Full But Not Finished

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.

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