Tara Schmidt, M.Ed., RDN, LD is the lead dietitian for the Mayo Clinic Diet, host of the Mayo Clinic On Nutrition podcast, and Medical Editor of the Nutrition & Fitness channel.

Today she joins me for a holistic, evidence-based conversation about GLP-1s, where we cut through the misinformation around these drugs and offer information you can really trust.

If you’re already taking Ozempic or Wegovy, you want to start so you can lose weight, or maybe your doctor’s recommending it — this episode is for you.

I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, RSVP for my FREE Workshop on September 3rd, Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track.

We discuss:

• What GLP-1s are and how they work
• The place of medication and are these long term drugs?
• Micro-dosing and low-dosing GLP-1s
• Which doctors should be prescribing metabolic drugs
• Regenerative healing from GLP-1s
• The causes of food noise
• Hunger vs appetite
• The triggers for emotional eating
• Why eating for comfort makes sense
• Reclaiming your agency so you want to change (rather than feeling like you “should”)

More about our guest: Tara Schmidt, M.Ed., RDN, LD is a registered dietitian and an instructor of nutrition at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. As the lead dietitian for the Mayo Clinic Diet, she provides guidance rooted in evidence-based principles, helping individuals develop sustainable and realistic strategies for long-term health. She also hosts Mayo Clinic On Nutrition, a podcast that dives into current nutrition research and practical weight management tips, and she lends her expertise as the Medical Editor of the Nutrition & Fitness channel. In addition, Tara co-authored The Mayo Clinic Diet: Weight Loss Medications Edition, highlighting her commitment to thoroughly researched and medically sound advice.

Beyond her professional endeavors, Tara is devoted to reducing weight bias and ensuring that everyone, regardless of size or background, has access to accurate, empathetic dietary information. She balances her busy career with family life, staying active with her husband, two children, and a golden retriever who—just like the rest of the family—enjoys a healthy serving of vegetables.

Connect with Tara and Mayo Clinic:

• On Nutrition podcast from Mayo Clinic
• Mayo Clinic Diet
• Mayo Clinic Press

Mentioned in this episode:

• Insatiable Episode 280: What’s Missing From the “Emotional Eating” Conversation with Dr. Deborah MacNamara
• Insatiable Episode 271: Over 40 Metabolism Myths with Liz Wolfe, NTP and Certified Personal Trainer

Send me (Ali) a text message.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

Why Am I Eating This Now? is open for registration!

Today I’m resharing a great conversation — and a powerful “Where are they now?” update — with two past Why Am I Eating This Now?: The Courage for Consistency participants who tell their powerful stories of going from “failing” at every program they tried to address the root issues of why they were falling off track with food.

Tune in to hear Ginny and Isis talk about the diets they’ve been on, the health concerns they’re navigating, and how our work together transformed their eating habits, including food no longer being their go-to.

We discuss:

• Our unique health priorities & how they relate to what we eat
• The many ways popular diets shame & isolate us
• Why Ginny & Isis decided to join Why Am I Eating This Now?
• How to know you’re ready to invest in yourself
• Support for pulling yourself out of feeling powerless
• The importance of having a flexible path (not a rigid rulebook)

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd.

Send me (Ali) a text message.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

Welcome to the 300th episode of Insatiable! To celebrate this milestone, I’m sharing three essential lessons every woman over 40 should know about health, weight loss, and nutrition in midlife.

After years of making this show and working with real life clients, I’ve seen what actually works for women in perimenopause and menopause—and it’s not counting calories, cutting carbs, or blaming yourself when your body doesn’t respond the way it used to.

Instead, we need to improve the quality of our food, quit punishing ourselves with exercise, and learn how to pivot without triggering our inner-perfectionist.

Want to know more? Tune in and share this one with your friends. These insights will save you so much time, energy, and (maybe even) digestive distress.

Learn about:

• The reality of counting calories and eating less over 40
• Why you need to eat carbs (especially if you can’t sleep)
• How to find joy in exercise (even if you’ve never been consistent!)
• Pivoting into a flexible mindset and prioritizing your health as you age
• Why pushing harder is rarely the answer and there is no perfect plan

Mentioned in this episode:

• ⭐️ FREE Workshop on September 3rd — Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track
• ⭐️ Why Am I Eating This Now? — Get earlybird pricing on our next live cohort
• Why I Joined Orange Theory (even though it’s “Bad” if you’re over 40)
• Insatiable named to FeedSpot’s Top 20 Emotional Eating podcasts

Send me (Ali) a text message.

