The world is a lot right now. Globally, personally, often both. And when things are this intense, it can be easy to feel like your relationship with food is a first world problem, or that nothing matters, you're just going to eat. To dismiss the battle as something to deal with later, when things calm down.

But this is exactly when it matters most. We can't all collapse at the same time. If you're hungry, depleted, or consumed by overriding your cravings, you don't have the energy for your own life, let alone for showing up with the values you want to see ripple out into the world. And the conditioning that tells you investing in yourself takes from others, that you should be able to power through, that your needs are too much, is the same conditioning that keeps the cycle going.

In this episode of Truce with Food, I walk through three reasons your food battle matters more in hard times, not less. I cover why you need to be physically nourished to show up for what you care about, why the all-or-nothing thinking that says investing in yourself takes from others is the same conditioning we need to change, and why most weight and food struggles are really about a complicated relationship with power. Healing your relationship with food isn't a distraction from the work of this moment. It's part of it.

5:47 – Why overriding your hunger actually robs you of the rebelliousness and energy needed for your life

11:17 – Why learning to connect how you eat to how your body works is revolutionary

13:52 – The cultural conditioning that makes you believe investing in your own health must come at the expense of your family or work

17:23 – How this zero-sum cultural conditioning trap exists on every level

19:55 – How a client learned the emotional work of tending to her needs, instead of trying to fix issues for her daughter

21:13 – Your food battle as a doorway to examine where you’re still sacrificing yourself to unsustainable norms

24:01 – How that guilty feeling you get for overeating or not working out is often a symptom of internalized capitalist productivity

26:42 – Backlash as a sign of actual progress and how “slow and steady” keeps you in the game

31:41 – How stubborn weight issues are often linked to an unconscious resistance to dominative power, and the need to redefine power as collaborative

36:03 – The yin archetype’s association with food and body issues (including eating disorders)

Mentioned In Healing Your Relationship With Food Is a Rebellious Act

Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don’t with Erin Holt

What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term

Freedom from Cravings course

Truce with Food

Food Stage Finder Assessment

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

Twenty years ago, functional medicine changed everything for me. My IBS cleared. My skin cleared. My depression lifted. And for the first time, I understood food as medicine instead of just calories. But somewhere in the last five years, functional medicine started looking a lot like what it was railing against. A supplement for every lab marker. A protocol for every person. A business model that profits from making you feel more broken than when you walked in.

So I stopped talking about it much here. But I still believe in root cause resolution. And I wanted to bring on someone who practices it the way it was meant to be practiced. That's why I brought Erin Holt on the show. Erin is a seasoned clinician, clinic founder, and trainer of other practitioners who has been vocal about what's gone wrong in this industry while still believing fiercely in what it can be. She practices what she calls intuitive functional medicine, a framework that starts with the physical body and refuses to stop there.

In this episode of Truce with Food, Erin and I get into what's actually broken in functional medicine right now, why data can never replace discernment or lived experience, and how her five-phase formula bridges the physical, mental, emotional, and energetic aspects of healing. We also talk about why you can't rewire an inflamed brain with mindset work, and what it really means to self-source your health instead of outsourcing it to someone in a white coat.

2:48 – Introduction to Erin and how she and her trainees help one-on-one clients

7:56 – The shift in functional medicine over the last five years that’s recreating the exact problem it was designed to solve

11:25 – Defining functional medicine and comparing it to more conventional medicine

16:46 – What intuitive functional medicine is and what it looks like in Erin’s practice (and her training of other practitioners)

24:08 – Self-sourcing vs. outsourcing your health and the long, underexamined history of the loss of self-trust in so many people

34:09 – A basic example of how Erin helps her clients rebuild their self-trust (without forcing it)

39:55 – Why too many choices in the name of empowerment can actually cause someone to freeze in response (and what skilled practitioners do differently)

44:11 – The real point of fear-based marketing and how to spot it before it sells you something you don't need

47:00 – Why the nocebo effect, medical hexing, and the labels a practitioner puts on you can quietly become the ceiling on your healing

