  

• What the future of food might look like. Climate impacts, extreme weather, and global political uncertainty are already changing what farmers can grow and what ends up on our shelves, alongside genuinely exciting developments like urban farming.

So next time you're standing in the supermarket aisle feeling overwhelmed by labels, remember: you don't need to know everything. Just get clear on what matters most to you, and let that guide good choices made consistently.

Connect with Cara -

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to transform this area of your life I'd love to support you, please get in touch with me using the links below.

Email - [email protected] 

Website - www.coachingwithcara.co.uk

Facebook - Coaching with Cara 

Instagram - @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together? 

Book a FREE no-obligation consultation call to discover what's possible. 

Book your call here.

Until next time, keep chatting!

Are GLP-1 drugs actually improving your relationship with food, or just quietening it? In this episode of Chatting with Cara, I'm talking honestly about GLP-1 drugs, food noise, and why appetite suppression isn't the same as food freedom.

In this episode I talk about -

• My stance on GLP-1 drugs. No judgement as always as my firmly believe you have full autonomy over your own body.

• What food noise actually is. The constant background chatter about food, thinking about it, planning it, being preoccupied by it and why it's become such a big part of the national conversation since Oprah spoke about it.
• Two real conversations that inspired this episode. One person feeling brilliant with less food noise a few months into treatment, another who'd regained a stone from "not listening to their body" and what that tells us.
• The honeymoon period. Why an improved relationship with food in the first few months on GLP-1 drugs needs unpicking, is it less urge to eat, less guilt after eating, or something else entirely?
• Why appetite suppression isn't food freedom. The mindset work, identity work, and food noise work that still needs doing because when the drugs are reduced or stopped, that's where sustainability is.
• What I actually work on with clients on GLP-1s. Language around food (yes, we're removing "cheat meal"), identity shifts as your body changes, hunger and fullness cues, and unpicking things like takeaway habits, no judgement, just curiosity.

Connect with Cara - 

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to transform this area of your life I'd love to support you, please get in touch with me using the below links.

Email -  [email protected]

Website - www.coachingwithcara.co.uk

Facebook - Coaching with Cara

Instagram - @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together? 

Fill out this form here and I will be in touch.

Until next time, keep chatting!

You know how to lose weight. You know how to gain it back. But has anyone ever taught you how to maintain it? In this episode I break down why chronic dieters get stuck in a rinse-and-repeat cycle of losing and regaining and it's not down to willpower or determination.

I was chatting to a woman recently who summed it up perfectly, she said "I knew how to lose weight, I knew how to gain weight, but I didn't know how to maintain weight." If that hits home, this one's for you. Diets are just a set of rules and rules run out. What happens next is the bit nobody talks about.

In this episode I cover- 

• Why diets are designed to bring you back. Diets are a set of rules someone else made and if they actually worked long-term, the diet industry wouldn't be a multi billion pound business. They need you to come back.

• The all-or-nothing trap. Diets give you total structure, then take it away the second you hit "goal weight," leaving you with no tools to cope especially if you lean towards perfectionism (and you do don't you?).

• Why life is the real trigger. School holidays, stressful work weeks, family chaos, nobody teaches you how to eat through real life, only how to follow a plan when everything's controlled.

• What building a healthy relationship with food actually looks like. Learning your own hunger and fullness cues, knowing you can leave food on your plate, being able to say no to another glass of wine, these are the intuitive tools that replace external rules.

• Why this feels "crunchy" for perfectionists at first. Swapping rigid rules for self-trust takes practice, but it's the only way off the diet rollercoaster for good.

If this is you, if you know how to lose weight but have never actually maintained it, if you're stuck rinsing and repeating the same diet cycle, you're my people. I'd love to help you build a healthy relationship with food, for good.

FYI - The perfectionism episode is episode 20.

Connect with Cara

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to transform this area of your life I'd love to support you, please get in touch with me using the below links.