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track with food? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd. I’ll guide you through a supportive coaching exercise, and you’ll walk away with tangible tools for untangling your food triggers. Click here to join live and get the recording.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

Body Stories is back — and we’re halfway through the journey.

Sas Petherick returns to share what she’s learning six months into her year-long holistic weight loss experiment. She opens up about how her relationship with food is evolving, what strength feels like in her body now, and how all of it is reshaping her work as a coach.

Together, we explore what it means to approach weight loss as an act of care — not punishment — especially in midlife, when everything from metabolism to motivation starts to shift.

If you’re tired of all-or-nothing thinking about your health, this one’s for you. And if you're ready to untangle your own food triggers, RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd.

We discuss:

• The power of loving limits and keeping promises to yourself
• How diet culture, wellness influencers, and capitalism shape your body story
• What “complexity fitness” means — and why it matters for you to hold the nuance
• Why taking a break from Instagram can change how you see yourself
• Why a glucose monitor won’t give you all the answers
• Letting yourself be more high-maintenance

More about our guest: Sas Petherick believes that healing our self-doubt is one of the most important contributions we can make to ourselves, our families, our work, and the world.

Sas holds a Master's degree from Oxford, and her research on self-doubt was published in the International Journal of Coaching and Mentoring. She has developed an evidence-based, trauma-informed, ICF-accredited coaching methodology for cultivating self-belief.

For over a decade, Sas has coached with hundreds of women experiencing self-doubt in their professional and personal lives. Sas hosts the top 1% rated self-doubt podcast Courage & Spice which has enjoyed over half a million downloads. She is also an accomplished speaker and has developed coaching workshops and programmes for clients like BBC Worldwide and Pinterest. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines.

After 25 years in the UK, Sas currently lives by the beach in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, with her partner Ash and pooch Bohdi, imagining a post-capitalist world, exploring consciousness, and listening to obscure UFO podcasts.

Connect with Sas Petherick:

• Visits Sas’s website
• Follow Sas on Instagram
• Subscribe to Sas’s newsletter Courage & Spice

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd.

Send me (Ali) a text message.

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track with food? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd. I’ll guide you through a supportive coaching exercise, and you’ll walk away with tangible tools for untangling your food triggers. Click here to join live and get the recording.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

Today Elise Loehnen returns to Insatiable for a much-needed reminder that you don’t have to be good. And in fact, focusing on being “good” or “nice” might perpetuate your battle with food and leave you feeling deeply unfulfilled.

In this conversation, we unpack what it means to be whole, why it’s fine if some people don’t like you, and how to stop seeking external approval. We also tap into how the stories we tell about goodness impact our relationship to food and our body (including what the deepest layer of body image is really about).

Tune in for a huge permission slip to rest and replenish — even when you’d rather push through (and learn how this supports staying on track with your food). And stick around until the end for a great reframe for envy!

We discuss:

• How your desire to be “good” shows up in your daily life
• Ways to unhook from external validation
• The shadow & why it matters in midlife, health included
• Rejecting the “sin” of sloth & learning to rest
• MAHA and why it’s not selfish yet essential to tend to your inner life during political turmoil
• Envy as a GPS for your soul

More about our guest: Elise Loehnen Fissmer is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles with her husband, Rob, and their sons, Max and Sam. She is the host of *Pulling the Thread* where she interviews cultural luminaries on the big questions of the day. While she’s co-written 12 books, including five New York Times Best Sellers, her first book under her own name, *On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good* (Dial Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House), was also an instant New York Times bestseller. Previously, she was the chief content officer of goop, where she co-hosted The goop Podcast and The goop Lab on Netflix, and led the brand’s content strategy and programming, including the launch of a magazine with Condé Nast and a book imprint.

Connect with Elise:

• Preorder Elise’s new workbook Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness: A Process for Reclaiming Your Full Self
• Get Elise’s book On Our Best Behavior
• Listen to Elise’s podcast Pulling the Thread
• Follow Elise on Instagram @EliseLoehnen

Mentioned in this episode:

• Why Am I Eating This Now? — Get the free masterclass and ea

Send me (Ali) a text message.

