In this powerful episode of the Once Upon a Binge Podcast, therapist Becca sits down with Claire Ashton for an honest conversation about binge eating recovery, body image healing, and breaking free from diet culture.

Claire Ashton is a Body Confidence Coach and intuitive eating counsellor, nurse, and personal trainer who helps women over 35 stop waiting for weight loss to feel confident and start living fully now.

After years of working in the health and fitness industry, Claire realised that the problem was never a lack of discipline—it was the belief that confidence had to be earned through changing your body. Through her coaching she helps women break free from dieting, food guilt, and body battles so they can feel confident without conditions.

As a mum to three daughters, Claire is passionate about modelling a healthier relationship with food, movement, and body image for the next generation, while helping women reclaim their own confidence in the process.

In this episode, Claire shares her deeply personal journey through disordered eating, bulimia, compulsive exercise, and years of yo-yo dieting — including how working in the fitness industry reinforced harmful beliefs about worth and body image. She also opens up about the life-changing accident that left her unable to walk and how relearning to walk completely transformed her relationship with food, movement, control, and self-worth.

Together, Becca and Claire explore:

✨ Treatment for bulimia and what was missing

✨ The binge-restrict cycle and why dieting feels so addictive

✨ How learning to walk again helped Claire see her body in a different light

✨ Learning to let go of food rules and finding meaning in suffering

✨ Body image struggles in motherhood and raising daughters in diet culture

This episode is a must-watch for anyone struggling with binge eating, emotional eating, body shame, chronic dieting, or feeling trapped in the cycle of trying to “fix” their body.

If this episode helped you, please like, comment or follow to stay up to date with the latest episodes releases. This also helps spread the message of body acceptance, intuitive eating, and eating disorder recovery to others who might need it.

💜 Connect with the podcast:

- Instagram - www.instagram.com/onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - [email protected]  

💜 Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – www.instagram.com/bingefreeandbeautiful  

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - [email protected]

💜 Connect with Claire:

- Instagram – www.instagram.com/claireashton_

- Website - https://claireashton.co.uk

I'm Becca, a therapist specializing in binge eating and body image, and this is the Once Upon a Binge podcast, where I have honest conversations with guests about breaking free from the binge restrict cycle and finding body acceptance.

Today, I'm joined by Anne Richardson. Anne is a registered nutritional therapist, cognitive behavioural therapy practitioner, lecturer, and supervisor. She's been practicing for more than 10 years and exclusively works in the field of disordered eating.

Anne suffered with anorexia in her teens, and now draws from her lived experience to blend her knowledge of nutrition with her CBT skills. She works with people all over Europe to help them achieve food freedom. She is also invested in helping other practitioners work with disordered eaters, as she recognizes that general nutritional advice can be extremely damaging to disordered eaters.

Anne is also a mom, the maker of all things, and especially a keen baker.

In our conversation today, we talk about supporting clients through cooking in recovery, the role of nutrition, and whether you fully recover from an eating disorder or not.

We also dive into:

✨ The role of nutrition in recovery

✨ Why calorie counting keeps people stuck

✨ Using rigid thinking to our advantage in recovery

✨ Cooking with clients in eating disorder recovery

✨ Perfectionism and control in anorexia

✨ The flaws with My Fitness Pal

✨ Mechanical eating vs intuitive eating

✨ Whether the “eating disorder voice” ever fully disappears

💜

Connect with the podcast:

- Instagram - www.instagram.com/onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - [email protected]

Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – www.instagram.com/bingefreeandbeautiful

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - [email protected]

Connect with Anne:

- Email – [email protected]

- Instagram - www.instagram/com/theeatingdisordernutritionist 

- Website - https://www.theeatingdisordernutritionist.co.uk

In this deeply honest episode of Once Upon a Binge, Becca is joined by her partner Will for a raw conversation about disordered eating, body image, binge eating, orthorexia, fitness culture, and recovery.

Together, they unpack how their relationship with food and their bodies changed through meeting each other — despite both struggling with unhealthy beliefs around eating, exercise, appearance, and self-worth when they first met.

Will shares his experience with:

Orthorexia and “clean eating”

Veganism and identity

Body dysmorphia in the fitness industry

Social media pressure and perfectionism

Binge eating behind the scenes

Male body image struggles

Personal training culture and physique obsession

Becca opens up about:

Restrictive eating and dieting

Fear of weight gain

Recovery from binge eating and food rules

Reassurance seeking and body image anxiety

Learning to feel safe in her body

Healing through relationships and connection

This episode explores how shame, diet culture, wellness culture, and external validation can shape our relationship with food — and how acceptance, compassion, and emotional safety can become part of recovery.

If you’ve ever struggled with:

binge eating

emotional eating

food obsession

calorie counting

body dysmorphia

orthorexia

fear of weight gain

restrictive eating

comparison on social media

feeling “not good enough”

…this conversation will likely resonate deeply.

Let us know in the comments:

Are you a male who's struggled with body image and disordered eating?

Subscribe for more conversations on:

Connect with Becca & the podcast....

Instagram:

@bingefreeandbeautiful

@onceuponabingepodcast 

Email:

[email protected]

[email protected]

💜

After 18 months of co-hosting the Once Upon a Binge Podcast, Katy is stepping away from the show. In this emotional and honest episode, Becca and Katy talk openly about the decision to end this chapter of the podcast, navigating change, burnout, recovery work, and what’s next for Once Upon a Binge.

If you struggle with binge eating, emotional eating, body image, perfectionism, or eating disorder recovery, this conversation may really resonate with you.