Email - [email protected] - www.coachingwithcara.co.ukFacebook - Coaching with CaraInstagram - @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together?Enquire here about 1-1 coaching.

Until next time, keep chatting!

Someone sent me a supplement in my DMs this week. It had 1,500 reviews and was £25 for 30 capsules, so £50 a month for her and her husband. I had a look on PubMed for evidence that it works. Turns out most of the research is in mice, and the human trials hadn't really come back with anything. 1,500 reviews and basically no evidence.

This podcast takes you right back to 19 year old me at the University of Leeds, doing a Sports Science degree, failing first year statistics and having to resit it while my mate Bolts had to redo the whole year. I'm using that to explain what it actually takes for something to be proven to work, because it's a lot.

In this episode I talk about -

● My sports science degree, the morgue on a Thursday morning, and the year I failed statistics. What peer review actually is, and why I only ever use evidence-based nutrition and evidence-based psychology because of it.

● The £50 a month supplement DM. Mice studies, no proper human trials, 1,500 five star reviews and still no actual evidence it does anything.

● Reviews are great for a plumber. Great for a swimsuit. Rubbish for a supplement. The people who feel nothing don't bother writing one, so you're only ever hearing from half the room.

● The placebo effect, which nobody talks about enough. Electrolytes that just get you drinking more water. Collagen that makes your hair "feel" thicker. You've invested, so you want it to work, so you look for the difference.

● Why any of this matters for your relationship with food. Show me the evidence, that's it, that's the whole thing. It's why my 1-1 coaching only ever uses what's actually proven to help you stop emotional eating, manage PCOS symptoms, or finally end the diet cycle.

If you're done falling for the 10% off code and ready to do the thing that's actually proven to work, come and work with me 1-1. Send me a message on social media or book your call using the link below.

Connect with Cara

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to transform this area of your life I'd love to support you, please get in touch with me using the below links.

Email - [email protected]Website - www.coachingwithcara.co.ukFacebook - Coaching with CaraInstagram - @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together?Book a FREE no-obligation consultation call to discover what's possible.Book your call here - https://calendly.com/coachingwcara/call-with-cara

Until next time, keep chatting!

Tracking your calories.

Weighing your oats.

Taking a photo of yourself in your underwear for a stranger on the internet.

All incredibly common. None of it normal.

In this episode I unpick why the two conversations that inspired today's show, one with a client, one with a friend who's been in my life for twenty years and she's showed me just how normalised diet culture is.

This one's part story time, one part wake-up call. If you've ever tracked your macros, sent a "before you judge me" photo of your dinner, or apologised for eating the last slice, this episode is for you.

In this episode I cover -

● Why common doesn't mean normal. From calorie tracking to weighing food to posting underwear progress pics for internet strangers. I walk through the everyday habits diet culture has convinced us are fine, simply because so many people do them.

● The client who can finally see it. Four months into her 1-1 journey, a client of mine watched people at her gym repeat the exact patterns she used to live and realised just how deep in diet culture she'd been without knowing it.

● The friend who couldn't. A twenty-year friendship, one throwaway comment about being "so fat," and the moment I realised what's completely normal to her is exactly the relationship with food I help people undo.

● How social media manufactures normal. Why "what I eat in a day," collagen, electrolytes and content creators who look "like you" aren't harmless relatable content, they're diet culture's newest trendsetters, quietly resetting what we think is acceptable.

● Why intuitive eaters are the real anomaly. Society has it backwards. Leaving food on your plate because you're full should be normal. Explaining yourself for it shouldn't be a thing at all.

● The launch of The Intuitive Table. My brand new 8 week, small group programme starting Monday 14th September at 9.30am at Shropshire Health in Leighton.

This is not a spreadsheet-and-macros programme dressed up as something new ,it's real, sustainable change, and I'm looking for founding members to pull up a seat.

If you would like to pull up your seat please go here.

