Diet culture, anti-diet rhetoric, and functional medicine all live in a messy middle ground. Our culture trains us to outsource authority, chase gold stars, and equate thinness with worth. We're taught to live by someone else's food rules, health rules, weight rules. So if you're still struggling to figure food out, it's not a failure of discipline. It's a misunderstanding of safety and belonging.

In this episode of Insatiable, I join Erin Holt on The Funk'tional Nutritionist podcast to talk about how functional medicine, adult development, and lived experience create pendulum swings in eating patterns. We get into why food feels like both the problem and the solution, and what it means to author your own choices around health and weight without shame, dogma, or perfectionism.

6:28 – How Ali’s history with cancer, functional medicine, and adult development work led her to see “falling off track” with food as a symptom instead of a core issue

10:15 – Erin’s history with eating disorders and how her story overlaps with Ali’s

14:00 – How the “good girl” (or socialized) mindset influences your thinking with food, weight, and health (even after you’ve rejected diet culture on the surface)

18:10 – Example of how seeing yourself (not others) as the author of your story changes what “success” looks like.

22:54 – Why people “go off track” with food and how it has nothing to do with willpower

27:45 – Erin’s food memories that illustrate the clash between the need for rest and resourcefulness vs. the need for approval and belonging 

34:34 – How tools like GLP‑1s aren’t inherently good or bad and can help or harm 

38:32 – Why weight loss alone can never deliver belonging, purpose, or a meaningful life

42:37 – Why it’s okay if you still feel like weight loss should be your focus right now

46:56 – Where to start if you don’t even know what emotional needs you have that need to be met 

52:26 – Seeing the inner critic as protection, not self-sabotage, and an example of how healing doesn’t always have to be difficult

Mentioned In Funk’tional Nutrition: How Belonging, Not Willpower, Shapes Your Eating

The Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

Dr. Deborah MacNamara

Next Level by Stacy Sims

What happens after you've tried everything? The plans, protocols, cleanses, and tracking apps. The running, the restriction, the attempt to outrun the fork. At some point, the effort becomes its own kind of exhaustion. You're no longer chasing health, you're chasing relief.

In this episode of Insatiable, I sit down with Dee, a graduate of the Truce with Food: Consistency program, to talk about what actually creates lasting change when food has become comfort, numbness, and self-punishment all at once. Dee shares what it was like to move from binging and rigid thinking into something quieter and more powerful: just showing up.

3:51 – Why Dee felt stuck before joining Truce With Food: Consistency 

7:47 – Why Dee had no hesitation about signing up, even after having tried so many things before

11:04 – What changed for Dee when success was defined as simply showing up

13:47 – Having a safe space and the role of compassionate witnesses in ending her isolation 

21:13 – The unexpected power of language in reshaping Dee’s thinking and behavior

27:23 – Where things shifted for Dee and where she is now compared to when she started

30:50 – How Dee’s rigid thinking and perspective on movement and motivation have changed

34:40 – The biggest shift for Dee in her relationship with food and why intensity and duration matter more than perfection

37:19 – The shift from measuring thinness to measuring aliveness

40:32 – What else surprised Dee about the work within the program and her words for anyone considering joining

Mentioned In How Just Showing Up Ended Years of Binging

Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

You tell yourself you're too busy and too tired to focus on yourself. You'll do it when things calm down, when work eases up, when the kids need less, when you finally get a good night's sleep. But food still calls your name at all the wrong times. You've tried to fix it, but the cycle keeps repeating.

You're not lazy. You're not broken. You're trying to solve exhaustion without understanding where it actually comes from.

In this episode of Insatiable, I break down why "too busy and too tired" is often protective resistance in disguise and why waiting for life to calm down costs you more than you think. I walk through how midlife physiology, perfectionism, lack of agency, and how we're conditioned as women all fuel the tired trigger. Plus, why turning to food makes complete sense as a solution, not a character flaw.

1:48 - Why “too busy and too tired” can be protective resistance disguised as practicality

4:48 – Example of how investing in your health earlier creates dividends you can’t see until later

6:33 - Biological shifts in midlife that quietly change hunger, satiety, and energy

9:16 - How perfectionism and over-functioning impact your energy

9:50 - Why sugar and “I deserve this” thinking are solutions before they’re problems

12:03 - Example of the surprising role of agency in chronic exhaustion

15:25 – How investing in the right support for yourself and self-compassion can energize you

19:25 - Final takeaways for this episode and an invitation to you

Mentioned In Why Being Too Tired Is Exactly Why You Need Support

Oura Ring

FREE Workshop on February 10th - ​​Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

You've followed the plans. Upped the discipline. Doubled down on getting back on track. And still, food and taking care of yourself feel harder than they used to.

You're not the problem. The problem is trying to apply the same strategies you relied on in your twenties and thirties to a body and life that have fundamentally changed.

In this episode of Insatiable, I share the five shifts that finally make consistency possible when perfectionism stops working. You'll learn why your resistance to showing up imperfectly is protective, not personal, and how to stay in the game even when it feels like you're barely moving forward.

3:28 - Why old strategies no longer working for you isn’t a sign of your failure

11:06 - Why C-plus effort triggers disgust and why that disgust has nothing to do with laziness

19:52 - How certainty becomes a shield against vulnerability and keeps you repeating the same all-or-nothing loop

24:51 - Why “momentum” sounds like a soft metric but becomes the only measure that compounds into lasting change

28:52 - The protective resistance that shows up the moment you try to break the cycle and why planning for it is non-negotiable

34:25 – Quick recap of the five shifts that redefine what success actually looks like in midlife with food struggles

Mentioned In Five Shifts to Finally Stay Consistent With Food

FREE Workshop on February 10th - ​​Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

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

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)

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 recommendations

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

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

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