In this episode, we discuss:

-Katy's decision to leave the podcast

-The emotional impact of endings and change

-Burnout in the eating disorder recovery space

-Recovery, mental health, and capacity

-The importance of conversations around binge eating recovery

-What the future of the Once Upon a Binge Podcast looks like

-Upcoming guest episodes featuring lived experience and professionals

Moving forward, Once Upon a Binge will continue with Becca as solo host, alongside guests including therapists, dietitians, coaches, and people sharing their own recovery journeys.

This podcast is dedicated to helping people heal their relationship with food, break free from the binge restrict cycle, improve body image, and let go of perfectionism.

✨ We are also looking for future podcast guests with lived experience of binge eating, emotional eating, body image struggles, disordered eating, or eating disorder recovery. If you have a story or perspective you’d like to share and think it could help others feel less alone, please get in touch — we’d love to hear from you. ✨

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported the podcast over the past 18 months through listening, sharing episodes, commenting, and reaching out 💜

Wishing you all the best Katy!

If you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, and subscribe — it really helps more people find these conversations around binge eating recovery and eating disorder recovery.

#BingeEatingRecovery #EatingDisorderRecovery #BodyImage #MentalHealthPodcast #EmotionalEating #Perfectionism #RecoveryJourney #bodyacceptance #bodypositivity

In episode 36 of the Once Upon a Binge podcast Katy and Becca talk about navigating social events and disordered eating. They talk about how food rules blocked them from having food freedom at social events, the role of binge eating and how body image insecurities made socialising challenging.

They discuss:

💜

Connect with Becca:

In this episode of Once Upon a Binge, Katy & Becca are talking about conflict - not just arguments or disagreements, but the way conflict can live in the body, shape your nervous system, and become tangled up with binge eating, restriction and body image struggles.

They explore how our very different childhood experiences with conflict shaped the way they responded to it: with one becoming conflict avoidant, swallowing feelings down and turning anger inward; the other becoming more reactive, using food afterwards to regulate the intensity of fight-or-flight energy.

They also talk about how binge eating can sometimes become the voice we weren’t able to use, the place our anger went, or the way our body tried to bring us back down when everything felt too much.

In this conversation, they cover:

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like food became the place where unspoken feelings, anger, shame or overwhelm went.

Let us know: are you more conflict avoidant, more reactive, or something else entirely?

Thank you so much for listening 🤎

In episode 34 Katy and Becca and talking about transitions, both in our day to day life and big life transitions. Why they are so difficult to go through and how binge eating comes in as a tool to cope.

They talk about:

If you struggle with transitions and find binge eating is a tool to get through it then you’re not alone.

Let us know in the comments below if you’ve found this episode helpful.

Please like, comment and subscribe as it helps our channel reach more people who may find it helpful!

💜

Connect with us:

- Instagram - www.instagram.com/onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - [email protected]  

Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – www.instagram.com/bingefreeandbeautiful  

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - [email protected]

Connect with Katy:

- Email – [email protected]

- Instagram - www.instagram.com/knacoaching

What’s the difference between disordered eating and an eating disorder - and why does it matter so much?

In this episode of Once Upon a Binge, Becca and Katy unpack the often-confusing conversation around disordered eating, eating disorders and the grey area in between. They explore why these experiences can feel more like a spectrum than a clear-cut box, how diet culture and wellness culture can normalise harmful behaviours, and why so many people end up feeling like they’re “not bad enough” to deserve support.

They also share parts of their own personal experiences with food, body image, restriction, bingeing, and recovery - including how eating struggles can develop gradually for some people, and much more intensely for others.

In this episode, they talk about:

This is such an important conversation if you’ve ever questioned whether your relationship with food is “serious enough” to matter.

You do not need to hit a crisis point before your struggle counts.

If this episode resonated, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

In episode 32 of the Once Upon a Binge podcast Katy and Becca talk about their journey of body image healing and the process of grieving your body.

They discuss:

This episode was recorded before the recent announcement for Stephanie Buttermore’s death. We’d like to send our condolences to Jeff Nippard and the rest of Stephanie’s family. We thank Stephanie for how many people she helped in recovery through documenting her own all-in journey.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment and subscribe. Engaging with our channel helps us grow and reach more people in recovery.

💜

Connect with us:

- Instagram - www.instagram.com/onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - [email protected]  

Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – www.instagram.com/bingefreeandbeautiful  

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - [email protected]

Connect with Katy:

- Email – [email protected]

- Instagram - www.instagram.com/knacoaching

In episode 31 of the Once Upon a Binge Podcast, Katy and Becca are talking about rest, burnout and binge eating.

The discuss:

- What really is rest? What’s the difference between passive rest and restorative rest?

- The go-go-go-crash cycle of binge eating

- How the inner critic influences the way we view rest

- How black and white thinking shows up around rest

- Embodiment, rest and binge eating

- Bingeing as a form of nervous system regulation

- What is the fear of rest?

- ADHD and how it affects our ability to rest

- A car analogy to represent running on empty

Let us know in the comments if you found this episode helpful. We’d love to hear how you think rest influences your relationship with food and exercise.

Please like, subscribe and comment. Engagement with our channel helps us to reach more people and we appreciate every little bit of support in helping our channel grow – thank you!

💜

Connect with us:

- Instagram

- www.instagram.com/onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - [email protected]

Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – www.instagram.com/bingefreeandbeautiful

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - [email protected]

Connect with Katy:

- Email – [email protected]

- Instagram - www.instagram.com/knacoaching