Connect with Cara -Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to transform this area of your life I'd love to support you, please get in touch with me using the below links.

Email - [email protected]Website - www.coachingwithcara.co.ukFacebook - Coaching with CaraInstagram - @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together?Book a free no-obligation consultation call to discover what's possible.

Book your call here - https://calendly.com/coachingwcara/call-with-cara

Until next time, keep chatting!

Ready to break the diet cycle and build a healthy relationship with food? In this episode, I explain why September (not January) is the perfect time to stop starting again on Monday and finally do the deep work.

If you've done every diet going, low carb, intermittent fasting, Slimming World, Weight Watchers, the shakes, the supplements, and you're still stuck in the same patterns, this one's for you. I talk through self-sabotage, all-or-nothing thinking around food, and why willpower alone was never going to fix it, and why you need a seat at The Intuitive Table.

In this episode I talk about -

● Why September has better "new start" energy than New Year, and why diet culture cashes in on it every single year.

● The all-or-nothing cycle so many women get stuck in- perfectionism, being "good" all week then "cheating" at the weekend, and starting again on Monday.

● Self-sabotage, and what's really going on when you stop your healthy habits just as they start to work.

● The supplement drawer problem, why chasing the next pill, powder or GLP-1 injection keeps you stuck instead of getting you free.

● Why community, not another tracking app, is the missing piece for so many people trying to find food freedom.

● An introduction to The Intuitive Table, built to help you build a genuinely healthy relationship with food for good

Connect with Cara -

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to transform this area of your life I'd love to support you, please get in touch with me using the links below.

Pull up your seat at The Intuitive Table here.

Email – [email protected]

Website – www.coachingwithcara.co.uk

Facebook – Coaching with Cara

Instagram – @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together?

Book a FREE no-obligation consultation call to discover what's possible.

Book your call here – https://calendly.com/coachingwcara/call-with-cara

Until next time, keep chatting!

You think if you stopped dieting, you'd eat everything in sight, don't you?

Ice cream for breakfast. Chocolate for dinner. That whole packet of biscuits.

In this episode of Chatting with Cara I'm myth-busting the 3 biggest fears keeping women going back to diets and not trusting themselves to break the pattern and come on over to be a intuitive eater.

Because breaking the diet cycle doesn't work the way you think it does.

In this episode I cover -

• The "I'll eat everything" myth. The number one fear I hear from women considering The Intuitive Table, that without rules you'll eat ice cream for breakfast and never stop. I break down why food freedom doesn't mean food chaos, and why having "forbidden" foods in the house is actually what teaches you to stop wanting them constantly.

• Why structure feels safe (and why diets still fail). Diets work at first because someone else's rules feel comforting, especially if you're a rule-follower by nature. But life happens, the rules break, and you're right back to overeating and feeling out of control. The intuitive eating framework replaces external rules with an internal one: checking in with hunger, fullness, and emotion instead.

• Fierce compassion, explained. This isn't about putting your feet up and eating crisps on the sofa. Fierce compassion is choosing what actually serves you, even when it's not the easy option and it's the thing that rebuilds trust in yourself, one small decision at a time.

• "If it worked, everyone would be doing it." The multi-billion pound diet industry has zero interest in you learning to trust yourself instead of buying the next plan.

• What's actually different about The Intuitive Table. No subscriptions, no re-learning a new set of rules every few months. Just the tools to trust yourself for good.

Connect with Cara -

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to build a healthy relationship with food please contact me below as I would love to chat to you.

Email - [email protected]
Website - www.coachingwithcara.co.uk
Facebook - Coaching with Cara
Instagram - @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together?

Book a free no-obligation consultation call to discover what's possible.
Book your call here - https://calendly.com/coachingwcara/call-with-cara

Until next time, keep chatting!

Snacking all day? It's probably emotional eating....

In this episode I break down why emotional eating shows up as snacking, using a real conversation I had this week with someone about to join The Intuitive Table.

