You've done the work. Tried the protocols, followed the plans. And yet food still takes up way too much mental space. You're not the problem. Those one-size-fits-all protocols you've been handed were never going to work for where you actually are.

After nearly two decades working with clients, I've watched the wellness space get louder and louder with protocols and plans telling you what to do without knowing who you are or what stage you're in. Frameworks meet you where you actually are and help you figure out why you keep turning to food in the first place. That distinction is everything when it comes to lasting change.

In this episode of Insatiable, I explain why frameworks work when protocols don't, walk you through the four developmental stages most women move through in their relationship with food, and share details about my free Untangle Your Food Triggers workshop coming up in February for those ready to move beyond protocols. 

5:52 - How last year’s “composting phase” reshaped my body of work

9:46 - Why midlife women need frameworks instead of protocols

13:19 - An appetizer for the Truce with Food Consistency program to kickstart your year

15:16 - Stages in the developmental process to a truce with food

17:16 - Why stage two is both the most confusing and the most hopeful place to land (and how to leverage it)

Mentioned In Why Food Plans Fail After 40 and What Works Instead

FREE Workshop on February 10th (not 11th, misspoke in episode) - ​​Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track

Braid Creative and Consulting

How to Better Understand Stress with Andrea Nakayama

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

Happy New Year, Insatiable listeners! Welcome to 2026.

Today I’m resharing my conversation with parenting expert Dr. Deborah MacNamara, where we explore how food connects to our deep need for belonging, how feeling significant plays into belonging and food choices, as well as the many ways we can heal our relationships with food, fullness, and needing other people.

If you want to make real changes with your or your loved ones eating, this episode just might help you make life-changing connections that have been elusive for years and be focused in the right direction for 2026.

Tune in, then make sure to check out my new website trucewithfood.com. 

We discuss:

• The difference between attachment and belonging
• What Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is missing
• How to focus on receptivity in relationships with our kids
• Why food is often the place our relationship dynamics play out
• The surprising connection between food, fullness, and vulnerability
• Self-soothing vs satiation
• Why feelings are different than emotions
• The problematic invasiveness of “work mode”
• Experimenting with being “needy” so we can learn to depend on others

More about our guest: Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the author of two books, Nourished: Connection, food and caring for our kids (and everyone else we love), and Rest, Play, Grow: Making sense of preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). She is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute and the Director of Kid’s Best Bet counselling.

Connect with Dr. Deborah MacNamara:

• Website
• Books
• Facebook
• Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

• Dr. Gordon Neufeld & Dr. Gabor Maté
• The Religion of Wellness Culture with Anne Helen Petersen (Episode 252)

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

What if your inability to change isn't a failure of willpower, but your heart's way of protecting you from something you're not ready to face?

Today I’m sharing a conversation I had with Meghan Telpner for the Courageous Pivot podcast about how my journey from overworking addiction to radical life redesign began with a simple question: "Why does this make sense?"

I reveals how addressing my relationship with food became the gateway to confronting deeper questions about worth, identity, and what success actually means—and why healing often requires becoming a beginner all over again. From my journey through cancer, infertility, and postpartum menopause to finally redefining wealth as "freedom over my time," we get into how having the courage to slow down and listen to your body's wisdom can unlock transformations you never imagined possible.

Essential listening for anyone measuring busyness instead of impact, struggling to make changes they know they need, or ready to understand why their body might be wiser than their ambition.