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track with food? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd. I’ll guide you through a supportive coaching exercise, and you’ll walk away with tangible tools for untangling your food triggers. Click here to join live and get the recording.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

A few months ago, my exercise routine stopped working for me. I’d been focusing on strength training for years, but I just didn’t want to go to the gym anymore. I felt super apathetic.

At first, I chalked it up to bad sleep and low energy. But then I realized that some sneaky Menopause 101 messaging was actually holding me back from doing what felt right for my body.

In this episode, I take you behind-the-scenes on how I noticed I was falling off track and the method that helped me return to movement again.

Tune in to hear about:

• How to bridge the Knowing-But-Not-Doing gap
• My experience with Orange Theory as a cardio-skeptic
• How to find the triggers that get you off track
• Polarity lessons I’ve learned from HIIT classes
• The results I’ve noticed with my sleep, my energy, my mental health, and my weight since reintroducing cardio

Mentioned in this episode:

• Next Level by Dr. Stacy Sims
• Listen to Dr. Stacy Sims on Insatiable podcast
• Try a free Orange Theory class
• Get my free Masterclass: Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track
• Learn about the Truce Coaching Certification
• Special thanks to Juliet for her expert guidance. Learn more or work with Juliet here.

Send me (Ali) a text message.

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track with food? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd. I’ll guide you through a supportive coaching exercise, and you’ll walk away with tangible tools for untangling your food triggers. Click here to join live and get the recording.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

Our Body Stories series is back with another installment of my friend Sas Petherick’s intentional weight loss journey.

We’re three months in now, and she’s discovering how her new routines are integrating into her daily life and reshaping her identity in the process.

Tune in to hear us unpack the emotional body, the power of habits, and how to actually stop treating food as an escape.

We discuss:

• Self-authoring and redefining what it means to “work out”
• How to cultivate self-compassion without resignation
• Ways that Sas is handling “bad days” without turning to food as an escape
• Rated of Perceived Exertion (RPE) & the reasons we underestimate our ability
• Why support from others is so important
• The Kardashians' new food product
• How much weight Sas has lost so far (stick around to the end for that!)

More about our guest: Sas Petherick believes that healing our self-doubt is one of the most important contributions we can make to ourselves, our families, our work, and the world.

Sas holds a Master's degree from Oxford, and her research on self-doubt was published in the International Journal of Coaching and Mentoring. She has developed an evidence-based, trauma-informed, ICF-accredited coaching methodology for cultivating self-belief.

For over a decade, Sas has coached with hundreds of women experiencing self-doubt in their professional and personal lives. Sas hosts the top 1% rated self-doubt podcast Courage & Spice which has enjoyed over half a million downloads. She is also an accomplished speaker and has developed coaching workshops and programmes for clients like BBC Worldwide and Pinterest. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines.

After 25 years in the UK, Sas currently lives by the beach in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, with her partner Ash and pooch Bohdi, imagining a post-capitalist world, exploring consciousness, and listening to obscure UFO podcasts.

Connect with Sas Petherick:

• Visits Sas’s website
• Follow Sas on Instagram
• Subscribe to Sas’s newsletter Courage & Spice

Mentioned in this episode:

• 291. How to Lose Weight AND Love Yourself (because you can do both!) with Sas Petherick [Body Series #1]
• 295. “We’re the Brave Ones” — Discipline vs Devotion, Macros & Being “Sporty” with Sas Petherick [Body Stories Series #2]

Send me (Ali) a text message.

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track with food? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd. I’ll guide you through a supportive coaching exercise, and you’ll walk away with tangible tools for untangling your food triggers. Click here to join live and get the recording.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

Today we continue our Body Stories series with Sas Petherick!

She joined me on Insatiable last month (listen here!) to talk about her intentional weight loss journey. This week she returns so we can catch up on how things are going one month in.

Tune in as we explore public weight loss, before and after photos, psychological flexibility, how it feels to eat more calories, healing our childhood wounds around sports, and more.

And if you relate to anything in this episode, join me (Ali) for Your Emotional Eating Blueprint this spring! You can enroll or sign-up for a free sneak peek here: https://alishapiro.com/blueprint/

We discuss:

• Why we shouldn’t judge a celebrity (or anyone) who loses weight
• How it feels to be bombarded by before & after photos
• Rejecting weight loss as a “hero’s journey”
• Discipline vs devotion & the myth of consistency
• Where Sas is going for support with eating, food & workouts
• How Sas felt when her trainer suggested she eat more calories per day
• Learning about macros & how they impact satiation
• The stories we have around sports & who’s “sporty”
• What’s shifting for Sas around movement & being active

More about our guest: Sas Petherick believes that healing our self-doubt is one of the most important contributions we can make to ourselves, our families, our work, and the world.