She wanted to know if working on her relationship with food would actually stop her snacking.

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: this episode.

This one's for anyone who's ever stood in front of the fridge, snack drawer or biscuit tin without really knowing why, or ended the day realising the whole packet's gone and you can't remember eating half of it.

In this episode I cover -

● The language you use around food. Calling snacks "rubbish" or "naughty" gives food morality it doesn't need and that good/bad divide quietly shapes every food decision you make.

● Physical hunger vs habit. The 11am biscuit, the 3pm slump, walking in the door and straight to the fridge. Learning to tell the difference between what your body actually needs and what's just routine.

● Diet culture, unpacked. Why so many women have spent years checking their bodies, avoiding photos, and not buying clothes in the size they need, and how naming diet culture is often the lightbulb moment.

● Food rules that are running your life without you noticing. Clean plate club, "earning" dessert, only allowing yourself one "treat" a day, where did these rules came from? And lets turn them into guidelines instead.

● Emotional eating, the sneaky version. It's not always the dramatic, crying into a ice cream tub moment. It's the unanswered text, the stress, the "I just need something" that turns into a snack you didn't really want.

● What's actually on the other side. An update from a 1 to 1 client who spent years tracking every calorie and is now, in her words, "just existing", not thinking about food all day, every day. Revolutionary I know.

If you recognise yourself in any of this, The Intuitive Table starts Monday 14th September at 9:30am at Shropshire Health, Leaton.

The table runs for 8 weeks and is £147.

Have a look here for more info and to pull up your seat.

https://www.coachingwithcara.co.uk/theintuitivetable

Connect with Cara -

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to transform this area of your life I'd love to support you, please get in touch with me using the below links.

Email - [email protected]Website - www.coachingwithcara.co.ukFacebook - Coaching with CaraInstagram - @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together?Book a free no-obligation consultation call to discover what's possible.Book your call here - https://calendly.com/coachingwcara/call-with-cara

Until next time, keep chatting!

You skip breakfast because there's no time.

You grab lunch at your desk, in the car, standing at the chopping board.

By 3pm you need a coffee just to function.

Dinner becomes whatever's quickest.

And by 11pm, when everyone else is finally asleep, you're scrolling your phone telling yourself this is "your time", even though you'll regret it at 6am.

If that's you, I want you to hear this clearly: this isn't a discipline problem. It's not about being disorganised, lazy, or bad at sleep hygiene.

It's a self-care deficit showing up at every meal time and again at midnight, because that's the only pocket of the day left for you.

In this episode I break down why these five "bad habits" are actually one exhausted woman trying to get through the day and why understanding that changes everything about how you fix it.

In this episode I cover -

• Why "bad habits" are actually symptoms, not the problem. Skipped breakfast, grabbed lunch, the 3pm caffeine crutch, the quick-and-not-quite-dinner, the late night scroll, these aren't five separate issues to white-knuckle your way through. They're one pattern wearing five outfits, and until you see the pattern, nothing sticks.

• The domino effect through your day. Breakfast gets skipped, so you're running on nothing by mid-morning. Because of that, lunch becomes whatever's fastest rather than what actually nourishes you. Because neither meal gave your body what it needed, you're reaching for caffeine by 3pm. Tired and wired, cooking properly feels like one task too many and the day ends with you scrolling at 11pm just to reclaim a moment that was never protected earlier.

• A real client story. I share what this looked like for one woman I coached, she skipping breakfast, was eating lunch in the car, and reaching for sugary drinks she didn't even like by mid-afternoon, when what she actually needed wasn't caffeine. It was five minutes back for herself.

• Why this isn't a willpower issue. It's not about forcing down a breakfast you haven't got time for or setting app limits on your phone at night. The fix is protecting small pockets of time earlier in the day, so you're not running on empty and clawing time back at 11pm.