49:15 – Functional labs that are actually worth it and the very contextual, individualized way Erin administers them as a practitioner

51:43 – Erin’s framework for whole-person healing, why the starting point doesn’t matter, and what needs to happen before you can rewire your brain using mindset work

1:00:42 – The importance and meaning of self-compassion and why you must only work with those who see your potential to heal

Mentioned In Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don't with Erin Holt

Manifest Your Health™

The Funk’tional Nutrition | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest

Funk’tional Nutrition Academy (FNA) 

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

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

You've tried the plans. The protocols. Maybe therapy, journaling, intuitive eating. And food still feels like a battle. The problem isn't that you haven't tried hard enough. It's that no one has ever shown you where you actually are.

I've spent 19 years working with women who've tried everything and nothing's worked long term. What I keep finding is that the approach mismatches the stage. And you can't know what to do next until you know where you're starting from.

In this episode of Truce with Food, I walk through I walk through the four developmental stages of resolving your food battle and introduce my free Food Stage Finder Assessment. If you've ever wondered why you're still struggling despite everything you've done, this is where to start.

1:40 – How women's healthcare concerns get dismissed and what led Ali to this work
3:59 – Why food struggles fall into two extremes and why both miss the point
6:26 – What the Food Stage Finder Assessment is and why Ali created it
7:34 – Why more information stopped being the problem for Ali's clients
9:03 – Women's health span post-menopause and why midlife is the time to get this right
11:56 – Taking responsibility for your own body literacy without burning out
13:11 – Why intuitive eating is hard when you've never had healthy eating patterns
14:06 – How adolescent culture shapes our food culture and why quick fixes dominate
19:50 – Why maturity, not more learning, is what actually creates food freedom
22:38 – The four developmental stages of resolving your food battle
25:53 – Stage one: Gathering Evidence
27:04 – Stage two: Breakthrough Ready
29:37 – Stage three: Practicing Freedom
32:48 – Stage four: Trusting in Satisfaction
36:19 – Why most people are surprised by their Food Stage Finder results
36:32 – How to take the free Food Stage Finder Assessment

Mentioned In What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term

Truce with Food

Food Stage Finder Assessment

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

After nearly a decade of conversations about food, culture, and psychology, this podcast has a new name. What was Insatiable is now the Truce with Food Podcast. What started as a rebrand turned into an honest look at how success, ambition, and identity shift over time.

Ten years ago, metrics like downloads and productivity felt like the scorecard. Then motherhood happened. Menopause happened. The realities of limited time and energy became impossible to ignore. I had to ask what actually feels like success now.

In this episode of Truce with Food, I share how hustle culture quietly shaped my definition of success and how I used my own framework to work through overworking. Because creating a truce with food often means creating a truce with the relentless pursuit of success itself.

4:26 – How a decade of podcasting quietly reveals how cultural definitions of success shape our goals and habits 

9:57 – When things began to shift in my energy and capacity regarding hustle culture

13:13 – What the rebrand is about and why a years-long evolving framework involving work with real people matters now more than ever

16:48 – The Truce with Food framework as a way to take back your power and how I used it to stop overworking

23:32 – Re-evaluation of time, energy, and capacity as a result of hustle culture limits in midlife 

32:54 – What is and isn’t changing about the podcast

Mentioned In What a Truce with Food Taught Me About Redefining Success

Truce with Food

How Just Showing Up Ended Years of Binging

Content with Carlos | my husband, who designed my new website and content strategy

Braid Creative | Kathleen Shannon on Skipping One-Size-Fits-All and Experimenting Instead

Health, Body, and Business with Ali Shapiro (Being Boss Podcast)

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

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

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

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

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

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

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

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

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

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

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library

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)

Find your Food Stage with Ali’s free assessment: Take the Food Stages assessment

Struggling with cravings, emotional eating, or feeling stuck with food? Find a conversation that meets you where you are. Explore the free Truce with Food Podcast Library by topic, or follow a curated listening Path: Explore the Podcast Library