Full But Not Finished

How do you actually change a core belief about yourself, especially one you've held for so long that it feels like a fact? Whether it's about your body, your relationship with food, or what makes you worthy of acceptance, some beliefs are so deeply ingrained that we don't even recognize them as beliefs.

In this episode of Full But Not Finished, I'm answering a listener's question about how to change core beliefs, using a recent body image moment of my own to explore what that process looks like.

I had just pulled into my driveway when I looked down at my stomach while unbuckling my seatbelt and felt an immediate flash of disgust. I was hungry and about to go inside to eat, and that moment brought up an old association between how my body looked and what I should do about it. But what interested me was how differently I responded to that feeling than I would have years ago.

Using this experience, I walk through how I've changed some of my most deeply held beliefs, including where they came from, why I held onto them, and what helped me begin to see things differently.

We will also explore how to question beliefs that seem undeniably true, including what to do when there's some evidence supporting them. How do we begin developing beliefs that better reflect what we know and what we want to change?

If you've ever wondered why it's so difficult to change, this episode offers a practical way to begin examining what might be keeping you in the hamster wheel.

MORE FROM STEF:

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/application

Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele

Website https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Why can another woman's weight loss make you feel jealous, insecure, or suddenly compelled to change your own body? And why do some women feel inspired by other women's success while others feel threatened or competitive?

In this episode of Full But Not Finished, I'm answering a listener question about feeling threatened when other women lose weight. We explore the psychology of female competition, social comparison, internalized sexism, and how we learn to associate our appearance with our worth.

I talk about why some women respond to comparison with inspiration while others experience jealousy or insecurity, how childhood experiences and sibling dynamics can shape those responses, and my own history of feeling like my appearance was the one thing I had to protect.

We also look at why these feelings can persist even when we intellectually disagree with them, how competition becomes tied to identity and self-worth, and how to work with jealousy without adding another layer of shame.

I close with a simple somatic practice to help you reconnect with yourself when comparison takes over.

Full But Not Finished is a podcast about binge eating recovery, body image, nervous system regulation, and the complicated experience of being human.

MORE FROM 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

You can know that dieting isn't working and still be terrified to stop. You can recognize that you're burned out and still feel compelled to keep producing. You can understand that controlling your body isn't making you happier and still believe that letting go would be a terrible mistake.

So what are we actually afraid of losing?

In this episode of Full But Not Finished, Kristina Bruce returns for one of our unscripted seasonal conversations, this time exploring the psychology of control, the fear of change, and why certain patterns can be so hard to let go of.

From binge eating recovery and body acceptance to burnout and our fear of making mistakes, we examine what makes change so difficult even when we understand that it's exactly what we need.

We explore the difference between experiencing an uncomfortable emotion and becoming consumed by what we believe it means about us, including a practical way to begin separating ourselves from those stories.

It's a conversation for anyone who's tired of trying so hard but isn't quite sure how to stop.

MORE FROM 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

MORE FROM 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

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