We discuss:

• Why only 1 in 7 heart attack survivors actually change their diet and lifestyle—even when they know it could save their lives
• The hidden cost of measuring busyness instead of impact and how it perpetuates chronic exhaustion
• The developmental reason we spend the first half of life proving we can exert our will on the world—and what the second half requires
• Why food (and overwork) are “almost addictive”—soothing just enough to quiet the alarm but never enough to meet the actual need
• What “immunity to change” reveals about the knowing-doing gap and why willpower will never be the answer
• How cultural conditioning around productivity and “earning your worth” gets embedded in our nervous systems
• The question that transforms self-judgment into constructive self-compassion

Connect with Meghan:

• Visit Meghan’s website
• Listen to the Courageous Pivot Podcast

Mentioned in this episode:

• Culinary Nutrition: How to Cook for Health and Taste with Meghan Telpner – Insatiable Season 12, Episode 2
• Enneagram: personality types
• Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey — published by Harvard Business Review Press
• Rest, Play, Grow by Dr. Deborah MacNamara
• Nourished by Dr. Deborah MacNamara — available through her foundation website
• Laura McKowen — writer on sobriety whose rule "it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility"
• Dr. Stacy Sims — exercise physiologist, Ali references regarding protein recom

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

Today, Sas Petherick returns for the fifth installment of our Body Stories series — and she’s nearly a year into her holistic weight-loss journey!

In this conversation, Sas shares what’s become unmistakably clear along the way: true change happens at the pace of your body, and all-or-nothing thinking around food and movement is far more pervasive (and sneaky) than we realize.

Together, we discuss:

• Why dieting isn’t an either/or thing — and you’re never just “on track” or “off track”
• How Sas embraced her birthday dinner without stressing over macros
• Moving at the pace of your body instead of rushing to the “end” of a diet
• The realities of The Biggest Loser and the ways they faked things for TV
• How to choose a trainer you can actually trust
• Self-compassion as an antidote to perfectionism
• Sas’ sobriety journey and finding the third way

Make sure to check out Ali’s new website trucewithfood.com, and take the new Find Your Food Stage assessment!

Connect with Sas Petherick:

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

Mentioned in this episode:

• How to Lose Weight AND Love Yourself (because you can do both!) with Sas Petherick [Body Stories Series #1]
• “We’re the Brave Ones” — Discipline vs Devotion, Macros & Being “Sporty” with Sas Petherick [Body Stories Series #2]
• Emotions & Embodiment for Sustainable Weight Loss with Sas Petherick [Body Stories Series #3]
• How to Hold Your Weight Loss Goals Loosely (for better results) with Sas Petherick [Body Stories #4]
• Fit For TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser
• Self-compassion books from Kristin Neff
• Train with Joan

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

You’ve probably heard the advice: “Feel your emotions.” But what does that actually mean in everyday life? Especially when so many of us believe we’re feeling our feelings when we’re actually thinking our feelings. And thus, not feeling better or resolving our stubborn bad habits.

In this episode, Mary Tilson joins me to explore how we’ve each learned to stay with and move through our emotions.

Mary also opens up about her journey with addiction and anorexia, offering an honest look at how activation, dysregulation, and stress show up in our bodies and minds.

We discuss:

• Being with our feelings instead of “rising above” them
• Practicing mindful awareness with the R.A.I.N. acronym
• Simple (but effective!) ways to resource yourself
• Addiction as an adaptation
• The realities of recovery and finding joy every day
• The science of awe and the healing powers of nature

More about our guest: Mary Tilson is a Certified Professional Recovery Coach and Somatic Practitioner with a Master’s Degree in the Psychology & Neuroscience of Mental Health. She draws on a holistic background, which includes Somatic Experiencing, a body-based approach to healing trauma and stress-related disorders and over a decade of experience as a Yoga & Mindfulness Teacher. Having experienced drug and alcohol addiction firsthand, Mary's approach to coaching is rooted in compassion and understanding. She has been sober for over 12 years and is passionate about helping others build fulfilling lives substance-free. She supports clients through 1:1 Coaching and Retreats.

Connect with Mary:

• Visit her website at sunandmoonsoberliving.com
• Follow her on IG: @marytilson @sunandmoon.soberliving
• Listen to her Podcast: The Sun & Moon Sober Living Podcast
• Join her 2026 Women's Recovery Retreat: sunandmoonsoberliving.com/banff

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

This week, Beatriz Victoria Albina returns to Insatiable for part two of our conversation on ending emotional outsourcing — the habit of looking outside ourselves for validation, safety, and worth.