Sas holds a Master's degree from Oxford, and her research on self-doubt was published in the International Journal of Coaching and Mentoring. She has developed an evidence-based, trauma-informed, ICF-accredited coaching methodology for cultivating self-belief.

For over a decade, Sas has coached with hundreds of women experiencing self-doubt in their professional and personal lives. Sas hosts the top 1% rated self-doubt podcast Courage & Spice which has enjoyed over half a million downloads. She is also an accomplished speaker and has developed coaching workshops and programmes for clients like BBC Worldwide and Pinterest. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines.

After 25 years in the UK, Sas currently lives by the beach in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, with her partner Ash and pooch Bohdi, imagining a post-capitalist world, exploring consciousness, and listening to obscure UFO podcasts.

Connect with Sas Petherick:

• Visits Sas’s website
• Follow Sas on Instagram
• Subscribe to Sas’s newsletter Courage & Spice

Mentioned in this episode:

• 291. How to Lose Weight AND Love Yourself (because you can do both

Send me (Ali) a text message.

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track with food? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd. I’ll guide you through a supportive coaching exercise, and you’ll walk away with tangible tools for untangling your food triggers. Click here to join live and get the recording.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

Do you feel trapped in a cycle of dieting and frustration? Why do your best efforts with food seem to fail when it matters most? Is it possible that your food struggles are about something deeper than food itself?

In this episode of Wits & Weights Podcast, host Philip Pape explores the deeper roots of food consistency with Insatiable’s own Ali Shapiro!

Tune in to learn all about:

• Why food struggles aren’t about food
• Understanding emotional hunger
• Tools Vs. Deeper psychological work
• Food and the human experience
• Stress, loneliness, secret eating, and falling off track
• The T.A.I.L. framework for emotional triggers
• Facing triggers and learning growth
• Ali’s personal journey with food and health
• Finding trust and meeting your needs
• Compassionate witness and feeling significant

Mentioned in this episode:

• Philip’s episode of Insatiable
• Ali’s Truce with Food program
• Registration for Your Emotional Eating Blueprint is now open! You can enroll or sign-up for a free sneak peek here: https://alishapiro.com/blueprint/

Send me (Ali) a text message.

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track with food? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd. I’ll guide you through a supportive coaching exercise, and you’ll walk away with tangible tools for untangling your food triggers. Click here to join live and get the recording.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.

Here at Insatiable, we’re all about providing the education you need for perimenopause, menopause and aging. I mean, we did a whole season on it, and it's obviously been my own focus since going through early menopause a couple of years ago.

But I'm starting to notice something alarming in terms of what we're not talking about — which is what these hormonal shifts mean for our stress and how this changes what works for our energy after 40.

So this week, we’re diving into the often-overlooked topic of how hormonal shifts in perimenopause and menopause impact our emotional stress resilience.

Because, did you know that the drop in estrogen and progesterone as we age removes a physiological stress buffer for cortisol? This means that the stress we're used to handling might now leave a mark on our energy, mood, and food choices.

So if you’re experiencing stress and food struggles in midlife, tune in to this episode to learn about:

• The exhaustion-fueled cravings cycle that I see with clients
• Why our relationship with food and our relationship with stress go hand-in-hand
• Emotional stress resilience in menopause and beyond
• Stories from the real-life women I support about how to overcome burnout, comparison, and overeating

And if you appreciate this episode, get on my list to be the first to know when my Your Emotional Eating Blueprint: Why Am I Eating This Now? course is open for registration in early April!

Send me (Ali) a text message.

⭐️ Ready to catch yourself before you fall off track with food? RSVP for my free workshop on September 3rd. I’ll guide you through a supportive coaching exercise, and you’ll walk away with tangible tools for untangling your food triggers. Click here to join live and get the recording.

Connect with Ali & Insatiable:

Click here to text Insatiable (for privacy, we only see the last 4 digits of your phone number) and won’t be able to text back. Please don’t delete prepopulated numbers as that identifies your message is meant for us.