• You are not the only one. My own Instagram analytics show my audience is most active between 8–10pm on Sundays. Because that's when everyone else has finally stopped needing something from them. If you've ever felt like the only one scrolling at midnight, you're really not.

So next time you catch yourself skipping breakfast, eating lunch standing up, or reaching for that 3pm coffee you don't even really want, pause.

Ask what's actually going on underneath.

That's the work we do together, meal by meal, pattern by pattern.

The Intuitive Table starts Monday 14th September at Shropshire Health in Leaton, a small weekly group of ten women who know exactly what it's like to skip breakfast, eat standing up, and scroll at 11pm because it's the only time left.

No points, no tracking, no weigh-ins.

Just eight weeks of getting to the pattern underneath it all.

Founding member spots are open now to pull up your seat follow the link here -

https://www.coachingwithcara.co.uk/theintuitivetable

Connect with Cara:

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to change your relationship with food, I'd love to support you, get in touch using the links below.

Email — [email protected]
Website — www.coachingwithcara.co.uk
Facebook — Coaching with Cara
Instagram — @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together?

Book a free no-obligation consultation call to discover what's possible.
Book your call here — https://calendly.com/coachingwcara/call-with-cara

Until next time, keep chatting!

Open your supplement drawer. Go on, actually do it.

The magnesium for sleep. The B12 for energy. The green powder that's meant to fix your gut. The menopause one. The one you can't even remember buying.

We've all got one and in this episode I explain why it's never really been about the supplements.

Every single thing in that drawer started with a feeling. You felt something, you felt bad about it, and you wanted to fix it. That's not you falling for marketing, that's just what happens when diet culture's spent years telling you, your hunger can't be trusted, your fullness can't be trusted, your energy can't be trusted.

So you stop listening to yourself.

And you start listening to whatever's just popped up in your social media ads instead.

So instead of listening to your body, you outsource the answer to whatever's trending on your Instagram ads.

This episode isn't about whether supplements work. It's about what's running underneath the reaching for them, and how to start trusting your body enough to hear what it's actually asking for.

In this episode I cover -

• Why the supplement drawer isn't really the problem. Every pill, patch and powder was bought to solve a feeling, not a deficiency. Until you look at what's underneath, you'll keep buying the next one.
• What diet culture has done to your instincts. Years of being told you can't trust your own hunger or your own tiredness makes it genuinely hard to hear your body when it's telling you something real.
• The difference between the fast fix and the real fix. A supplement is quick, it's transactional, it asks for your card details. Looking at your sleep, your stress and your relationship with food is slower, but it's the bit that actually works.
• Why I start with values, not symptoms. One of the first things I do with 1-1 clients is look at what they're actually prioritising in their life, because when you're not living in line with your values, something always feels off.
• How skipped meals, caffeine and autopilot habits show up as "hormones." Missing lunch, running on caffeine and pushing through tiredness all affect your energy, your clarity and your patience, and it's rarely just your hormones.
• The real audit I want you to do. Go back to that drawer. Pick up each supplement and ask yourself what problem you were really trying to solve with it, and what pattern is sitting underneath it.

So next time you catch yourself reaching for the next bottle, pause. Ask what your body's actually telling you, and whether you're willing to listen this time.

If you want help rebuilding that trust between you and your body, that's exactly what The Intuitive Table is built for.

It starts Monday 14th September and founding member spots are open now, to save your seat at the table follow here.

Connect with Cara -

Thanks for joining me today on Chatting with Cara. I hope today's conversation gave you some food for thought!

If you're looking to transform this area of your life I'd love to support you, please get in touch with me using the below links.

Email - [email protected]
Website - www.coachingwithcara.co.uk
Facebook - Coaching with Cara
Instagram - @coachingwcara

Ready to explore how we can work together?
Book a free no-obligation consultation call to discover what's possible.
Book your call here - https://calendly.com/coachingwcara/call-with-cara

Until next time, keep chatting!