In this episode, we explore the practices that help you come back home to yourself: tuning into your needs, regulating your nervous system, returning to your body, and reclaiming your center.

It all begins with one simple but powerful question: What feels good right now?

Join us as we explore what it means to live from that place of connection and self-trust.

We discuss:

• How to reconnect with your biological impulses
• Functional freeze and how to feel your feelings (not think them)
• Why wellness is not about coffee enemas or random supplements
• The dangers of emotionally outsourcing to wellness professionals
• How we’re trained to prioritize productivity
• Somatic practice and praxis

More about our guest: Beatriz (Béa) Victoria Albina, NP, MPH, SEP (she/her) is a UCSF-trained Family Nurse Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Master Certified Somatic Life Coach, author of End Emotional Outsourcing: a Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionist and People Pleasing Habits and Breathwork Meditation Guide with a passion for helping humans socialized as women to reconnect with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems and rewire their minds, so they can break free from codependency, perfectionism and people pleasing and reclaim their joy.

She is the host of the Feminist Wellness Podcast, holds a Masters degree in Public Health from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College. Born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Béa grew up in the great state of Rhode Island. She has been working in health & wellness for over 20 years and lives with her wife, Billey Albina and their handsome all-black cat Wade.

Connect with Béa:

• Website
• Book Website
• Instagram: @beatrizvictoriaalbinanp
• Podcast: Feminist Wellness
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Free Meditations

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

Today, I’m joined by Beatriz Victoria Albina for a conversation about the emotions that often hide beneath common gut issues—and why codependency isn’t the real problem (and boundaries aren’t the full solution).

We also dive into her new book, End Emotional Outsourcing: A Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionist, and People-Pleasing Habits, where Beatriz offers powerful reframes on parenting, community, and self-trust.

This episode feels like a deep exhale—a reminder that healing isn’t about fixing yourself, but coming home to yourself.

Join us for part one today, and come back next week for part two.

We discuss:

• Our backgrounds with functional medicine
• What it means to end emotional outsourcing
• Why codependency isn’t the problem and boundaries aren’t the answer
• How patriarchy undermines caring for each other and ourselves
• Why perfectionism isn’t an identity - it’s a habit
• Attachment styles and “good enough” parenting
• How to stop striving and actually relax
• Polyvagal theory for healthy skeptics
• Functional freeze and why we dissociate from joy
• Why people-pleasing isn’t a problem — it’s a protection strategy

More about our guest: Beatriz (Béa) Victoria Albina, NP, MPH, SEP (she/her) is a UCSF-trained Family Nurse Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Master Certified Somatic Life Coach, author of End Emotional Outsourcing: a Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionist and People Pleasing Habits and Breathwork Meditation Guide with a passion for helping humans socialized as women to reconnect with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems and rewire their minds, so they can break free from codependency, perfectionism and people pleasing and reclaim their joy.

She is the host of the Feminist Wellness Podcast, holds a Masters degree in Public Health from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College. Born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Béa grew up in the great state of Rhode Island. She has been working in health & wellness for over 20 years and lives with her wife, Billey Albina and their handsome all-black cat Wade.

Connect with Béa:

• Website
• Book Website
• Instagram: @beatrizvictoriaalbinanp
• Podcast: Feminist Wellness
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Free Meditations

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

Today I’m joined by everyone’s favorite poet, Kate Baer, for a tender conversation about midlife transitions, medical anxiety, and the power of female friendship.

We talk about how to orient around ideas instead of problems, and we share a few poems from Kate’s forthcoming collection, How About Now, out November 4th.

If you’ve been feeling a little lonely, uncertain, or in-between — or all three — this one is for you.

We discuss:

• How the body makes itself known in midlife
• Body neutrality, medical anxiety, and illness
• The public scrutiny around Kate’s weight loss
• Parenting in a fatphobic world
• “Menopause is when all the girls you were come out to play”
• How to cultivate female friendships — even through conflict
• The difference between community and friends
• Being erased from the male gaze as you age

More about our guest: Kate Baer is the 3x New York Times bestselling author of What Kind Of Woman, I Hope This Finds You Well, and And Yet. Her work has also been published in The New Yorker, Literary Hub, Huffington Post and The New York Times. Her next book, How About Now, is out November 4, 2025.

