🎧 Episode Overview

In this episode of Before Dieting, I bring the concept of family food culture to life through one woman’s story.

Ingrid’s lifelong struggle with weight wasn’t about willpower or discipline, it was about an invisible eating system that began in childhood and shaped her adult relationship with food.

Her story reveals why diets can’t address the root cause and how uncovering hidden food rules can help women finally regain agency over their eating.

✨ Key Takeaways

1. Diets can’t defeat invisible systems.

Ingrid’s experience shows that eating isn’t just about food, it’s about emotional wiring formed through years of family rules. When those subconscious systems collide with diet rules, the diet never wins.

2. Childhood access and agency create lifelong patterns.

Ingrid grew up with no choice over what or when to eat. Once she gained freedom, her eating became open-ended, a pendulum swing from restriction to overindulgence. Those early experiences still drive her food choices today.

3. Relief eating isn’t bingeing.

Her nightly secret sweets weren’t about greed or lack of control. They were a form of relief, a way to deal with emotion and reclaim a sense of autonomy after years of living by someone else’s rules.

4. Real change begins with awareness, not restriction.

Ingrid’s progress didn’t start with another diet. It started when she recognised her eating system, learned to name emotions, and began rebuilding missing skills.

💡 Why It Matters

This story highlights a truth many women share: weight struggles are not failures of discipline, but the natural outcome of unseen systems running in the background. When you uncover the rules that govern your eating, you can finally stop fighting them and start rewriting them.

Leave a comment or DM me on LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/bronwynfletcheratweightingforhappiness