Connect with Kate:

• Kate’s website: www.katebaer.com
• Kate’s Instagram: @katejbaer
• Buy How About Now. Pre and early orders help authors so much: bookshop.org/p/books/how-about-now-poems-kate-baer

Mentioned in this episode:

• Katie Sturino

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

This week Liz Wolfe returns to the show for a candid conversation about all the fitness myths we’re seeing around the wild world of wellness in 2025.

Together, we get into why people are slapping the word “perimenopause” on everything, how to focus on agility as much as strength training, and everyone’s favorite fall purchase: weighted vests.

We also discuss:

• Taylor’s new album and why we love her with Travis
• Why strength is different than muscle mass
• Liz’s tips for injury prevention at any age
• The nervous system benefits of proper form
• How to reclaim your range of motion to prevent injury
• Perfectionism as a protection strategy
• How much muscle you can actually build (and maintain)
• The very real risks of under-eating in midlife
• Finding yourself on the spectrum of detrained to trained
• Muscle and strength don’t vanish from a few off weeks but at 4-6 weeks of no training
• What Liz really thinks about weighted vests

More about our guest: Liz Wolfe is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Certified Personal Trainer, best-selling author and award-winning podcaster. She’s also a mom, a military spouse, and an Enneagram 6 (with a STRONG 5 wing).

When it comes to wellness, Liz has always been curious about where the truth actually lies. She’s wrote the Wall Street Journal best-seller Eat the Yolks, which tackles many of the lies we’ve been told about nutrition over the last 50 years. She’s also the founder of supplement company IdealAge and the host of the Ideal Age podcast.

Connect with Liz:

• Visit Liz’s website
• Follow Liz on Instagram @realfoodliz

Mentioned in this episode:

• Simplifying Food: Liz Wolfe on the Magic of Macros (especially as we age)
• Over 40 Metabolism Myths with Liz Wolfe, NTP and Certified Personal Trainer

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage

This week, I’m joined by my former cohost Juliet Root for a fun, truth-seeking conversation about how our perspectives on food, body, and movement have shifted in 2025.

Together, we share the biggest things we’ve changed our minds about—what no longer feels true, what surprised us, and what new possibilities opened up when we let old beliefs go.

We discuss:

• Releasing restriction and shame
• Protein, fiber, and variety in our diets
• Dental care and holistic vs Western dentists
• Is getting to the “root cause” endless? and reconsidering functional medicine
• Updating our views on mammograms
• The nuanced truth about weighted vests
• Real talk about “vanity weight loss”
• Where we stand with food tracking and GLP1s
• Changing our minds about zone two cardio & HIIT
• The value of community and how connection improves our health

More about Juliet: Juliet Root is the co-founder of Ultralife, an online coaching platform, where she has spent nearly two decades helping people achieve lasting health, fitness, and longevity. As a certified personal trainer, board-certified nutritionist, and health coach, Juliet has worked with thousands of clients ranging from busy parents to high-performing executives and celebrities. Her mission is to cut through the noise of fitness fads and give people clear, sustainable strategies to feel and perform their best. Juliet has been featured in Shape Magazine, NBC, ABC, and Fox News, and is known for making complex training and nutrition science practical and actionable. At her company Ultralife she and here team help adults 35+ build strength, energy, and resilience so they can thrive in every season of life

Mentioned in this episode:

• Juliet Root and Ultralife
• Erin Holt
• 297. Why I Joined Orange Theory (even though it’s “Bad” if you’re over 40)

Send me (Ali) a text message.

🧭 If you're tired of knowing what works but not being able to make it stick, try my free food stage finder. There are four distinct stages in how we relate to food, and a few questions will reveal yours along with next steps. Visit: trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage