Episode 35: Why Emotional Eating Isn't a Willpower Problem - An Open Letter to Women Who Are Ready to Hear the Truth

This episode is different.

There are no guests, no frameworks, no listicles. Just me, speaking directly to every woman who has been fighting herself around food for years — and is tired of being told the answer is more discipline.

Because it isn't. It never was.

You've been trying to solve the wrong problem

If you've spent years starting over — new plan, new Monday, new version of the same hope that this time will be different — and it keeps not working, there is a reason.

And the reason is not you.

It's that every approach you've tried has been aimed at the behaviour. The eating, the restriction, the rules. As if changing what you put in your mouth is the thing that needs to happen.

But emotional eating is a disconnection problem. It's what happens when, usually early in life, something teaches you that certain feelings aren't safe to have. That your emotions are too much, or not acceptable, or need to be managed quietly rather than felt and expressed and met.

And food becomes the solution. Loyal, available, reliable. There when nothing else is.

That's not weakness. That's an adaptation. And it makes complete sense.

What this is actually costing you

Your emotional eating is not a failure. But I also know it is costing you.

The dinner out where you're only half present because the other half of you is in your head. The holiday where you spend two weeks quietly at war with yourself while pretending to everyone around you that you're having a wonderful time. The morning in front of the mirror, negotiating with yourself before you can feel acceptable enough to leave the house.

It is costing you the version of your life where you're actually in it. Fully. With presence and pleasure and without the constant background noise.

And you deserve to get that back.

What's on the other side

In this episode I talk about what actually becomes possible when women heal this at the root.

Not a perfect relationship with food or the permanent absence of hard days. But a life you can actually inhabit. Ordering what sounds delicious and being completely present in that evening. Going on holiday and trying everything and coming home reminiscing about how beautiful it was. Getting dressed in the morning and leaving the house. That's it. Just leaving — without the negotiation, without the commentary, without the exhausting performance of trying to feel acceptable enough to be seen.

That is not a fantasy. That is what becomes possible when you heal what is actually driving this.

I was you for 30 years

I started dieting when I was around eight years old. I was on the merry-go-round for three decades. I know every inch of it — how convincing it is, how it keeps promising that the next plan will be the one that finally changes things.

And I also know what it's like to step off it. To do the real work. To find something so much better on the other side.

That is available to you too.

You are not too far gone

Wherever you are, however long you've been at this — you have not missed your chance.

But you will not find your way off the merry-go-round through a better diet. You will find your way off it by finally being willing to hear what is underneath. The feelings, the parts, the old stories the food has been managing all this time.

That's the work. And it is absolutely possible.

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Disclaimer

This podcast and blog content is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or psychological advice. If you are struggling with your relationship with food or your mental health, please seek support from a trained professional.

Episode 34: What Ozempic Is Actually Doing to Your Brain | GLP-1s, Food Noise and Nervous System Healing

This episode and article contain discussions around emotional eating, binge eating, body image, trauma, and weight loss medications including GLP-1s such as Ozempic and semaglutide. Please engage gently. This content is educational in nature and reflects published research and personal perspective. It is not medical advice and does not recommend for or against any medication. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional before making any medical decisions. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or severe distress around food or your body, please seek support from a qualified healthcare professional.

There's a conversation happening right now about weight loss medications. And almost everyone is either for them or against them.

But that's not the conversation I'm interested in.

What I'm curious about is what's actually happening in the brain and the nervous system when people take these medications. Because when you look at the research, what you find isn't just about appetite. It's about regulation. It's about what it feels like when a system that has been running on threat and scarcity for years finally gets a different signal.

And that's a conversation worth having.

First, a note on what this is and what it isn't

I'm not a medical doctor, a pharmacist, or a prescribing practitioner of any kind. I'm an IFS practitioner who is deeply curious about what's happening in the nervous system. Everything in this episode and this post is drawn from published research, which I'll reference throughout, and from my own reading and learning in this space.

This is not medical advice. It is not a recommendation to take or not take any medication. If you're considering any kind of medical intervention, please talk to a qualified health professional who knows your individual situation.

What I'm bringing here is a layer of this conversation that I don't think is being talked about enough. The medical side is for your doctor. The nervous system piece is what I want to explore.

What regulation actually means

Before we get into the medications, I want to talk about regulation. Because I think the way it gets described online, particularly on social media, does it a disservice.

Regulation is not about being calm all the time. It's not about being unbothered or always having it together. Regulation is simply the capacity to move through different states, whether you're activated or resting, whether things are intense or easy, without getting stuck at either extreme.

A regulated system can get stressed and then settle again. It can be pulled off centre and find its way back. It can feel something intense and return to baseline.

Dysregulation is the opposite. It's where the system gets stuck. It's a low grade state of activation that never fully turns off. Not crisis, but never fully calm either. Always slightly braced. Always scanning. Always on.

For many people, particularly those who grew up in environments that were unpredictable, chaotic, or emotionally unsafe, that low grade activation isn't a bad habit or something to breathe your way out of. It's a trained physiological response. The body learned early: don't relax, something bad might happen. And over time that becomes the baseline. That becomes normal. Because it's what kept you safe.

Most people don't know they're dysregulated if they've never experienced the alternative. Until something changes.

The brainstem: the oldest part of you

At the base of the brain sits the brainstem. It's the oldest part of us evolutionarily. It was here before we had language, before we had memory, before we had the capacity to reflect on our own experience. Its job, always, is asking one question: am I safe enough right now?

It regulates things we don't consciously control. Heart rate, breathing, gut motility, baseline muscle tension, where our attention automatically goes. And based on what it reads in the body and the environment, it either signals safety or signals threat.

Here's the critical thing. This system does not use logic. It doesn't read context. It reads patterns and it reads history. When the brainstem is activated, the prefrontal cortex, the logical, rational part of the brain, is generally not online.

Stephen Porges, a neuroscientist who developed polyvagal theory, introduced the concept of neuroception. A subconscious threat detection process that operates below the level of conscious awareness. Your nervous system is constantly reading cues in your environment and your body and deciding whether you're safe or not before you've had a single conscious thought about it.

Which means you can be sitting in a completely safe environment, objectively fine, nothing actually wrong, and your brainstem can still be running a threat response. Because it's operating off older data. Off a system that learned, back then, that calm meant stay ready.

What does that look like from the inside? Tightness in the body you can't quite explain. Attention that keeps scanning for what's wrong. An inability to fully settle. Subtle irritation without a clear cause. A sense of always being slightly behind, slightly on the edge of something.

This isn't a personality trait. This is a brainstem that learned its job very well.

The hypothalamus: your internal accountant

Sitting above the brainstem is the hypothalamus. It's doing something related but distinct. It's managing resources. Integrating signals about energy availability, blood glucose, hormones, stress, hunger, thirst, temperature, sleep. And it's constantly asking: do we have enough, or do we need to mobilize?

Like the brainstem, the hypothalamus works off pattern recognition as much as real time data. If you grew up in an environment of scarcity, whether that was emotional scarcity, physical unpredictability, chronic stress, or even food scarcity, the hypothalamus may have calibrated towards a bias of there's not enough.

A 2022 review published in Frontiers in Psychiatry looked at childhood trauma and its effects on the HPA axis, the body's central stress response system. It found that early trauma can sensitize this system, altering how it responds to stress long into adulthood.

A 2023 paper published in Psychoneuroendocrinology looked specifically at people with eating disorders and found that early traumatic experiences were consistently associated with HPA axis dysregulation, and that this dysregulation was linked to disordered eating behavior. Not as a personality flaw. As a measurable biological consequence of what the system went through.

What does that hypothalamic bias feel like in the body? A chronic preoccupation with food that isn't really about physical hunger. Difficulty feeling truly satisfied after eating. A sense of urgency without a clear object. A restlessness. A feeling of always being slightly depleted.

And here's where it gets interesting. The brainstem and the hypothalamus are in constant communication. The brainstem's threat signal feeds directly into the hypothalamus's resource assessment. So when the brainstem is activated, the hypothalamus reads: conditions are unstable, keep looking, don't fully settle, find resources.

You end up with a system where both the safety signal and the resource signal are biased towards alert. Not because anything is currently wrong. Because the system was shaped in a context where things were.

The reward system and food noise

The brain's reward circuitry is driven primarily by dopamine and centered in a region called the nucleus accumbens. It's designed to motivate us towards things that keep us alive. Food, connection, safety, novelty. It creates urgency and a pull towards things that matter.

But in a chronically activated nervous system, this system gets recruited for something else entirely. Regulation.

When your baseline state is dysregulation, when you're carrying that low grade brainstem activation and that hypothalamic seeking signal, your brain is going to look for fast ways to change the state. Fast ways to find safety and resources. Things that offer quick relief, a quick shift in how the body feels.

Food is the most efficient option available. Not because of a character flaw or lack of willpower. Because your nervous system learned, very accurately, that this works. Eating, particularly high reward food, creates a rapid dopamine response that briefly interrupts the activation. It changes the way you feel.

So does scrolling. So does the mental loop of planning and researching and obsessing. So does anything that creates a hit of novelty or sensation.

These aren't bad habits. They are a dysregulated nervous system doing precisely what it was wired to do. Finding a way to regulate itself using the tools available.

What we call food noise, that constant hum of thinking about food, wanting something, searching, it's not really about food. It's the sound of a system looking for relief. Looking for regulation.

And a 2021 systematic review published in the journal Nutrients found that the same class of medications we're about to discuss appeared to modulate reward circuitry in ways that reduced seeking behavior across multiple domains, not just food. People reported drinking less alcohol, smoking less, feeling less of that compulsive pull towards relief across the board. Because these aren't separate problems with separate solutions. They're expressions of the same underlying system.

So what are these medications actually doing?

When people take GLP-1 medications like Ozempic or Wegovy, many report something unexpected. Not just that they eat less, but that the food noise quietens or stops entirely. The mental searching, the urgency, the constant low level pull. It quiets.

For many people, especially those who've experienced that noise their whole lives and just assumed that's who they were, that quiet is enormous.

The research points to three main mechanisms.

The first is blood sugar stabilization. These medications slow gastric emptying, creating more consistent satiety signals and reducing glucose volatility. Blood sugar dips, even small ones, are read by the nervous system as a low level stress signal. When that smooths out, the hypothalamus receives more consistent data that says we are resourced, we are okay. And the seeking signals begin to quiet.

The second is that these medications act directly on receptors in the brainstem and hypothalamus. Research published in the Journal of Neuroscience in 2024 mapped specific populations of neurons in the brainstem that carry receptors for this class of drug and found that these neurons send projections all the way up into the hypothalamus and the limbic system, the emotional brain. When the medication activates these receptors, it's changing the input data that the brainstem and hypothalamus are receiving. Less urgency in the signal. Less of the mobilize now.

The third, and the one drawing the most attention in recent research, is that these medications appear to change activity in the reward system. Specifically they reduce what researchers call reward salience, the degree to which something feels urgent and necessary. A 2025 paper found that semaglutide reduced appetite while actually improving the quality of dopamine reward signaling. The compulsive restless seeking quietens. But the capacity for genuine satisfaction remains. And in some cases deepens.

Food stops feeling like it needs to happen right now. The urgency quietens. The searching quietens.

And in that quietness, something remarkable can happen. People start to notice things they haven't noticed before. The quality of light in the afternoon. The warmth of the sun. A feeling in the chest that might be described, carefully, as peace.

Some say: for the first time I feel like I'm starting to see the world.

This isn't a side effect. This is what becomes available when the threat in the brainstem quietens. When the brainstem finally gets consistent enough safety data to shift towards what polyvagal theory calls a ventral vagal state. A state of genuine safety, openness, and connection.

These states are not created by the medication. They're uncovered. They're what's there when the noise drops low enough.

Which means something important. The capacity you didn't think you had was always there.

What this means for healing

Understanding all of this at a biological level changes the way we frame emotional eating entirely. Because what looks like compulsion, or lack of discipline, or food obsession, is actually a nervous system doing the job it was trained to do in the context it was trained in.

And you can't think your way out of a brainstem response. You can't journal your way to a regulated hypothalamus. What these systems respond to is evidence. Consistent, repeated, embodied evidence that things are different now.

That looks like physiological stability. Stable blood sugar, sleep, hydration. These aren't boring basics. They are literally changing the data your brainstem is working with. Every stable meal is a signal. Every consistent sleep is a signal.

It looks like reducing internal conflict and building a relationship with your experience that doesn't require constant management and suppression. In IFS we call this working with polarizations, the parts of you that are in conflict with each other, pulling in opposite directions. You can't fix a polarization until both parts feel seen and heard.

It looks like predictable safety. In your environment, your relationships, your own nervous system's rhythms. A slow accumulation of evidence that when I relax, nothing bad happens.

For some people, these medications create a window where this work becomes possible. When a protector part quietens, even temporarily, the parts underneath have room to come forward. Healing becomes accessible in a way it wasn't when the system was working so hard just to survive the day.

But the medication doesn't do the healing. You still need to heal what's underneath. What it can do is create the conditions where healing has more space to happen.

The question I keep coming back to

Why do some people feel more like themselves on these medications? What does it mean when someone says they feel regulated for the first time? And what does that reveal about what was happening before?

Those are the questions I care about. And they're the ones I'll keep pulling on. In a future episode I'm going to sit down with an expert at the forefront of the conversation around metabolic health, peptides, and what these medications are actually doing at a nervous system level. We're going to take everything covered here much deeper.

If this episode resonated, stay tuned. And if someone in your world needs to hear that what they've experienced is real, that there's a biological explanation for it, please share it.

The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join before launch receive founding member pricing.

References

1. Childhood trauma and the HPA axis Murphy, F., Nasa, A., Cullinane, D., Raajakesary, K., Gazzaz, A., Sooknarine, V., Haines, M., Roman, E., Kelly, L., O'Neill, A., Cannon, M., & Roddy, D.W. (2022). Childhood Trauma, the HPA Axis and Psychiatric Illnesses: A Targeted Literature Synthesis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 748372. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.748372

2. Early trauma, HPA axis dysregulation, and eating disorders Cascino, G., et al. (2024). Early traumatic experiences and the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis in people with eating disorders: A narrative review. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 159, 106665. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106665

3. GLP-1 and reward system related disorders (food, alcohol, drugs) Eren-Yazicioglu, C.Y., Yigit, A., Dogruoz, R.E., & Yapici-Eser, H. (2021). Can GLP-1 Be a Target for Reward System Related Disorders? A Qualitative Synthesis and Systematic Review Analysis of Studies on Palatable Food, Drugs of Abuse, and Alcohol. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 14, 614884. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.614884

4. Hindbrain GLP-1 neurons and projections to the hypothalamus (Journal of Neuroscience 2024) Randolph, A.B., Zheng, H., & Rinaman, L. (2024). Populations of hindbrain glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP1) neurons that innervate the hypothalamic PVH, thalamic PVT, or limbic forebrain BST have axon collaterals that reach all central regions innervated by GLP1 neurons. Journal of Neuroscience, 44(31), e2063232024. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2063-23.2024

5. Semaglutide, appetite reduction and dopamine reward signaling Kooij, K.L., Koster, D.IJ., Eeltink, E., Luijendijk, M., Drost, L., Ducrocq, F., & Adan, R.A.H. (2024). GLP-1 receptor agonist semaglutide reduces appetite while increasing dopamine reward signaling. Neuroscience Applied, 3, 103925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nsa.2023.103925

6. Polyvagal theory and neuroception Porges, S.W. (2004). Neuroception: A subconscious system for detecting threats and safety. Zero to Three, 24(5), 19–24. (Foundational reference for polyvagal theory)

A note worth including on your blog post: the Psychoneuroendocrinology paper was published online in November 2023 and appears in the January 2024 volume, so it may be listed as either 2023 or 2024 depending on where you look. Both are correct.

Episode 33: Your Body Never Meant You Any Harm | Somatic Healing, Body Image and Eating Disorder Recovery With Dr. Ann Saffi Biasetti

What if the body you've been at war with has actually been trying to protect you this whole time?

That's the question at the heart of this conversation with Dr. Ann Saffi Biasetti, transpersonal psychologist, somatic psychotherapist, and author of Your Body Never Meant You Any Harm. Ann has spent over 35 years working in the space of eating disorders and trauma recovery, and this episode is one of those conversations that stays with you long after it ends.

Where It Begins: The Belief That Your Body Has Failed You

One of the most common and most painful things Ann encounters in her work is the belief that a woman's struggles with food and her body are somehow her fault. A personal failing. A lack of willpower or discipline or self-control.

Ann is clear: that belief didn't come from nowhere. It came from deep sociocultural conditioning, messages so embedded and so consistent that most women have never stopped to question them. The first chapter of her new book is dedicated entirely to unpacking how we got here, because before any healing can happen, we have to understand the world that shaped us.

Her book title, she shares, was intentional. She insisted on it because she knew it would land differently for every woman who read it. Some would feel relief. Some would feel grief. Some would want to put it down and walk away. And she says, pay attention to that response, because there's a reason it's happening inside you.

The Body as Protector, Not Enemy

One of the most powerful reframes in this conversation is the idea that the body has always been working in your service, even when it hasn't felt that way.

Ann draws on her background in yoga therapy and anatomy to help clients understand what the body is actually doing at any given moment. When cortisol creates a protective layer of weight around the midsection, that's not the body failing. That's the body finding a way to create safety when a woman didn't feel she could use her voice. When food becomes a source of soothing or control, that's not weakness. That's an intelligent system doing what it knows how to do.

This is something that resonates deeply with IFS work too. When we look at the parts of us that are driving these behaviours around food and the body, they all have the same intention underneath. To keep us safe. To protect us. And when two parts that seem to be working against each other finally get to speak to one another, they almost always discover they're protecting the exact same thing, just in opposite ways. The softening that happens in that moment is profound.

Ann puts it beautifully: what would happen if we got on the same team?

Body Forgiveness Is Not About Doing Something Wrong

Ann's research has centred on body forgiveness, and her definition of it is one I want every woman to hear.

Body forgiveness is not about exonerating yourself for something you did wrong. It's not about shame or blame or fixing. It's about understanding, deeply, that you couldn't have done anything differently with what you knew at the time. And neither could your body.

What she describes is more like a relational repair. A grief, even. An acknowledgment that you and your body have both been trying to get to the same place, safety, belonging, peace, and somewhere along the way you ended up feeling like you were on opposite sides.

That grief, she says, is part of the path back.

You Don't Have to Like Your Body to Take Care of It

This is one of the most grounding things Ann shares in the whole conversation, and I think a lot of women need to hear it.

You don't have to be at peace with your body every day. You don't have to love it or feel grateful for it or feel good inside it. There will be days that feel hard. That's not a sign that you're doing it wrong. That's just the reality of being in a relationship, with your body, with other people, with yourself.

Ann uses the example of her three teenagers. Were there days she liked them? No. Did she still make their lunches and send them off to school? Yes. The relationship continues even when the feeling isn't there. And it's the same with our bodies.

The work isn't about arriving somewhere perfect. It's about the constant return.

Pleasure, Comfort, and Why We've Made Both So Complicated

We spend some time in this conversation talking about pleasure, and specifically how fraught that word has become for women.

Ann points out that when she went to research the word pleasure in relation to women's bodies, everything that came up was sexual. And while that's a whole other conversation, what she really wants women to understand is that pleasure starts much smaller than that. It starts with comfort. With knowing what it feels like when your body is comfortable versus uncomfortable. With a warm cup of tea in the sun. With clothes that feel good against your skin. With a moment of stillness.

These tiny sensory experiences of comfort are actually acts of internal kindness, whether we call them that or not. And they are the foundation that everything else gets built on.

How to Start Listening to Your Body When You Feel Completely Disconnected

For anyone who feels like their body is speaking a language they don't understand, Ann offers a simple starting point.

Ask yourself: what is this like inside?

Not what is this like. What is this like inside. Those two words change everything. They redirect the mind inward rather than outward. You can ask it while you're holding your coffee, walking the dog, sitting in traffic. What is this like inside right now?

And then get as descriptive as possible. Build a language for what you notice. This is what Ann calls body literacy, and it is the foundation of interoception, our ability to sense and understand what's happening inside our bodies.

She's careful with her words too. She doesn't ask people what it feels like in their body, because for someone who has been disconnected for years, the body can feel like a foreign or threatening place. Inside is softer. More accessible. Less loaded.

The goal in the beginning isn't to get it right. It's just to get curious. To start asking: is this my mind, or is this actually a sensation? Is this a thought, or is this something my body is telling me?

And what she finds, over and over, is that once people start to touch this, something feels familiar. Like a language they once knew. Like coming home.

If Her Body Could Speak Uninterrupted

At the end of every episode I ask my guests the same question. If a woman's body could speak to her uninterrupted, what would it most want her to hear?

Ann's answer was the same place we began.

I never meant you any harm.

About Dr. Ann Saffi Biasetti

Dr. Ann Saffi Biasetti is a transpersonal psychologist, somatic psychotherapist, mindfulness and self-compassion teacher, and certified yoga therapist with over 35 years of experience in eating disorder and trauma recovery. She is the creator of the Befriending Your Body program and the author of Befriending Your Body and the upcoming Your Body Never Meant You Any Harm, releasing July 21st 2026. She trains clinicians internationally and maintains a private practice in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Find Ann: Website: www.anembodiedlife.com Befriending Your Body Program: www.befriendingyourbodyprogram.com Instagram: @anembodiedlife | https://www.instagram.com/anembodiedlife/

Get her book - Your Body Never Meant You Any Harm: https://amzn.to/4njxbhp

Also available via Shambhala Publications: https://www.shambhala.com/authors/a-f/ann-saffi-biasetti/your-body-never-meant-you-any-harm-9781645474418.html

The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join before launch receive founding member pricing.

Disclaimer: This episode and article contain discussions around emotional eating, binge eating, body image, shame, compulsive eating behaviours, and disordered relationships with food. Please engage with this content gently and use your own discretion if these topics feel activating for you. This content is educational in nature and reflects personal experience and therapeutic perspectives. It is not intended to replace medical, psychological, nutritional, or mental health support. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or severe distress around food or your body, please seek support from a qualified healthcare professional.

Episode 32: Emotional Eating, Bingeing & the Search for Something Food Could Never Fix

There’s a very specific feeling I think a lot of women know intimately, even if they’ve never said it out loud.

The driving from place to place.
The “just one thing.”
The secrecy.
The shame.
The searching.

Not shopping.
Searching.

Searching for the exact thing that’s finally going to scratch the itch.

And if you’ve ever found yourself standing in a supermarket aisle late at night scanning shelves for something you can’t quite name, I want you to know this:

You are not crazy.
You are not weak.
And this was never just about food.

Emotional eating is rarely about hunger

For years, I thought emotional eating meant there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

I thought I lacked discipline.
I thought I had no self control.
I thought if I could just become stricter, more controlled, more “good,” I’d finally stop.

But what I understand now is that the food was never actually the point.

The food was something I could do when my nervous system became overwhelmed.

Something to interrupt the discomfort.
Something to soften the noise.
Something to focus on that wasn’t the weight of what I was carrying emotionally.

And this is the piece I think so many women miss when they’re trapped in cycles of emotional eating or bingeing.

They keep trying to control the behaviour without understanding what the behaviour is trying to do for them.

The Melbourne winters, the loneliness, and the nervous system overload underneath it all

In my late 20s, I was living alone in Melbourne during one of those heavy, grey winters that seem to get into your mood as much as your body.

At the time, I was also working in retail banking in a highly stressful environment where I was absorbing emotional intensity all day long.

People came in angry.
Frustrated.
Hostile.
And because I’m highly sensitive, I carried all of it home with me.

What I didn’t understand back then was that my nervous system had no way to come down.

No regulation.
No softness.
No emotional outlet.
No real sense of safety inside my own body.

So by the time I’d leave work, there was this unbearable feeling underneath my skin.

Restlessness.
Irritation.
Overwhelm.
A desperate need to escape myself.

And somewhere along the way, my brain had learned:
Food can interrupt this.

Temporarily.
Not deeply.
Not permanently.
But enough to keep repeating the cycle.

“You’re not shopping, you’re searching.”

I talk about this in the podcast episode because it’s something I’ve observed so many times in women, both in myself and in others.

You walk into the supermarket and you’re not really shopping anymore.

You’re searching.

Searching for the exact thing that will finally make the feeling stop.

You pick things up.
Read labels.
Put them back.
Walk to another aisle.
Try to find the “healthier” option.
Circle back again.
Negotiate with yourself.
Convince yourself.
Hide what you’re doing.

And underneath all of it is shame.

Because emotional eating and bingeing often carry this invisible layer of secrecy.

The rules.
The hiding.
The “one thing at each shop.”
The trying to make it look normal.

But what’s actually happening underneath is usually far deeper than food itself.

A body that doesn’t feel safe being still

One of the biggest things I understand now is this:

The difficult clients weren’t the trigger.
The cold weather wasn’t the trigger.
Living alone wasn’t the trigger.

Those things amplified what was already happening underneath.

A body that didn’t feel safe being still.
A nervous system that had been running all day with nowhere to put the overwhelm.
A loneliness I didn’t know how to name.
An emotional hunger I didn’t yet have language for.

And because I didn’t understand any of that, I kept trying to solve the problem through discipline.

More control.
More rules.
More restriction.
More shame.

But you cannot willpower your way out of a wound.

And you cannot calorie count your way into feeling safe inside yourself.

Emotional eating is often a coping strategy, not a character flaw

This is why I feel so passionate about helping women understand emotional eating differently.

Because so many women are carrying enormous shame around behaviours that actually make perfect sense when you understand the nervous system underneath them.

Emotional eating is often a coping strategy your body learned long before you had the capacity to understand what you were feeling emotionally.

It becomes a way to:
• soothe
• numb
• regulate
• distract
• comfort
• interrupt overwhelm
• create temporary relief

And healing starts when we stop asking:
“What’s wrong with me?”

And start asking:
“What is this behaviour trying to do for me?”

The deeper hunger underneath emotional eating

One of the most profound shifts in my own healing journey came when I realised I wasn’t actually hungry for food.

I was hungry for:
• softness
• safety
• relief
• emotional connection
• rest
• permission to feel
• somewhere to put my overwhelm

But because those needs didn’t feel safe to acknowledge, the food became the substitute.

And no amount of shame, restriction, or control could ever truly resolve that.

There is another way

If you recognise yourself in this, I want you to know there is nothing wrong with you.

You are not broken.
You are not failing.
And this is not about lacking discipline.

There is a reason your system learned this pattern.
And there is a way to heal it that goes far deeper than food rules or trying harder.

This is exactly the work I teach inside Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle, my self paced course designed to help women understand the nervous system, emotional, and relational roots underneath emotional eating and bingeing patterns.

The waitlist is now open and women who join before launch will receive founding member pricing.

You can join the waitlist here

Disclaimer

This episode and article contain discussions around emotional eating, binge eating, body image, shame, compulsive eating behaviours, and disordered relationships with food. Please engage with this content gently and use your own discretion if these topics feel activating for you.

This content is educational in nature and reflects personal experience and therapeutic perspectives. It is not intended to replace medical, psychological, nutritional, or mental health support. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or severe distress around food or your body, please seek support from a qualified healthcare professional.

Episode 31: The Desire to Be Smaller Didn't Start With You

There's a question I come back to again and again in sessions with clients.

Is this actually your belief, or is it something you inherited?

So much of what women carry around food, their bodies, visibility, and taking up space was never consciously chosen. It was absorbed. Passed down through generations of women adapting to environments where being smaller, quieter, more agreeable, and less visible was genuinely safer.

In this episode, I explore the generational, historical, and nervous system roots underneath body image struggles, emotional eating, and the quiet pressure so many women feel to shrink themselves. Not just physically, but energetically, relationally, and in how much space they allow themselves to occupy.

I also share a personal memory from when I was twelve years old, a moment I didn't have language for at the time, and why it sits at the centre of something so many women experience but rarely talk about.

This episode is for the woman who has spent years trying to fix herself and keeps coming back to the same place. Because what you've been trying to fix may never have been fully yours to begin with.

Whose voice have you been listening to this whole time?

It Was Handed Down

The beliefs so many women carry about their bodies were absorbed, not chosen. A mother standing in front of the mirror criticising her body. An auntie making a comment about weight at a family gathering. A grandmother equating thinness with worth, with desirability, with discipline.

These women weren't trying to cause harm. They were carrying something too — passing on what they themselves had absorbed without ever being given the chance to question it.

In Internal Family Systems therapy, which is the modality I work from, we call this a legacy burden. These beliefs are held by parts of us that were shaped by families and generations before us. And at some point, they made complete sense. They were adaptations. Strategies for staying safe.

Being Small Was Never Just About Aesthetics

If we zoom out and look at history, this starts to make a different kind of sense. Women being small was never purely about how they looked. It was about safety.

Not ancient history — recent history. Women couldn't own property. Couldn't open their own bank accounts. Couldn't leave marriages without severe consequences. In many places, marital rape wasn't even legally recognised until the 1990s. A woman's legal identity was often absorbed entirely into her husband's.

What kept women safer in those conditions wasn't taking up space. It was compliance. Being agreeable, quiet, non-threatening, digestible, easy. Not having too many needs. Not becoming too much.

Being small — in every sense of that word — was protective.

And your body remembers that, even if your conscious mind has never framed it that way.

Your Nervous System Inherited More Than You Think

Your nervous system — the part of you that decides what's safe and what isn't, what to reach for and what to pull away from — doesn't just inherit physical traits. It inherits ways of interpreting the world.

What's safe? When to speak? How to belong? What happens when you take up too much space?

These patterns don't live in our thoughts. They live in our nervous systems, in our tissue, in our bodies — in the parts of us that respond before our conscious mind has even had the chance to catch up.

You can see it in how people move through the world. Some bodies feel open, grounded, like they're allowed to be where they are. Others feel slightly curled in, contained, taking up only as much space as seems permissible. The body quietly, constantly learning to be smaller.

The Moment the World Started Looking Differently

There's a layer to this that rarely gets spoken about, and I want to share it because I think it matters.

I was about 12 or 13, walking through my small town to visit a friend. I ran into one of my parents' friends — a family man, married, liked and respected in the community. We chatted for a couple of minutes on the street. And when I left, I remember the way he looked at me. Up and down. With this big smile on his face.

Something in me felt deeply uncomfortable. Uneasy in a way I couldn't name. I was 12. I didn't have the language for it. He was someone safe, someone my parents trusted. And yet my body registered, very clearly, that the way he was looking at me was not okay.

I wish I could say that was an isolated moment. But when I sit with women in sessions and we explore certain memories, this is one of the most common things that comes up. The moment she first noticed that men were looking at her differently. Her body had become something that invited a certain kind of attention — before she was anywhere near ready to understand what that meant.

Research shows that body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviours often begin in early adolescence, frequently around the onset of puberty, when the body starts to change and that kind of attention increases. A connection forms — not consciously, but deeply in the body: when I was smaller, I felt safer. And when my body changed, something about the world changed with it.

Adaptation, Not Failure

For some women, this looks like trying to return to something smaller — restricting, minimising, becoming less visible. Trying to exist in a body that feels less like a target.

For others, the body adapts in the opposite direction — creating protection through size. A buffer. A barrier. A way of putting distance between herself and a world that hasn't felt safe to be seen in.

Neither of these is about willpower or failure. They are intelligent, embodied responses to experiences that felt overwhelming or unsafe. And food sits right at the centre of all of this — because food can soothe, control can create predictability, and restriction can feel like order when everything underneath is overwhelming.

These aren't failures of character. They're adaptations. They're survival.

So when we approach this purely at the level of behaviour — trying to change what you eat, enforce more discipline, fix the pattern by controlling the surface — we miss what's actually driving it. Because underneath the behaviour, there is a system that has been carrying a lot. Not just your own experiences, but inherited ones. Unspoken ones. Generational ones.

Where the Real Shift Happens

This is where something genuinely begins to shift. Not when you try harder — but when you begin to gently separate what actually belongs to you and what doesn't. What's yours, and what you've been carrying for generations of women who adapted to surviving conditions they didn't choose.

When that kind of legacy burden is released — and I have witnessed this over and over in my work — something shifts in a way that's hard to explain but very clear to feel. Women will pause and say: I feel lighter. Because they are.

This work is not about becoming physically smaller. It's about becoming safer in being seen. Safer in having needs. Safer in taking up space — in your body, your voice, and your life — without feeling like a threat.

If you've spent years trying to fix your relationship with food or your body and it hasn't shifted in the way you hoped, it might not be because you're doing it wrong. It might be because what you've been trying to fix was never fully yours to begin with.

So before you try to change yourself again, it might be worth asking one question:

Whose voice have you been listening to the whole time?

The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join the waitlist before launch receive founding member pricing. You can join the waitlist here

Disclaimer: This episode contains discussions around emotional eating, body image, generational trauma, and unwanted attention during adolescence. Please engage gently. This podcast is not a substitute for professional support.

Episode 30: Emotional Eating & the Hidden Cost of “I’ll Deal With It One Day”

In Episode 30 of the Self Led Woman Podcast, I’m unpacking something that so many women experience but don’t often have language for.

How long have you known that your relationship with food or your body is something you want to change?

Not how long you’ve been trying.
How long you’ve known.

For a lot of women, the honest answer is years. Sometimes decades.

And yet they’re still in it.
Still circling the same patterns.
Still having versions of the same conversations with themselves.

“I’ll start again Monday.”
“I just need more discipline.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“I’ll deal with it one day.”

And I think this is one of the biggest things people misunderstand about emotional eating, body obsession, and the constant mental noise so many women live with.

Most women are not stuck because they don’t understand the pattern.

They’re stuck because the pattern has become tolerable.

That sounds harsh, but I don’t mean it critically. I mean it honestly.

You can still function.
You can still work.
You can still show up.
You can still be successful.
You can still look like you have your life together from the outside.

So the issue gets pushed into the background.

But just because something is functioning in the background doesn’t mean it isn’t costing you.

The quiet exhaustion women adapt to

There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from having part of your attention permanently occupied.

Thinking about food.
Thinking about your body.
Checking yourself in mirrors.
Negotiating what you’ll eat later.
Promising to “be good tomorrow.”
Feeling different about yourself depending on how your body looks that day.

For many women, this has been happening for so long it feels normal.

Not because they enjoy it.
But because they’ve adapted to it.

And adapting to something is not the same thing as it being okay.

I often think about it like having 50 apps open on your phone all day.

Even when your battery says 100%, it drains faster because there’s so much running quietly in the background.

That’s what emotional eating patterns and body obsession can feel like.

Not always dramatic.
Not always obvious.
But constantly consuming energy.

“I understand my patterns… so why am I still doing this?”

This is where so many high functioning, self aware women get stuck.

Because they do understand their patterns.

They know they emotionally eat more when they’re overwhelmed.
They know comparison makes things worse.
They know stress impacts their body image.
They know they use food to soothe, numb, distract, regulate, reward, or escape.

And yet they still find themselves back in the same cycles.

This creates one of the most exhausting emotional experiences possible:

The gap between what you know and what you actually do.

You can intellectually understand your behaviour and still feel completely trapped inside it.

And that doesn’t mean you’re failing.

It means understanding the pattern and changing the pattern are two completely different things.

Why awareness alone doesn’t heal emotional eating

This is the part I wish more people understood.

Insight is not the same thing as healing.

You can know exactly why you do something and still feel powerless to stop it.

Because emotional eating patterns don’t just live in thoughts.

They live in the nervous system.

They live in the parts of you that learned food created relief.
Comfort.
Numbing.
Safety.
Distraction.
Regulation.
Control.

Which is why so many women stay stuck trying to “think” their way out of something their body learned long ago as survival.

And then they blame themselves when more information doesn’t fix it.

The problem with waiting for rock bottom

A lot of women unconsciously believe they’ll finally deal with this when it gets “bad enough.”

When they hit a breaking point.
When they gain more weight.
When they binge harder.
When they feel more miserable.
When things become unbearable.

But honestly?

Rock bottom often never comes.

Instead, what happens is much quieter.

You just slowly adapt.

You keep functioning while carrying this constant low level drain in the background of your life.

And because it’s manageable, you minimize it.

You tell yourself:
“It’s not that serious.”
“Other people have it worse.”
“I can handle it.”

But I really want women to understand this:

There is life to be lived on the other side of this.

Life where food is not taking up this much mental space.
Life where your body is not something you’re monitoring all day.
Life where your self worth is not fluctuating based on what you ate yesterday or how flat your stomach looks that morning.

Emotional eating is rarely about the food

One of the biggest shifts in my own healing journey was realizing food was never actually the issue.

Food was the strategy.

The strategy for managing discomfort.
Managing overwhelm.
Managing loneliness.
Managing emotional pain.
Managing nervous system dysregulation.
Managing parts of myself that didn’t feel safe.

And when you understand that, the conversation changes completely.

Because now the question becomes:
“What is the eating trying to do for me?”

Not:
“What’s wrong with me?”

That shift changes everything.

You do not need to wait until this gets worse

If you’ve been saying “I’ll deal with this one day,” I want you to gently ask yourself:

How long have you been saying that?

And if nothing changes, how will your life look a year from now?
Five years from now?
Ten years from now?

Not because I want to scare you.
But because so many women are quietly exhausted by this pattern while simultaneously convincing themselves it isn’t serious enough to deserve support.

It is.

You do not need to hit a breaking point for your pain to count.

And you do not need to wait until things fall apart before deciding you want something different.

Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle

If this resonates with you and you’re tired of living in the gap between knowing and actually changing, my self paced course Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is opening soon.

This work goes far deeper than food rules, discipline, or behaviour management.

We work with the nervous system patterns, emotional survival strategies, and protective parts underneath emotional eating so you can finally understand what’s actually driving the cycle.

The waitlist is now open and women who join before launch will receive founding member pricing.

You can join the waitlist here

Episode 29: Emotional Eating, Control & Parts Work with Ivana Legnerova | IFS Therapy for Healing Your Relationship with Food

Listen to the full episode

If you’ve ever felt like you should be able to “fix” your relationship with food but haven’t been able to, this episode will help you understand why.

Emotional Eating, Control & Parts Work

Why your relationship with food isn’t about willpower, with IFS therapist Ivana Legnerova

In Episode [insert number] of the Self Led Woman Podcast, I’m joined by Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist Ivana Legnerova for a grounded and compassionate conversation about emotional eating, control, and what’s actually happening underneath our relationship with food.

Because for so many women, the struggle with food doesn’t make sense on the surface.

You can be high functioning.
Disciplined.
Self-aware.

And still feel like you’re losing control with food behind closed doors.

This episode helps make sense of that.

It’s not about control

One of the biggest themes in this conversation is the idea that eating behaviours are not failures.

They are protective.

When someone says, “I just need more control around food,” what’s often sitting underneath that is not a lack of discipline, but a system that is trying to manage something deeper.

As Ivana shares, there is always a reason for these patterns.

Parts of you that restrict, binge, or control food are not random. They are trying to help you cope with something that feels overwhelming, vulnerable, or unsafe.

And when you begin to understand that, the way you relate to yourself starts to shift.

Why high-functioning women struggle in private

Something we both see in our work is how common this is for high-functioning women.

From the outside, everything looks together.

They are capable. Productive. Reliable.
They are the ones holding everything together.

But behind closed doors, there is often another part of the system trying to balance that.

A part that turns to food to soothe, numb, or create relief after a day of holding too much.

This isn’t a contradiction.

It’s a system trying to regulate itself.

In IFS terms, these are often different parts working in opposition. One part pushing, performing, achieving. Another part stepping in to release the pressure.

And when you don’t understand that dynamic, it can feel like you’re fighting yourself.

The role of shame in eating patterns

Shame is one of the most powerful forces that keeps these patterns in place.

There is shame around food.
Shame around the body.
Shame around not being able to “get it together.”

And then there is another layer of shame for even having the struggle in the first place.

As Ivana explains, shame often creates more protection.

Parts step in to fix it. To control it. To make sure you don’t feel that way again.

Which only deepens the cycle.

This is why trying to force behaviour change rarely works.

Because the behaviour isn’t the problem.

What IFS therapy offers that other approaches don’t

Internal Family Systems offers a completely different way of working with these patterns.

Instead of trying to eliminate behaviours, it helps you build a relationship with the parts of you that are driving them.

Not with judgment.
Not with control.
But with curiosity.

When parts feel understood instead of pushed away, something shifts.

They begin to trust.
They soften.
They no longer need to work as hard.

And from there, change happens in a way that doesn’t feel forced.

What healing actually looks like

Healing your relationship with food isn’t just about changing what you eat.

It’s about changing how you relate to yourself.

As Ivana describes, healing often looks like:

More space in your mind
More presence in your body
More compassion towards yourself
Less urgency, less control, less noise

And something that’s hard to describe but easy to feel…

A sense that you are no longer fighting yourself.

There is life on the other side of constantly thinking about food and your body.

And many people don’t realise how much energy it’s taking until it’s no longer there.

Connect with Ivana Legnerova

Link to website
https://www.ivanatherapy.co.uk/

Disclaimer

The Self Led Woman podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, medical advice, or professional healthcare.
If this episode brings up anything difficult for you, please consider reaching out to a trained healthcare professional, therapist, or support service.

In Australia you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Butterfly Foundation National Helpline on 1800 33 4673, which provides support for people experiencing eating disorders and body image concerns.

Work with me

If you’re listening to this and recognising yourself in these patterns, you don’t have to keep navigating it on your own.

You can book a free 30-minute consultation below where we’ll map out what’s actually going on in your system and what support could look like. Book here

https://megandarnell.as.me/?appointmentType=69722155

Episode 28: Why Knowing Your Emotional Eating Patterns Still Doesn’t Change Them

A woman said something to me recently that I hear all the time in my work.

She said,

“I already know where this comes from. It’s because of my childhood. It’s because of trauma. I understand exactly why I do it.”

And then she paused for a moment and said something really honest.

“But I’m still doing it.”

She still finds herself standing in the kitchen late at night.

Opening the cupboard.

Eating something even though a part of her is thinking,

Why am I doing this again? I know better.

And the question she asked next is the one I want to talk about.

“If I understand my patterns so well… why haven’t they changed?”

The Moment Emotional Eating Often Happens

Let me describe what this moment often looks like.

You’ve had a long day.

Work has been demanding.
Maybe the kids needed you.
Maybe your partner needed something.
Maybe someone at work dropped the ball and it landed on your plate at the last minute.

You’ve been capable all day.

Responsible.
Strong.
Holding it together for everyone.

Then the house gets quiet.

You walk into the kitchen.

In that moment you are not analysing your childhood or thinking about trauma.

You’re just feeling something.

Maybe it’s exhaustion.
Maybe it’s loneliness.
Maybe it’s resentment.
Maybe it’s the feeling of being unseen or unappreciated.

Instead of saying to someone,

“I’ve had a really hard day.”

Instead of asking for a hug.

Instead of calling a friend and saying,

“I feel really alone tonight.”

You open the cupboard and grab something to eat.

Because that’s what you learned to do.

Handle it yourself.

Why Food Becomes a Way to Regulate

The truth is food works.

Food regulates the nervous system.

Warm food can slow your system down.
Warm food can mimic the feeling of being held.

Sweet foods can create a moment of comfort.

Sweetness can represent love, care, and nurturing.

Crunchy foods allow you to bite, break, and release tension.

Sometimes when people crave crunchy or salty foods, they are releasing frustration or anger that has been pushed down all day.

The body is incredibly intelligent.

It is always looking for ways to regulate.

When you’re standing in the kitchen eating chocolate late at night, sometimes you are not reaching for sugar.

You are reaching for comfort.

You are reaching for softness.

You are reaching for the feeling of being held.

The Connection Between Cravings and Emotional Needs

In Chinese medicine, sweetness is associated with the earth element.

Earth represents the mother.

It represents nourishment, care, and stability.

So when you crave sweetness, it can sometimes reflect a deeper longing for nurturing.

For comfort.

For someone to hold you in the way you needed when you were younger.

Why Many Women Struggle to Ask for What They Need

Here is the deeper part of this conversation.

Many women struggle to ask for what they need.

They cannot pick up the phone and say,

“I’m having a really hard time.”

Or

“I feel really lonely tonight.”

Because somewhere earlier in life they learned that their emotions were not welcome.

Maybe when they cried they were told,

“Stop crying.”

“Don’t be so sensitive.”

“You’re fine.”

Maybe when they were upset, the adults around them were too overwhelmed to respond.

So as little girls they learned something important.

Handle it yourself.

Don’t be too much.

Don’t ask for too much.

And those patterns don’t disappear just because you understand them.

They live in your nervous system.

They live in your body.

Why Awareness Alone Doesn’t Change the Pattern

This is where many self aware women feel stuck.

They can explain their patterns perfectly.

They might say,

“I emotionally eat when I’m overwhelmed.”

“I know I carry too much responsibility.”

“I know this started in childhood.”

But knowing does not stop the behaviour.

Because awareness alone does not create a new experience.

Understanding your childhood does not automatically teach your nervous system how to receive support.

Understanding your patterns does not automatically teach you how to ask for connection.

Those are relational experiences.

They have to be felt.

When Food Becomes the Reliable Source of Regulation

If you learned early in life that you couldn’t express your emotions or ask for what you needed, food may have become a reliable way to regulate.

Warm food can soothe.

Sweet food can comfort.

Carbohydrates can ground an anxious nervous system.

These are not random behaviours.

They are intelligent adaptations your body developed to take care of you.

Learning the Skills You Were Never Taught

For many women, there is another layer.

They are not connected to their bodies.

They cannot feel their hunger cues.

They cannot feel their fullness cues.

They struggle to recognise what they actually need emotionally.

And this is not a personal failure.

It is simply a skill that was never taught.

Learning to feel into your body is a skill.

Learning to recognise your emotional needs is a skill.

Learning to ask for support is a skill.

The Deeper Work Behind Emotional Eating

The work I do is not about controlling food.

Food is simply where the pattern shows up.

The real work is underneath.

Learning how to recognise what you actually need.

Learning how to say,

“I’m not okay today.”

Learning how to reach for connection instead of isolation.

Learning how to soothe your nervous system in ways that do not require food to carry the emotional load.

This process is often about learning how to mother yourself.

Learning to Mother Yourself

Self mothering means offering yourself the care, compassion, and support that you needed when you were younger.

It means learning how to listen to your body.

Learning how to respond to your needs with softness rather than criticism.

It is like becoming deeply attuned to yourself in the way a loving parent would be attuned to a child.

When you can offer yourself that kind of care, something begins to shift.

The need underneath the behaviour starts getting met somewhere else.

And food no longer has to do the emotional work it has been carrying for years.

Why This Work Changes Everything

Many women who work with me say the process feels incredibly gentle.

But it creates deeper change than anything they have tried before.

Because instead of trying to force behaviour change, we work with the nervous system and the parts of you that developed those patterns in the first place.

When your system experiences safety, connection, and support, the behaviours that once felt impossible to change begin to soften.

If You Understand Your Patterns But Still Feel Stuck

If you understand your patterns better than most people but still find yourself repeating them, I want you to know something.

You are not failing.

You do not lack discipline.

Insight is just one part of the healing process.

Real change happens when your nervous system begins to experience something different.

Support.

Connection.

Safety.

And when that happens, the patterns that once felt impossible to change start to loosen their grip.

Because healing always happens from the inside out.

Episode 27: All the Things I Tried to Stop Emotional Eating (And Why None of Them Worked)

Content Note

This article discusses eating disorders, binge eating, restriction, and exercise used as punishment around food.

This blog and podcast are intended for educational and informational purposes only and are not a substitute for therapy, medical advice, or professional healthcare.

If this topic brings up anything difficult for you, please consider reaching out to a trained therapist or healthcare professional.

In Australia you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Butterfly Foundation National Helpline on 1800 33 4673, which provides support for people experiencing eating disorders and body image concerns.

For years I thought my emotional eating was a discipline problem.

I believed I lacked willpower.

I thought if I could just control myself around food, everything would finally change.

So I tried everything.

I tried hypnotherapy.
Acupuncture.
Kinesiology.
Past life regression.
Self help books and affirmations stuck to my walls.

I hired personal trainers.
Followed high protein diets.
Low carb diets.
Nutrition plans.

I tried intuitive eating.

At one point I even ran a marathon because I was trying to run off all the food I had eaten.

I tried appetite suppressants, herbal teas, juice cleanses, and the lemon detox diet.

I even taped my mouth shut at night hoping it would stop me from waking up and binge eating.

None of it worked.

And for a long time, I thought that meant something was wrong with me.

But what I understand now is that I wasn’t failing.

I was just trying to solve the wrong problem.

The Therapy Session That Changed Everything

I remember sitting in a therapy office in my late twenties.

I was sitting across from the therapist, and my mum was sitting next to me.

Even before the session started I remember thinking this was a terrible idea.

But my therapist said that if I wanted to move forward with my healing, I needed to work on my relationship with my mum.

She said we needed to address some things that had happened when I was younger.

So I asked my mum to come along to therapy.

During the session the therapist asked her about some things from my childhood.

My mum responded the way she had many times before.

“That never happened. I would never do that.”

And I remember saying to her,

“Why would I make that up?”

Eventually she admitted that some of those things had happened.

But then she said something many people with emotionally immature parents will recognise.

“It’s not a big deal Megan. It was so long ago. Why don’t you just get over it?”

The therapist gently said to her,

“This might not be a big deal to you, but it’s a big deal to Megan.”

For a moment I thought maybe something had landed.

Maybe she understood.

But nothing changed.

I never received the repair I was hoping for.

At the time that felt devastating.

All I wanted was for my mum to understand and see me.

What I understand now is that I was looking for something she didn’t have the capacity to give.

Emotional Eating Was Never Really About Food

For a long time I thought my struggle was about food.

But when I look back, that therapy session was actually a pivotal moment in my emotional eating journey.

Because what I was really longing for was something much deeper.

I wanted to feel mothered.

I wanted to feel held.

I wanted someone to understand what I had been carrying.

Food became the place my nervous system tried to regulate that longing.

The Cycle of Bingeing and Punishing Myself

In my twenties I lived in a cycle of restriction, binge eating, and punishment.

I would binge at night.

Then the next morning I would wake up with a sense of shame.

The first thought in my head was essentially,

“I need to punish my body for what I’ve done.”

So I would go to the gym and push myself as hard as I possibly could.

Sometimes I would train twice in one day.

Not from a place of self care.

From a place of punishment.

The strange part is that people praised this behaviour.

When I was mentally at my worst, I received the most compliments.

I might say something like,

“I ate so much last night so I’m smashing myself at the gym today.”

And people would respond,

“Good on you.”

Looking back now, I realise how socially acceptable that form of punishment is.

The Hunger That Food Could Never Satisfy

During that time there was a hunger I couldn’t explain.

No matter how much I tried to control my eating, the hunger didn’t go away.

I would tell myself,

“You’re not hungry. You just ate.”

And technically that was true.

But what I didn’t understand then was that it wasn’t physical hunger.

It was what I now call developmental hunger.

A hunger for something food could never satisfy.

Connection.

Comfort.

Support.

To feel held and understood.

Why Diets and Food Plans Don’t Heal Emotional Eating

This is why so many strategies failed for me.

None of them addressed the real thing underneath.

Diets focus on food.

Exercise focuses on calories.

Nutrition plans focus on discipline.

But emotional eating is not a food problem.

Food is simply where the pattern shows up.

Underneath emotional eating there is often grief, loneliness, suppressed anger, resentment, or years of carrying too much responsibility.

Very often there is a longing to feel nurtured.

To feel cared for.

To feel safe.

The Deeper Meaning Behind Cravings

This is something I spoke about with my guest Lottie Davies on the podcast.

In Chinese medicine the taste of sweetness is associated with the earth element, which represents the mother.

Sweet foods are often linked to comfort, nurturing, and care.

So when someone is craving sweetness, it is not always about sugar.

Sometimes it is the body looking for softness.

Looking for love.

Looking for comfort.

The body is always communicating something.

Learning to Mother Yourself

The deeper healing work for me was not about fixing my eating.

It was about learning something I had never been taught.

How to mother myself.

How to offer myself the compassion, care, and emotional support I needed.

Instead of trying to force the behaviour to stop, I began working with the parts of me that were protecting me.

These protective parts were trying to keep me safe.

They were just running an old script that was no longer helping.

As those parts began to heal, the behaviours started to soften.

The pressure and perfectionism that had been driving my emotional eating slowly began to dissolve.

Healing Emotional Eating Starts Beneath the Behaviour

If you have tried everything to stop emotional eating and nothing seems to work, I want you to hear this.

You don’t lack willpower.

There is nothing wrong with you.

You have simply been trying to solve a deeper emotional need with food.

When you begin healing the nervous system and learning how to support yourself with compassion, things start to change.

Not through force.

Through understanding.

Through safety.

Through care.

Episode 26: The Hidden Link Between Emotional Eating, People Pleasing and Boundaries

Emotional eating is usually treated like a food problem.

Most conversations focus on cravings, discipline, willpower or learning to control what you eat.

But when I work with women around emotional eating, the story rarely begins with food.

It usually begins with a moment where something didn’t sit right.

A comment that hurt.
A boundary that was crossed.
A moment where you felt dismissed, unseen or taken for granted.

And instead of expressing it, you swallowed it.

The Moment That Often Starts the Pattern

Imagine something small happens during the day.

A partner says something that hurts your feelings.
A colleague drops more work on your desk when you already feel overwhelmed.
A friend makes a comment that lands badly.

Your body registers the moment immediately.

You feel tension.
You feel irritation.
You feel something shift inside.

But instead of saying something, the system often defaults to keeping the peace.

You tell yourself:

“They probably didn’t mean it.”
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of this.”
“I should just let it go.”

So you swallow it.

The frustration.
The hurt.
The resentment.

And your body holds the emotional charge.

People Pleasing Is Not a Personality Trait

When we talk about people pleasing, it is often framed as a confidence issue.

But people pleasing is rarely about weakness.

It is usually a very intelligent survival strategy that begins early in life.

Girls are socialised to be accommodating.

We are taught to be nice.
Be polite.
Don’t be difficult.
Don’t be too much.
Don’t upset people.

Over time, the nervous system learns something important.

Connection depends on keeping others comfortable.

Belonging depends on being agreeable.

Love depends on being helpful.

Children are incredibly intuitive.

They know that connection with caregivers is essential for survival.

So the nervous system adapts.

It learns to read the room.

To anticipate what other people need.

To smooth things over before conflict happens.

These skills often create adults who are highly perceptive and empathetic.

But they come at a cost.

Instead of asking, “What feels right for me?”

The system asks, “What will make everyone else comfortable?”

Why Boundaries Are Not Just Communication Skills

Most advice around boundaries focuses on scripts.

Say this.
Communicate that.
Just state your needs clearly.

But the nervous system does not operate through scripts.

It operates through one core question.

Am I safe?

If expressing needs once led to rejection, punishment, dismissal or withdrawal of love, the body remembers.

Years later, when you try to set a boundary, your nervous system can react as if you are stepping into danger.

You might say no to someone and then spend hours spiralling afterwards.

Replaying the conversation.
Worrying you were too harsh.
Feeling guilty.

You might even go back and soften the boundary.

Not because you lack confidence.

But because your nervous system believes connection might be at risk.

The Fawn Response

Most people are familiar with fight or flight.

But there is another trauma response that often sits underneath people pleasing.

It is called fawning.

Instead of fighting a threat or running from it, the nervous system learns to appease it.

To smooth things over.

To keep the peace.

For children who could not escape conflict or fight back against authority figures, fawning becomes a very efficient strategy.

Keep everyone happy.

Avoid conflict.

Ignore your own needs.

Preserve connection at all costs.

The problem is that the strategy does not disappear in adulthood.

It becomes automatic.

Where Emotional Eating Enters the Picture

When emotions are suppressed, the energy does not disappear.

It stays in the body.

That tension has to go somewhere.

This is where food often becomes the outlet.

Food creates relief.

It softens the tension that has built up from holding emotions inside.

It gives the nervous system something to do with the emotional activation that never had a place to go.

What we call emotional eating is often the body attempting to process feelings that were never allowed to be expressed.

Why These Patterns Can Last for Years

Over time these moments accumulate.

Years of accommodating.

Years of saying yes when you meant no.

Years of prioritising connection over authenticity.

All of those swallowed emotions settle in the body.

And they eventually settle into the relationship you have with food.

Emotional eating becomes the place where the nervous system finally releases pressure.

Healing the Pattern

Healing emotional eating is not about controlling food.

It is about helping the nervous system feel safe enough to experience emotions that were once dangerous to express.

Safe enough to feel anger without collapsing into guilt.

Safe enough to say no without fearing abandonment.

Safe enough to hold a boundary even if someone else is disappointed.

This work is not about pushing past your system.

It is about helping your body discover that it is safe to exist without disappearing.

Because when that internal safety begins to return, something powerful happens.

The pressure that was driving the emotional eating begins to dissolve.

Food no longer has to carry the emotional load.

And the relationship with food begins to change naturally.

Not because you forced it.

But because the relationship you have with yourself has finally begun to repair.

Episode 25: Emotional Eating Isn’t About Food | Dr Anita Johnston on Body Image, Cravings & What Your Body Is Really Saying

In Episode 25 of the Self Led Woman Podcast, I’m joined by depth psychologist and eating disorder specialist Dr Anita Johnston, author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, for a conversation that will completely shift the way you understand emotional eating.

Because for most women, the struggle with food isn’t actually about food.

Listen to the full episode

If you’ve ever felt stuck in cycles of food guilt, confusion, or disconnection from your body, this episode will help you see your experience in a new light.

🎙️ Listen to Episode 25: Emotional Eating Isn’t About Food on the Self Led Woman Podcast.

Why emotional eating is misunderstood

When you’re stuck in cycles of emotional eating, restriction, or food guilt, it’s easy to assume the problem is your behaviour.

That you need more discipline.
More control.
A better plan.

But as Dr Anita Johnston explains, these patterns are rarely random or dysfunctional.

They are meaningful.

They are often your system’s way of coping, regulating, or communicating something deeper that hasn’t yet been met.

Cravings are not the problem

One of the biggest shifts in this conversation is understanding that cravings are not something to fight.

They are something to listen to.

Dr Johnston uses metaphor to explain how food can symbolise deeper emotional needs.

For example, certain foods may be connected to comfort, warmth, or safety. Others may be linked to stimulation, expression, or relief.

This doesn’t mean every craving has a direct or obvious meaning, but it does point to something important:

Your body is communicating with you.

And when that communication is ignored, overridden, or judged, the cycle around food often intensifies.

Understanding “soul hunger”

Not all hunger is physical.

Physical hunger can be satisfied with food. It comes on gradually and settles once you’ve eaten.

But many women are experiencing a different kind of hunger entirely.

A deeper sense of longing that food alone cannot resolve.

Dr Johnston refers to this as “soul hunger.”

This can show up as a need for rest, connection, creativity, expression, or emotional support. And when those needs aren’t acknowledged, they often get redirected toward food.

Not because food is the answer, but because it’s accessible.

What’s really happening during “fat attacks”

Many women experience moments where their focus becomes intensely fixated on their body.

You might suddenly feel uncomfortable in your skin. Critical. Hyper-aware of your appearance.

Dr Johnston describes these as “fat attacks.”

But what’s important to understand is that these moments are rarely about your body itself.

They are often triggered by something deeper.

A feeling of vulnerability.
A lack of control.
An emotional experience that feels unsafe or overwhelming.

The mind shifts the focus onto the body because it feels more tangible. More manageable.

But addressing the body will never resolve what’s actually underneath.

Your body is not working against you

One of the most important takeaways from this conversation is this:

Your body is not the problem.

The patterns you’ve been trying to control, whether it’s emotional eating, restriction, or food obsession, may actually be your system’s way of trying to support you.

When you begin to see these behaviours through that lens, something shifts.

Instead of fighting yourself, you begin to understand yourself.

And from there, change becomes possible in a very different way.

Connect with Dr Anita Johnston

You can find Dr Anita Johnston and her work here:

Website: https://dranitajohnston.com/
Instagram / Facebook: @dranitajohnston

Light of the Moon Cafe: https://lightofthemooncafe.com/
Instagram / Facebook: @lightofthemooncafe

Ai Pono Hawaii
Instagram / Facebook: @aiponohawaii

📖 Purchase her book Eating in the Light of the Moon

Resources:
Free Food & Metaphor Guide
Cracking the Hunger Code (special offer)
New Crescent Moon (interactive course)

Disclaimer

This podcast and blog content is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or psychological advice. If you are struggling with your relationship with food or your mental health, please seek support from a qualified professional.

Episode 24: Why Weight Loss Is Not the Goal of Healing Emotional Eating

When people hear that I work with women who struggle with emotional eating, food, or their bodies, there is often an assumption.

That the goal must be weight loss.

But weight loss is never the goal of this work.

And there are important reasons for that.

The Message Women Are Already Receiving

We already live in a culture that constantly tells women their bodies need to be smaller, better, or fixed in some way.

Diet culture.
The wellness industry.
Fitness marketing.

Everywhere you look there is another message suggesting that your body is a problem that needs solving.

A new plan.
A new protocol.
A reset.
A before and after photo.

Another promise that if you just lose the weight, your life will finally work.

Underneath all of these messages is the same belief.

That something is wrong with you.

I fundamentally disagree with that.

The Body Is Often Trying to Protect You

One of the reasons I never position weight loss as the goal is because the body is far more intelligent than we often give it credit for.

Sometimes the body holds weight for protective reasons.

For many women, there have been experiences where their boundaries were crossed.

Sometimes these experiences were obvious and significant.

Other times they were subtle.

Unwanted attention.
Being sexualised at a young age.
Feeling exposed or uncomfortable as the body changed during puberty.
Comments that made them feel unsafe in their own skin.

Even if these experiences seemed small at the time, the body remembers them.

Parts of the nervous system can develop beliefs like:

If I stand out, something bad will happen.
I don’t want unwanted attention.
I don’t want people looking at me.
I don’t want jealousy or backlash.

These parts are not irrational.

They developed because something happened that taught them it wasn’t safe to be fully seen.

The body adapts.

Not because something is wrong with you.

Because your system is trying to protect you.

Emotional Eating Is Not About Food

Even though my work sits in the emotional eating space, the truth is that this work is not really about food.

Food is simply the place where the pattern shows up.

Underneath emotional eating there is often something much deeper.

Grief.
Loneliness.
Resentment.
The pressure of carrying too much responsibility for too long.

Sometimes these patterns started when someone was very young.

When emotions didn’t feel safe to express.

When there wasn’t a safe adult to sit with those feelings.

Food becomes the place where the nervous system can finally get a small moment of relief.

It might numb the pressure.
Soften the overwhelm.
Create a brief sense of comfort.

The behaviour is not a failure.

It is an adaptation.

And often a very intelligent one.

Why Focusing on Behaviour Alone Doesn’t Work

When the focus stays on controlling food, the deeper reason for the behaviour is never addressed.

Women often end up stuck in a cycle of trying to control their eating, feeling ashamed when they can’t maintain it, and then trying even harder.

All of that attention stays locked on the body.

But the real reason the behaviour exists underneath remains untouched.

My Own Experience With This

This is also personal for me.

I have my own recovery journey with food.

When I was at the worst point in that struggle, the least helpful thing I could have done was focus on fixing my body.

But that’s exactly what I was doing.

I was dieting more than ever.
Restricting more than ever.
Obsessing about my body more than ever.

And it made everything worse.

Restriction intensified the bingeing.

The desire to lose weight only increased my obsession with food.

My attention stayed locked on my body instead of understanding what my system was actually trying to cope with.

Why Intuitive Eating Is Not Always Simple

Another important piece of this conversation is intuitive eating.

Today I eat intuitively.

But when people say “just listen to your body,” they often forget something important.

Many women don’t feel safe in their bodies yet.

If you’ve spent years living in your head or disconnecting from your body, you might not be able to feel hunger or fullness clearly.

For some people, even being present in their body for a few seconds can feel overwhelming.

Reconnection with the body is a process.

It takes time.

It takes safety.

It takes learning to rebuild trust with yourself.

You cannot flip a switch and suddenly feel your body clearly.

The Sensitive Little Girl

Something I see over and over again in my work is that women who struggle with emotional eating were often highly sensitive children.

They noticed everything.

They could feel emotional shifts in the room before anyone said a word.

They were deeply intuitive.

But that sensitivity was often not celebrated.

They were told:

You’re too sensitive.
You’re too emotional.
Don’t cry.
Stop being dramatic.

So they learned to suppress it.

Those sensitive girls often grow into women who carry enormous responsibility.

They manage everyone around them.
They hold everything together.
They rarely express what they are carrying.

And eventually the body looks for somewhere to release the pressure.

Often that place becomes food.

Healing Happens in Safe Relationships

One of the most important parts of healing emotional eating is understanding relational trauma.

Relational trauma does not always come from dramatic moments.

Sometimes it comes from small, repeated experiences where a child’s emotions were not met with care.

Moments where there was no safe adult to say:

“I can see you’re upset. Let me sit with you.”

Those moments shape how we show up in relationships later in life.

And healing those wounds cannot happen completely alone.

Relational trauma heals inside safe relationships.

Including within a therapeutic relationship.

This is why the container of therapy matters so much.

Repairing small ruptures, speaking up for parts of yourself, and having those experiences received safely can become powerful moments of healing.

The Real Goal of This Work

This is why weight loss will never be the goal of the work that I do.

Not because bodies can’t change.

Bodies change all the time.

But weight loss is not the point.

The point is helping women reconnect with themselves.

To rebuild safety in their bodies.

To understand the parts of them that developed these strategies.

To trust their internal signals again.

To feel supported instead of punished by their own system.

Because what women actually need is not another plan to fix their bodies.

They need safety.

Connection.

Compassion.

And the space to understand what their system has been trying to protect them from all along.

Episode 23: My Bipolar Diagnosis and the Gut Brain Connection: How Nutrition Changed My Mood Stability

There is something about me that many people who are new to my work might not know.

At 35, I was diagnosed with bipolar type 2.

For a long time, that diagnosis felt like a life sentence.

I had struggled with depression on and off since I was young. Probably since primary school. There were periods where everything felt heavy, flat and difficult.

Then there were other periods where I felt energised, creative, productive and social. I needed less sleep. I had more ideas than I could keep up with.

I now understand that those periods were hypomania.

But at the time, I believed that was the version of me I needed to maintain.

That was the version of me that felt capable.

When depression returned, it felt like failure.

The Moment Everything Changed

The diagnosis itself was confronting, but what really impacted me was what I was told afterwards.

I was told that I would likely need medication for the rest of my life.

That bipolar disorder would always be something I would have to manage.

That conversation changed something inside me overnight.

It wasn’t just about mood anymore. It affected how I saw myself.

I started questioning whether I was reliable.

Whether I could run a business.

Whether I could build the life I imagined.

Because depression could return at any moment and take everything down with it.

That belief was devastating.

My Early Curiosity About Nutrition and Mood

Long before I received that diagnosis, I had already started noticing something important.

What I ate affected my mood.

If I ate enough protein, I felt more stable.
Too much sugar made me crash.
Refined carbohydrates made me sleepy and then hungry again later.

Alcohol made everything worse.

Eating too little made me anxious.
Eating too much made me feel heavy and low.

I was constantly observing these patterns.

Looking back, I was essentially treating my body like a science experiment.

Some of this curiosity was healthy.

Some of it was also tangled up in diet culture and an obsession with doing everything perfectly.

But even then I could feel that my mood was not separate from my physiology.

When My Gut Health Collapsed

In my early thirties I developed a parasite infection.

That experience sent my gut health into chaos.

Suddenly I was reacting to foods that had never been a problem before.

Dairy would make my throat tighten.
Certain foods made me feel hungover the next day even though I hadn’t been drinking.

My digestion was unpredictable and uncomfortable.

At the same time, I noticed something else.

When my gut was inflamed, my mood was worse.

When my blood sugar was unstable, my mood swung with it.

When I was undernourished, my brain felt under resourced.

These connections were impossible to ignore.

Discovering the Gut Brain Connection

A couple of years after my diagnosis, I came across a book called Madness: A Bipolar Life.

The book explored the role that things like nutrient deficiencies, inflammation, mineral imbalances and mitochondrial health can play in mood regulation.

It didn’t promise a cure.

But it gave me something incredibly important.

Agency.

One metaphor from that book stayed with me.

The brain is like a baby.

If a mother isn’t getting enough nutrients during pregnancy, the baby will still take what it needs from her body.

And when a baby is born, it cries when it needs nourishment.

The brain does something similar.

If it is not receiving the nutrients it needs, it will signal distress.

Supporting My System Differently

After reading that book, I decided to explore these ideas further with professional guidance.

I worked with a naturopath alongside my doctors.

We ran tests.
We looked at mineral levels.
We explored gut health and food intolerances.

We made adjustments slowly and carefully.

Over time, my system began to stabilise.

I continued to monitor my nutrition, blood sugar stability and stress levels.

Today I still do regular testing and pay close attention to what my body needs.

And since January 2020, I have not experienced another bipolar or depressive episode.

Trauma, Stress and Digestion

Something I understand now that I didn’t fully understand back then is this:

The brain is not separate from the body.

Around ninety percent of serotonin is produced in the gut.

The vagus nerve directly connects the gut and the brain.

When the nervous system is under chronic stress, digestion is one of the first systems that gets deprioritised.

If you grew up in an environment where your nervous system was constantly on high alert, your body likely spent years in survival mode.

When the body is in survival mode, digestion slows down.

Digestive enzyme production drops.

The ability to absorb nutrients from food becomes compromised.

Over time this can influence gut health, nutrient status and mood regulation.

Trauma lives in the body, not just the mind.

And the gut is one of the places where that story shows up.

From Control to Self Leadership

For years I tried to control my body.

I tried to optimise it, override it, fix it.

What eventually changed things was learning to support it instead.

That looked like:

Maintaining stable blood sugar
Eating enough protein
Supporting mineral balance
Prioritising sleep
Reducing stress where possible
Healing trauma
Setting boundaries

None of these things are glamorous.

But they are powerful.

A Very Important Disclaimer

This is my personal story.

It is not medical advice.

Mental health conditions like bipolar disorder are complex. They are biological, psychological and environmental.

Medication can be essential and life saving for many people.

What I am sharing here is simply the path I chose to explore under the guidance of qualified professionals.

What This Journey Taught Me

The biggest shift wasn’t just physiological.

It was relational.

I stopped treating my body as an enemy that needed to be controlled.

And I started learning how to support it.

I stopped chasing the highs and trying to avoid the lows.

Instead I focused on resourcing my nervous system.

That shift from control to self leadership changed everything.

Because the brain is not separate from the body.

And stability is not built in one place alone.

It is built in layers.

Episode 22: What If Your Hunger Isn’t About Food? Understanding Developmental Hunger

Many women say things like:

“I’m just always hungry.”
“Why can’t I ever feel full?”
“I eat and I’m still not satisfied.”
“What is wrong with me?”

When this happens, the assumption is usually that something is wrong with appetite, discipline, or willpower.

But what if the hunger isn’t actually about food?

There is a concept I use in my work called developmental hunger. When you begin to understand it, it can completely reframe the way you see emotional eating and your relationship with food.

What Is Developmental Hunger?

During childhood, there are stages where we are meant to receive very specific forms of nourishment.

Not food nourishment.

Emotional nourishment.

Things like:

• Being soothed when we are overwhelmed

• Feeling emotionally attuned to by a caregiver

• Being mirrored and understood

• Being comforted without shame for our emotions

• Feeling protected and prioritized

• Being held when we feel scared or upset

These experiences help regulate a child’s nervous system and build a sense of emotional safety.

But when these needs aren’t met consistently, the nervous system doesn’t simply move on.

It keeps searching.

Because developmentally, something was never completed.

That’s where developmental hunger begins.

The Difference Between Physical Hunger and Developmental Hunger

Physical hunger is usually steady and predictable.

It builds gradually.
It resolves when you eat enough.
It is flexible around what food will satisfy it.

Developmental hunger feels very different.

It can feel urgent.
Sometimes it feels bottomless.
It often comes with a feeling of emptiness or loneliness.
There can be an ache that is hard to explain.

You might eat and still feel like something is missing.

Because what you’re actually searching for isn’t food.

It’s comfort.
Safety.
Relief.
Connection.

Food becomes the fastest way the nervous system can create those feelings.

Food is reliable.

Food doesn’t reject you.
Food doesn’t criticise your emotions.
Food doesn’t withdraw when you need it.

It is warm, soothing, accessible and predictable.

Of course the nervous system learns to use it.

There is nothing wrong with you for that.

Why High Functioning Women Often Experience This

Many of the women I work with are incredibly capable.

They hold their lives together beautifully.
They are responsible, nurturing and emotionally aware.

But underneath that competence, there is often a developmental gap.

They might have grown up with:

• Emotionally unavailable parents

• A parent struggling with addiction

• Unpredictable caregivers

• A household where emotions were dismissed

• A parent who needed them emotionally more than they could be needed

When that happens, children often adapt by becoming the giver.

They learn to manage the emotions of the people around them.
They become highly perceptive and responsible.
They learn how to anticipate the needs of others.

But what they didn’t learn was how to receive.

They didn’t learn what it feels like to be consistently soothed, emotionally nourished, or held in distress.

Later in life, that unmet need shows up as hunger.

And it often gets misinterpreted as a food problem.

Why Emotional Eating Makes Sense

When developmental hunger is present, emotional eating is not a failure.

It is a nervous system adaptation.

Food becomes a shortcut to create the feelings that were missing earlier in life.

Warm foods can mimic being held.
Sweet foods can represent comfort or love.
Crunchy foods can discharge frustration or tension.

But food cannot complete the developmental experience that was missing.

So the hunger remains.

This is why someone can eat and still feel unsatisfied.

The Inner Loop That Keeps It Going

From an Internal Family Systems perspective, emotional eating often involves a loop between different protective parts.

One part feels the hunger or emptiness.

Another part reaches for food to soothe it.

Then a different part criticises the behaviour.

That criticism creates shame, which then leads to more control or restriction.

And eventually the hunger returns again.

The issue is not discipline.

Underneath that loop there is often grief, longing, or a younger part that never experienced consistent emotional nourishment.

Learning to Mother Yourself

One of the deepest parts of healing emotional eating is learning something many women were never taught.

How to mother themselves.

This isn’t about surface level self care.

It’s about learning how to:

Notice when you are overwhelmed and actually pause.
Feed yourself consistently without needing to earn it.
Speak to yourself gently when you make mistakes.
Allow yourself to receive support.
Ask for what you need.
Hold your own emotions with compassion.

These are emotional skills.

And if you were never taught them, your nervous system will naturally look for other ways to regulate.

Food just happens to be one of the most accessible options.

Building an Internal Secure Base

When you begin to develop these skills, something powerful happens.

Your nervous system begins to feel supported from the inside.

Psychologically, this is called building an internal secure base.

Instead of constantly searching for relief outside of yourself, your system begins to feel safer internally.

And when that happens, the urgency around food starts to soften.

Not because you forced yourself to control it.

But because the nervous system no longer needs it in the same way.

A Different Question to Ask Yourself

The next time you feel the urge to emotionally eat, especially when you are not physically hungry, try asking yourself a different question.

Instead of asking:

“What should I eat?”

Pause and ask:

“What do I actually need right now?”

Maybe you need:

Rest
Connection
Touch
Reassurance
Space
Permission to cry
A boundary
Support

You don’t need to solve it immediately.

Just begin to listen differently.

Because sometimes the hunger isn’t about food.

Sometimes it’s about something you didn’t receive when you needed it most.

And that kind of hunger can be healed.

Not through more control.

But through building the emotional capacity and support your nervous system was always looking for.

Episode 21: ADHD, Food Noise & Healing Your Relationship With Food with Kiah Paetz

In this episode, I’m joined by Accredited Practising Dietitian and Credentialled Eating Disorder Clinician Kiah Paetz for a deeply compassionate conversation about healing your relationship with food.

Kiah specialises in supporting people experiencing eating disorders, disordered eating, food anxiety, and neurodivergence through a non diet, weight neutral approach. In this conversation, she shares her own recovery journey with food, how it shaped the way she practices today, and why so many struggles around eating are misunderstood.

We explore why the behaviours often labelled as “disordered” are usually adaptations rather than personal failures, and what can sit underneath patterns like restriction, binge eating, emotional eating, and constant food noise.

Kiah also shares how ADHD and executive functioning challenges can shape eating patterns in ways many people don’t realise. From planning meals and grocery shopping to remembering to eat and managing capacity, we talk about how to support yourself in ways that actually work for your brain and your life.

This episode is a powerful reminder that your body is not the enemy, and that healing your relationship with food starts with understanding, nourishment, and self compassion.

• why eating behaviours are often adaptations rather than problems to fix • what can sit underneath emotional eating, restriction, and bingeing • how under nourishing the body can intensify food struggles • how ADHD and executive function challenges affect eating patterns • why capacity and meeting yourself where you are matters • simple ways to begin supporting yourself around food • why self compassion is essential in healing your relationship with food

If you’ve ever felt stuck in cycles of food guilt, shame, or confusion around how to nourish yourself, this conversation will help you feel less alone and more understood.

In this episode we explore

You can find Kiah on instagram ⁠@nutritionbykiah⁠

On her podcast ⁠Nutrition By Kiah⁠

Her website ⁠kiahpaetz.com⁠

Why your relationship with food is not about willpower

For many women, food becomes a constant source of tension.

There is the voice that says you should eat better.
The voice that says you have no discipline.
The voice that says you should just try harder.

And then there is the behaviour that follows. Restricting. Bingeing. Grazing. Emotional eating. Feeling out of control around food.

But what if these behaviours are not failures.

What if they are adaptations.

In a recent episode of The Self Led Woman, I spoke with Accredited Practising Dietitian and Credentialled Eating Disorder Clinician Kiah Paetz about the deeper patterns that shape our relationship with food.

Kiah specialises in supporting people experiencing eating disorders, disordered eating, food anxiety, and neurodivergence through a non diet, weight neutral approach.

Our conversation explored something many women have never been told.

Your relationship with food is not about willpower.

It is about support.

It is about nourishment.

And often, it is about compassion.

Disordered eating is often an adaptation

One of the most powerful shifts that can happen in healing your relationship with food is understanding that behaviours around food are rarely random.

They are usually trying to do something for you.

Restriction can be about control.

Binge eating can be about relief.

Emotional eating can be about comfort.

From an Internal Family Systems perspective, these behaviours are often parts of us trying to help us survive overwhelming experiences.

They are not the problem.

They are signals.

As Kiah shared in the episode, many people assume food itself is the issue. Calories. Discipline. Control.

But in practice, food behaviours often sit on top of something deeper.

Stress. Shame. Trauma. Exhaustion. Pressure. Emotional needs that have never been met.

When the focus stays only on food, those deeper needs remain unaddressed.

And the cycle continues.

Why nourishment matters more than perfection

Something that is often overlooked in conversations about disordered eating is how important basic nourishment is.

Many people who struggle with binge eating or emotional eating are actually under fuelling their bodies earlier in the day.

Skipping meals. Restricting food groups. Eating very little during the day and then feeling overwhelmed by hunger later in the evening.

When the body is under nourished, it will try to catch up.

This is not a failure of discipline.

It is biology.

Kiah explained that one of the first things she looks at with clients is whether their body is actually receiving enough food consistently throughout the day.

Eating regularly.

Eating balanced meals.

Supporting the body with protein, carbohydrates, fats, and fibre.

When the body begins to feel safe and nourished again, the urgency around food often softens.

ADHD and the hidden challenges around food

Another important part of this conversation was how ADHD and neurodivergence can influence eating behaviours.

Many people assume struggles around food come down to motivation or discipline.

But for people with ADHD, the challenge is often executive functioning.

Executive functioning is the brain's admin system.

It helps us organise tasks, plan ahead, start activities, and remember things.

Feeding yourself requires many executive function steps.

Planning meals.
Making a shopping list.
Going to the supermarket.
Preparing food.
Cleaning up.
Repeating the process multiple times a day.

When executive functioning is compromised, these steps can feel overwhelming.

Not because someone is lazy.

Because their brain processes these tasks differently.

This can lead to patterns such as:

Forgetting to eat
Struggling with meal preparation
Feeling overwhelmed by grocery shopping
Relying on convenience foods
Inconsistent eating patterns

Understanding this removes a huge amount of shame.

The issue is not character.

The issue is support.

Meeting yourself where you are

One of the most helpful ideas Kiah shared is the concept of eating based on capacity.

Instead of expecting yourself to cook elaborate meals every day, you create options that match your energy levels.

Low capacity meals might include something that takes less than five minutes to prepare.

Toast.

A wrap.

A frozen meal.

A simple snack.

Medium capacity meals might include something slightly more involved like a sandwich, salad bowl, or quick pasta.

Higher capacity meals might involve cooking something from scratch.

The goal is not perfection.

The goal is consistency.

When we meet ourselves where we are, we reduce pressure.

And when pressure decreases, many food struggles begin to soften.

Self compassion is essential in healing

One of the most painful things about disordered eating is the shame that often surrounds it.

The belief that you should have more control.

The belief that you should be better by now.

The belief that something is wrong with you.

But as Kiah reminded us, many people are far kinder to others than they are to themselves.

If a friend was struggling with food, you would likely offer empathy.

Understanding.

Patience.

But when it comes to ourselves, the voice becomes harsh.

Learning to bring self compassion into the conversation can be one of the most powerful steps toward healing.

Self compassion does not mean you love everything about your body.

It means you treat yourself with kindness.

Even when things feel hard.

Even when you are still learning.

What your body might want you to know

At the end of the episode, I asked Kiah a question I often ask my guests.

If a woman listening feels trapped in her relationship with food, and her body could speak directly to her, what would it want her to know?

Her answer was simple.

Your body deserves care.

Your body deserves respect.

Your body deserves kindness.

Your body is not the enemy.

It is the only body you will ever have.

And even when you feel frustrated with it, it is still working every single day to keep you alive.

If food has been taking up too much space in your mind, you are not alone.

Healing your relationship with food is not about discipline.

It is about understanding.

It is about nourishment.

And it is about learning to meet yourself with compassion.

Episode 20: The Missing Piece in Emotional Eating Recovery

When most women try to heal emotional eating, they assume the answer is discipline.

They think they need more willpower.
A better plan.
More control.

Maybe they just need to try harder.

But what if the missing piece isn’t discipline at all?

What if it’s support?

Because one of the biggest patterns I see with emotional eating is that women are trying to heal it completely alone.

And that’s part of the problem.

The Loneliness Behind Emotional Eating

Emotional eating can be an incredibly lonely experience.

Many women carry deep shame about it. On the outside their life looks together. They’re high functioning, capable, and responsible. They show up for work, relationships, family, and everything else that life demands.

But inside there’s a constant mental battle around food.

Food noise.
Restriction.
Bargaining.

“I ate this so I need to work out later.”

“I skipped lunch so I can have a bigger dinner.”

“Did I exercise today? Can I eat this?”

Body checking.
Feeling guilt after eating.
Trying to stay ahead of the next moment of shame.

And most women are trying to manage all of this privately.

Shame loves that.

Shame grows in isolation. It thrives when we keep things hidden and try to fix everything on our own.

But emotional eating was never meant to be healed alone.

Why Behaviour Change Often Fails

The wellness industry often tells women that emotional eating is a behavioural problem.

Change the behaviour and everything will be fine.

Follow a plan.
Start another reset.
Cut certain foods out.

But this approach only works temporarily.

It’s like putting a lid on a boiling pot of water. It might hold for a while. But the moment life becomes stressful, exhausting, or overwhelming, the lid lifts and the behaviour returns.

Life changes. Capacity changes. Seasons of life shift.

When emotional eating hasn’t been understood at the root, the pattern simply comes back.

And when it does, most women assume it’s their fault.

They believe they just didn’t try hard enough.

But the real issue is that emotional eating was never just about food.

The Floaty Metaphor

I often explain emotional eating using a simple metaphor.

Imagine you’re in the ocean but you never learned how to swim.

Food becomes your floaty.

It’s the thing that helps you stay above water when life gets overwhelming. When emotions are too big. When there are too many waves in your life.

Loneliness.
Stress.
Overwhelm.
Emotional exhaustion.

Food becomes something that helps you stay afloat.

Then the wellness industry comes along and says:

“Just stop using the floaty.”

“Have more discipline.”

But what happens when you take the floaty away from someone who never learned how to swim?

They panic.

They drown.

And eventually they go back to the floaty.

Not because they’re weak, but because they’re trying to survive.

What Real Healing Looks Like

The work of healing emotional eating isn’t about ripping the floaty away.

It’s about learning how to swim.

This means building capacity in your nervous system so you can actually meet the emotions and needs underneath the behaviour.

When someone learns how to swim, the floaty is no longer urgent.

It might still be there sometimes. Maybe when they’re tired or need extra support. But it’s not the only thing keeping them afloat.

Food becomes less charged.

The urgency around eating softens.

Because the nervous system now has other ways to regulate.

The Difference Between Capability and Capacity

Many of the women I work with are incredibly capable.

They can work, manage households, support friends, maintain relationships, and hold everything together.

But capability and capacity are not the same thing.

Just because you are capable of doing something doesn’t mean you have the capacity for it right now.

Many women judge themselves because they can’t maintain the routines they think they should have.

Meal prep.
Cooking everything from scratch.
Perfect morning routines.
Consistent gym habits.

But when your capacity is already stretched thin, these expectations can create even more pressure.

And when we are under supported, the nervous system will look for relief somewhere else.

Often that relief becomes food.

Support Creates Capacity

Support isn’t a luxury.

It’s the thing that creates capacity.

When your system feels supported, coping strategies like emotional eating become less urgent.

For me personally, building capacity includes very practical things.

Sleep is one of the biggest. When I’m tired, everything becomes louder. My inner critic, my anxiety, and my cravings.

Rest is another. Rest is not a reward you earn after productivity. Sometimes the most supportive thing you can do is stop pushing past your limits.

Movement can also be supportive, but only when it feels regulating rather than punishing.

For me, strength training helps me feel grounded and safe in my body. For someone else it might be walking, yoga, or dancing.

Meal prep is another way I support myself because it removes decision fatigue. When food decisions are already made, I have more energy for the things that matter.

Sometimes support also looks like choosing the path of least resistance.

Buying pre made meals.
Using frozen options.
Cooking simple food that meets your needs.

Nourishment is still nourishment.

Trying to do everything perfectly when your cup is already overflowing is not self care.

Sometimes it’s self abandonment dressed up as health.

Why Support Can Feel Hard

Here’s the piece that many women struggle with.

They need support, but they have difficulty giving it to themselves.

Emotional eating is often rooted in relational trauma. Many women learned very early that they had to handle their emotions alone.

They were told not to cry.
That they were too sensitive.
That they were too much.

So they became high functioning and independent.

But they also became emotionally alone.

Food became one of the few places where they could finally exhale.

So when women try to heal emotional eating completely by themselves, they often end up repeating the original wound.

“I have to do this alone.”

That belief keeps the cycle going.

You Were Never Meant to Do This Alone

If emotional eating is still part of your life, there is nothing wrong with you.

Your nervous system has simply been trying to regulate in the only way it knows how.

Often the real issue is not a lack of discipline.

It’s a lack of support.

When women begin receiving real support and building capacity in their nervous system, the urgency around food begins to soften.

Not through force.

Not through control.

But because the system no longer needs food in the same way.

And that’s when your relationship with food can finally start to change.

EPISODE 19: What Your Food Cravings Are Actually Trying to Tell You

When we talk about food cravings, most women have been taught to see them as a problem.

A craving means you have no discipline.
A craving means you lack willpower.
A craving means you can’t be trusted around certain foods.

But what if cravings aren’t a flaw?

What if they’re information?

Because the truth is, cravings aren’t random. They’re your body trying to communicate something. And when you learn how to listen to them, they start to make a lot more sense.

Sometimes cravings are physical.

Your body might simply need more food. You might not have eaten enough protein or carbohydrates during the day. Your blood sugar might be dysregulated. You might be exhausted. Or you might be in the luteal phase of your cycle and your body genuinely needs more magnesium and carbohydrates.

All of that is real.

But cravings can also carry emotional messages.

For many women, especially high functioning women who carry a lot of responsibility, cravings are both physical and emotional at the same time.

And when you start looking at cravings through this lens, they stop feeling like something you need to fight and start becoming something you can understand.

Cravings Are Often a Nervous System Strategy

Your body is not trying to sabotage you.

Your nervous system is trying to regulate you.

Food is one of the fastest ways the body can create relief, comfort, stimulation or grounding. When your system feels overwhelmed, lonely, depleted or suppressed, it will reach for something that helps it shift state quickly.

If you’ve been taught to treat cravings like a discipline problem, you’ll usually respond with more control.

More rules.
More restriction.
More pressure.

But pressure is one of the biggest triggers for emotional eating.

This is how the cycle begins.

Craving.
Control.
Restriction.
Pressure.
Eventually snapping.
Then guilt.

And the whole time you believe the problem is the craving.

But often the real issue is the relationship you’ve been taught to have with it.

When we stop fighting cravings and start getting curious about them, they can tell us a lot.

Sweet Cravings: Comfort, Care and Softness

Sweet cravings are incredibly common for women.

Physically, they can show up when your blood sugar is unstable, when you haven’t eaten enough during the day, when you’re stressed or sleep deprived, or when you’re in the luteal phase of your menstrual cycle.

But emotionally, sweetness often represents something deeper.

Sweetness symbolises comfort.

Softness.
Care.
Warmth.
Love.

Many high functioning women spend their entire day taking care of everyone else. They’re managing work deadlines, family responsibilities, relationships, and the constant mental load.

By the time evening arrives, they’re exhausted.

Standing in the kitchen at 9pm eating something sweet is often not about hunger.

It’s about finally receiving something for themselves after holding everything together all day.

Sometimes sweet cravings can also reflect something from childhood.

If love was conditional growing up, tied to being good, helpful or easy, the nervous system may still be seeking the emotional sweetness that was missing.

Sweet food can become a substitute for the care and softness your system is craving.

Salty and Crunchy Cravings: Anger and Suppressed Frustration

Salty and crunchy foods like chips, crackers, popcorn or nuts are another common craving.

And this one is fascinating.

Crunchy cravings are often connected to unexpressed anger, frustration or resentment.

Many women have spent years being the one who keeps the peace. They swallow their reactions, take the high road and tell themselves it’s not worth creating tension.

But anger doesn’t disappear just because it isn’t expressed.

It stays in the body.

You might feel it as jaw tension, tight shoulders, pressure in your chest or a constant sense of irritation under the surface.

Crunchy food gives the body a way to release that tension.

Biting, snapping and crunching allows the nervous system to discharge some of that suppressed energy without confrontation.

Salt itself is also regulating for the nervous system.

So when you find yourself reaching for chips at night, it may not be about lack of control.

It might be your system trying to release frustration that never had a safe place to go.

Spicy Cravings: Aliveness and Stimulation

Spicy food cravings often appear when life feels flat or stagnant.

Spice brings intensity. Sensation. Aliveness.

When someone has spent years living within the good girl template, doing everything right, taking care of everyone else and suppressing their own desires, their emotional world can start to feel muted.

Everything might look good on paper.

But internally something feels dull.

Spicy foods can stimulate the nervous system and create sensation when life feels predictable or overly controlled.

In some cases, these cravings can reflect a deeper desire for change, excitement or risk.

Not necessarily big dramatic risks, but simply reconnecting with the parts of you that crave energy, expression and vitality.

Warm Food Cravings: Emotional Warmth and Being Held

Cravings for warm foods like soup, pasta, toast, oats or warm desserts often relate to emotional warmth.

Warm food mimics the feeling of being held.

Think about a baby being held against someone’s chest, feeling the warmth and safety of another body.

For many high functioning women, loneliness isn’t obvious.

They may have full lives, relationships, work and responsibilities. But they’re also the one who always says:

“I’ve got it.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I’ll be fine.”

When you carry everything alone for a long time, there can be a quiet emotional loneliness underneath.

Warm foods can become a substitute for the warmth you don’t know how to ask for.

Not because people aren’t around you, but because no one truly sees how much you’re holding.

Chocolate Cravings: Pleasure and Receiving

Chocolate deserves its own category.

It isn’t just sweet.

Chocolate is associated with pleasure, indulgence, sensuality and richness.

For many women, chocolate becomes the place where their nervous system meets pleasure.

And interestingly, this can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.

Many women crave chocolate but also fear it. They see it as dangerous, something that will make them lose control.

But chocolate can symbolise something deeper.

Receiving.

For a lot of women, receiving isn’t neutral.

Receiving can feel like it comes with consequences. Maybe growing up you were given things but then reminded that you owed something in return. Or you learned to be self sufficient and not need too much.

Even something simple like a friend buying you a coffee can feel uncomfortable.

You immediately want to repay it.

Food can bring this dynamic to the surface because eating is, in many ways, an act of receiving.

Allowing yourself to enjoy food, to slow down and truly savour it, requires permission to receive pleasure without guilt.

For many women, that’s unfamiliar territory.

Cravings Are Your System Asking for Something

If there’s one thing to take away from this conversation, it’s this.

Cravings are not the enemy.

They are your system trying to meet a need.

When we fight cravings, we often miss what’s underneath them.

And when the underlying need isn’t met, the craving simply returns later, often stronger.

This is why behavioural approaches that focus only on stopping emotional eating often fail. They try to remove the behaviour without addressing the need driving it.

Your nervous system will always try to regulate itself.

If one strategy is removed, another will take its place.

A Different Question to Ask

Instead of asking:

“Why can’t I stop craving this?”

Try asking:

“What do I actually need right now?”

Sometimes the answer might be physical.

You might need more food, more protein, more sleep, more water or more rest.

But sometimes the answer is emotional.

You might need a break.
A moment outside in the sun.
A hug.
Support from someone you trust.
Or permission to stop swallowing resentment and say what you really mean.

For many women, emotional eating is not about food.

It’s about needs that haven’t had a place to exist.

When we begin listening to our cravings instead of shaming them, we open the door to understanding the deeper patterns underneath.

And that’s where real change begins.

Episode 18: A Healed Woman Is Not Profitable

If you’ve been in the emotional eating world for any amount of time, you’ve probably tried something.

A plan.
Tracking.
Food rules.
Mindset work.
Accountability.
“I’ll start again on Monday.”

And maybe it worked. For a week. A month. Maybe even longer.

But eventually — you ended up back in the same loop.

And if you’re honest, part of you thinks:

What is wrong with me?

Nothing.

But there is something wrong with how this has been framed.

Because most approaches to emotional eating treat it like a behaviour problem.

They assume you need:

• More discipline

• More consistency

• More control

• More structure

• More willpower

And while those things can temporarily change behaviour, they don’t touch what’s driving it.

Which means the second life gets stressful — and life always gets stressful — your system will return to the strategy that has always worked.

Not because you’re weak.

Because you’re wired for survival.

Emotional Eating Is a Strategy

Imagine your emotional eating like a riverbed carved over many years.

Every time there’s a storm in your life — stress, overwhelm, loneliness, resentment, pressure — the water flows through that same channel.

Now imagine someone standing in front of the river saying:

“Just don’t flow here.”

That’s what behaviour-only approaches do.

They try to block the water without building another path.

And when the next storm hits?

The water goes straight back to the old riverbed.

Because survival strategies don’t disappear just because you decide you’re done with them.

The body only lets go of a strategy when something safer replaces it.

The Floaty and the Swimming Lessons

Let me put it another way.

If you didn’t get emotional “swimming lessons” growing up — consistent attunement, help processing emotions, space to feel — then food likely became your floaty.

It kept you afloat.

Now imagine someone comes along and says:

“Just stop using the floaty.”

Without teaching you how to swim.

Of course you panic.

Of course you grab it again.

You’re not failing the plan.

You’re trying not to drown.

When we do this work properly, we don’t rip away the floaty.

We teach you how to swim.

Slowly.
Gently.
In a way your nervous system can tolerate.

And once you know how to swim?

You don’t need the floaty in the same way.

Not because you forced yourself.
Because you genuinely don’t need it.

Why Insight Isn’t Enough

A lot of women I work with are incredibly self-aware.

They know exactly why they emotionally eat.

They can trace it back to childhood.
Attachment.
Trauma.
People-pleasing.
Anxious patterns.

They understand themselves deeply.

And they’re still stuck.

Because insight is not integration.

Understanding is not embodiment.

The intellectualising part of you is brilliant. But she can become another coping strategy. Another way to stay in control.

You can know why you do something and still feel compelled to do it when you’re overwhelmed.

Because this isn’t a logic issue.

It’s a nervous system issue.

It’s a relational wound.

And the mind cannot think its way out of something the body doesn’t feel safe enough to release.

A Healed Woman Is Not Profitable

Here’s the uncomfortable truth.

If you actually healed the root of the pattern, if you built safety underneath it — you wouldn’t keep restarting.

You wouldn’t need another plan every January.
You wouldn’t keep Googling the next fix.
You wouldn’t outsource your self-trust every time life got hard.

A healed woman doesn’t keep buying the promise that she’s one program away from being fixed.

She becomes self-led.

And that doesn’t serve industries built on repeat customers.

That doesn’t mean everyone in the wellness world is malicious.

But the system is structured around behaviour management — not deep healing.

Because deep healing makes you less dependent.

And dependency is profitable.

Emotional Eating Is Regulation

Food is not the enemy.

The behaviour is not sabotage.

It’s regulation.

It’s your system saying:
“This is too much.”
“I don’t know how to hold this.”
“I need relief.”

Food doesn’t ask you to be brave.
It doesn’t require you to set boundaries.
It doesn’t risk rejection.
It doesn’t make you disappoint anyone.

It just says:
“Here. Take a breath.”

And for women who have spent their whole lives holding it together — that relief is powerful.

The issue isn’t the craving.

It’s that food has been carrying something alone.

What Actually Changes the Pattern

When we do this work properly, we don’t start with:
“Stop emotionally eating.”

We start with:
“What is this protecting you from?”

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is powerful here.

We meet the part that emotionally eats.
We understand what she fears.
We understand how old she thinks you are.
We update her.
We build safety underneath.

And slowly, your system learns:

I can feel this.
I can digest this.
I can stay.

When you can digest your emotions in small, tolerable amounts, food doesn’t have to digest them for you.

Healing isn’t about discipline.

It’s about safety.

It’s about building capacity.

It’s about learning to sit with 1% of what you’re feeling without abandoning yourself.

And like swimming, it’s learned over time.

Not through force. Through attunement.

You’re Not One Program Away From Being Okay

You’re not broken.

You’re not lazy.

You’re not incapable.

You adapted.

Your system built a strategy when you didn’t have another one.

And it worked.

Now the work is building something underneath it.

So you don’t have to fight yourself anymore.

So you don’t have to white-knuckle your way through weeks.

So you don’t feel like a little girl in an adult body trying to hold everything alone.

You’re not one program away from being fixed.

You’re one deeper relationship away — with yourself.

And when that relationship feels safe?

The strategy softens.

Not because you forced it.

Because you don’t need it in the same way.

If this resonated, listen to the full episode: A Healed Woman Is Not Profitable.

We go deeper into nervous system healing, emotional digestion, IFS, and what it actually means to become self-led.

Healing isn’t about control.

It’s about safety.

And you deserve that.

Episode 17: You Already Know: Reconnecting to Your Body, Hormones & Cycles with Lottie Davies

There’s a moment in this conversation where Lottie says:

“You already know.”

And I felt it in my whole body.

Because for so many women, the problem isn’t that they don’t know what to eat, how to live, or what they need.

It’s that they’ve been taught not to trust themselves.

In this episode, I sat down with UK-certified naturopath and yoga teacher Lottie Davies to talk about hormones, cravings, nervous system healing, and cyclical living. But what we really spoke about was something deeper:

Coming home to your body.

Your Body Is Not Random

So many women come to this work feeling frustrated.

Their mood shifts across their cycle.
They feel fine for two weeks, then everything unravels.
They crave sugar.
They feel angry in their luteal phase.
They feel exhausted before their period.
They think something is wrong.

But as Lottie explains, your body is not malfunctioning.

It’s cycling.

Nature does not move in straight lines.
It moves in ebbs and flows.
Expansion and contraction.
Summer and winter.
Action and rest.

And your body does the same.

The problem isn’t that you have cycles.

It’s that you’ve been trying to live like you don’t.

PMS Is Not a Flaw. It’s Feedback.

One of the most powerful parts of this conversation is how we reframe the luteal phase.

So often women describe it as:
“I’m crazy that week.”
“I hate who I become.”
“I’m so emotional.”

But what if that phase isn’t dysfunction?

What if it’s clarity?

In the luteal phase, your tolerance lowers. The buffer you have earlier in the month softens. You see what isn’t working. You feel where your boundaries have been crossed. You notice what you’ve been suppressing.

Your body is not sabotaging you.

It’s shedding light.

And if you don’t listen, it will keep bringing it back around next month.

Cravings Are Not Weakness

We also spoke about cravings — something so many women feel ashamed about.

Chocolate before your period?
Sugar late at night?
Salty or crunchy foods when you’re stressed?

Instead of labelling them as “lack of discipline,” Lottie speaks to what they may actually signal.

Chocolate? Often magnesium depletion.
Sugar cravings? Sometimes low iron.
Constant fatigue? Possibly mineral deficiency.

And sweet cravings in particular relate, in Chinese medicine, to the earth element — the mother energy. Nourishment. Nurturing. Softness.

Which is fascinating when you consider how many women are craving sweetness in seasons of stress, loneliness, or over-responsibility.

Your body isn’t greedy.

It’s communicating.

The Nervous System Comes First

You can eat the “perfect” diet.

You can take all the supplements.

You can tick every wellness box.

But if you are stuck in fight-or-flight, your body cannot heal.

You cannot absorb nutrients properly.
You cannot digest fully.
You cannot regulate emotionally.

Healing requires safety.

Which is why something as simple as pausing before a meal — smelling your food, humming softly, placing a hand on your body — can shift more than another restriction ever will.

We are so quick to reach for complex protocols.

But the body responds to simple safety.

Undernourished Isn’t Always What You Think

When women say they’re “eating well,” they often mean they’re eating controlled.

But undernourishment isn’t just about calories.

It can look like:

– Eating on the run
– Never sitting down
– Not connecting to your food
– Being in stress while you eat
– Constant self-criticism
– Emotional deprivation

Digestion starts before you even take a bite.

It begins when you prepare your food. When you smell it. When you allow your nervous system to soften.

If you are constantly braced, your body cannot receive.

And that theme — receiving — runs through everything.

Emotional Eating Is Often a Search for Balance

We spoke about something I see all the time in my work:

Women swinging between control and relief.

Restriction and overeating.
Structure and collapse.
Being “good” and then “losing it.”

But this isn’t moral failure.

It’s the nervous system trying to create balance.

If you expect yourself to operate in “summer” energy all month — productive, pleasant, high-functioning — eventually your body will force a winter.

Often at 10pm.

In the pantry.

Looking for relief.

The problem isn’t that you crave relief.

It’s that you don’t build it in earlier.

Shame Keeps the Cycle Alive

One of the most important pieces of this conversation was about shame.

Shame fuels:
“I was so bad.”
“I ruined everything.”
“I’ll be stricter tomorrow.”

And that internal bullying increases stress.

Which increases cortisol.

Which keeps the body in protection.

Which can even encourage weight retention — especially around the midsection — because the body is trying to feel safe.

You cannot shame your body into safety.

But you can soften it into regulation.

And that starts with the simplest practices:

A hand on your chest.
A pause before you eat.
One kind sentence to yourself.
One moment of stillness.

You Already Know

If the body could speak without interruption, Lottie said it would say:

“You already know.”

And that’s the truth.

Underneath the conditioning.
Underneath the food noise.
Underneath the shame.
Underneath the rules.

You know when you’re tired.
You know when you’re overstretched.
You know when your boundaries were crossed.
You know when you need more softness.

The work isn’t about adding more information.

It’s about creating enough safety to hear yourself again.

Where to Start

If you feel disconnected from your body right now, don’t start by fixing.

Start by noticing.

Before your next meal:
Pause.
Breathe.
Place your hand on your body.
Ask what you need.

Before reacting to a craving:
Pause.
Ask if it’s hunger, exhaustion, stress, or emotion.

Before tightening control:
Pause.
Ask what you’re actually protecting.

Small moments of reconnection build trust.

And trust rebuilds regulation.

This conversation with Lottie is a beautiful reminder that your body is not the problem.

It is always working for you.

If you want to listen to the full episode, you can find Episode 17 — You Already Know: Reconnecting to Your Body, Hormones & Cycles with Lottie Davies — on The Self Led Woman podcast.

And if you’re ready to go deeper into the patterns underneath emotional eating and nervous system dysregulation, you can explore my 1:1 work inside Release & Reclaim.

Because you don’t need more control.

You need support.

And your body has been trying to tell you that all along.

Episode 16: What Happens to Your Nervous System When You Stop Using Instagram Body Image, Comparison & Emotional Eating)

Disclaimer

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical, psychological, or professional health advice.

While I’m an IFS informed therapy practitioner, this podcast is not therapy and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or replace individual support.

If anything in this episode brings up something for you, please seek support from a qualified health professional, GP, psychologist, or therapist, especially if you are experiencing distress, disordered eating, or mental health concerns.

Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your health, nutrition, or treatment plan.

Taking a Break From Instagram Changed More Than I Expected

Recently I took some time off Instagram, and it genuinely changed a lot more than I expected it to.

I wasn’t doing it to be disciplined with screen time. I wasn’t trying to become some “better person.” And I definitely wasn’t doing it because I think social media is evil.

I took a break because I realised I was letting an app have way too much access to my nervous system.

And what surprised me was this.

It didn’t just make me less distracted.

It changed my presence in my relationship.

It changed my creativity.

It changed my gratitude.

It changed how my inner critic showed up.

It even changed how I saw my appearance, and I didn’t realise how distorted that perception had become until I stepped away.

So I want to share what happened, because I think this will land for you, especially if you’re someone who seems fine on the outside… but underneath you’re tired, overwhelmed, overthinking, comparing, or quietly feeling like you can’t switch off.

Why I Took a Break (And The Red Flag I Couldn’t Ignore)

There were a few reasons I stepped back.

One was my honeymoon.

I shared a little bit on my stories, but not much. I was present. I wasn’t filming everything. I wasn’t trying to turn it into content.

And when I came back, I’d lost around 30 followers.

And honestly, I had a part of me that was like… are you kidding me?

This part was annoyed.

Not because I think anyone owes me a follow.

But because I worked so hard on my socials last year, probably too hard. I didn’t stop when I needed to. I didn’t zoom out. I just kept going.

So to see followers drop while I was literally living my life felt like a moment where my system went:

Why am I giving this app so much power?

And that was the red flag.

Because if I’m letting an app dictate my emotional state, I need to step back.

The Other Reason: Comparison Was Quietly Shifting Me

The other big reason was comparison.

There was a part of me that was comparing myself and my business to other people’s businesses.

Seeing them thriving.

Growing.

Killing it.

And power to them, genuinely.

But the part of me that compares was making it mean something about me.

And I want to say this clearly.

Comparison is human.

You can’t just “stop comparing.”

That advice is honestly useless.

But you can notice when comparison is changing your internal state.

And for me, it was.

It was changing my relationship to my work.

It was changing my energy.

It was changing how I felt in myself.

So I deleted the app off my phone.

The First Thing I Noticed Was Gratitude

This part surprised me.

I wasn’t trying to do a gratitude practice.

I wasn’t journaling.

I wasn’t forcing it.

But within days, I noticed gratitude coming through naturally.

I was grateful for the sun.

My coffee.

My business.

The fact I can work the hours I choose.

I was grateful for where I live.

For the beach.

For my friends.

For the small moments I usually rush past.

And I started noticing my husband more too.

Not in a “he changed” way.

In a “I’m finally present enough to see him properly” way.

And when you’re noticing more, you express more.

And when you express more, the energy in your relationship shifts.

You soften.

You feel closer.

They feel appreciated.

They show up more.

You show up more.

It becomes this beautiful loop.

Life Got Bigger (Because I Got My Attention Back)

This is the part I didn’t expect.

When I stopped consuming everyone else’s lives, my own life got bigger.

Nothing in my life changed.

I just got my attention back.

I was more present on my walks because I wasn’t checking my phone constantly.

I was more present with friends.

I wasn’t sitting in moments thinking:

Should I post this?

Should I film this?

Should I share this?

I was just living it.

And honestly, that felt rare.

My Creativity Came Back (Because Creativity Needs Space)

The next thing I noticed was creativity.

My creativity ramped up so fast.

And it makes sense.

Creativity needs space.

And creativity is like a muscle.

If you’re constantly consuming, there’s no space.

You’re full.

Your system is full.

Your brain is full.

Your emotional world is full.

And when you’re creating from pressure, it doesn’t flow.

But when I stepped away, I was creating more than I was consuming.

I was writing more.

I had more ideas.

I felt more depth.

More energy.

More clarity.

And even more desire to create, which was honestly such a relief.

But Here’s The Other Side: My Inner Critic Got Loud

Now I want to speak to the other side of this.

Because it wasn’t all “wow, I’m so peaceful and enlightened.”

My inner critic got brutal for a couple of weeks.

Like genuinely loud.

So loud it made me cry several times a week.

And what was interesting was I couldn’t unblend from her.

I know my inner critic.

I have a relationship with her.

But I was so blended I was believing everything she was saying.

And this is the part I want you to hear.

When you remove distractions, what’s underneath comes up.

If you’ve been scrolling to numb out, even subtly, then when you stop scrolling…

you start feeling.

You start sitting with yourself.

You start being in the quiet.

And for some parts of you, that can feel confronting.

Especially if you’ve had parts keeping you moving for years.

The Part I Needed To Work With Wasn’t Even The Critic

This was a big moment for me.

I realised the inner critic wasn’t the first part I needed to work with.

The first part I needed to work with was the part that wanted the inner critic to go away.

Because that part was making her louder.

So I started turning toward them every day.

Listening.

Letting her show me what she was protecting.

And slowly, my capacity expanded.

Not just in a productivity sense.

In a depth sense.

Because we can only hold the things in our life to the depth we go to ourselves.

And yes, I know that sounds like a therapist thing to say.

But it’s true.

You can’t take people where you haven’t gone.

And this break asked me to go deeper.

The Unexpected Shift: My Relationship With My Appearance Changed

This part honestly shocked me.

I didn’t even realise how automatic my thoughts about my appearance had become.

The subtle scanning.

The noticing.

The urge to filter.

The tiny critiques.

And then one day off Instagram, I looked in the mirror and realised:

I don’t think any of those things right now.

Nothing about my face had changed.

No skincare.

No treatment.

No magic.

Just a change in environment.

And it reminded me how distorted our perceptions can become when we’re exposed to curated feeds constantly.

Your Baseline Quietly Shifts (And You Don’t Even Notice)

I shared a story in the episode about watching Sex and the City in my early twenties.

Candice Bergen came on screen.

And I remember thinking she looked so puffy.

Years later, I watched the exact same scene again and thought:

She looks normal.

That’s not about her.

That’s about perception.

Our baseline shifts.

Our “normal” shifts.

And it happens quietly.

Filters.

Fillers.

Makeup.

Angles.

Lighting.

Curated lives.

Perfect homes.

Perfect routines.

Even if you’re self aware, you still absorb it.

You still take it in.

Parts of you still scan.

Still compare.

Still measure.

And over time, it changes what you think is attractive, acceptable, or what you think you should look like.

Your Cycle Changes Your Perception Too

This is another important piece, especially for women.

Your perception changes depending on where you are in your cycle.

I shared a story about looking in a mirror in an elevator.

One morning I thought:

You look cute today.

A few days later I looked at myself in the exact same mirror and my inner critic said:

You fat motherfucker.

And I was like… whoa.

Because I know I hadn’t changed.

But my perception had.

That’s hormones.

That’s emotional sensitivity.

That’s the internal world shifting.

And when you add Instagram on top of that, it’s like fuel on a fire.

You’re already more sensitive, then you expose yourself to an environment designed to trigger comparison.

And then we wonder why we feel like shit.

What You Think Is Your Personality Might Just Be Your Nervous System

This was one of the biggest takeaways for me.

What we think is our personality is often just our nervous system responding to the environment we’re in.

And Instagram is an environment.

Even though it’s not physical, it becomes your environment because your attention is living there.

So if your inner critic gets louder when you’re on social media…

If your body image gets worse…

If comparison ramps up…

It doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.

It might mean you’re overstimulated.

And if your body image gets worse, it doesn’t mean you need to fix your body.

It might mean you need to look at what you’re exposing yourself to.

And Yes, This Links Back To Emotional Eating

Because food isn’t just food.

Food is layered.

Complex.

Emotional.

Relational.

Nervous system.

Environment.

And the more overwhelmed, overstimulated, pressured, and depleted you feel…

the more likely you are to emotionally eat.

Or to do something else emotionally.

Scrolling.

Wine.

Shopping.

Control.

All the same system.

You Don’t Need To Quit Instagram

I’m not telling you to shut down your account.

I didn’t.

I just deleted the app and checked messages once a day on my laptop.

And laptops hit different.

You don’t get pulled into the scroll in the same way.

So if you’ve been feeling like your inner critic has been loud lately…

If comparison has been creeping in…

If your body checking has ramped up…

If you’ve been scanning, measuring, analysing…

Just consider what happens if you step away for three days.

Not as discipline.

Not as punishment.

Not as a “challenge.”

As information.

Because your system might respond beautifully, intelligently, exactly as it’s designed to.

Listen to the Full Episode

If this landed for you, you can listen to the full episode of The Self Led Woman using the player above.

Disclaimer

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical, psychological, or professional health advice.

While I’m an IFS informed therapy practitioner, this podcast is not therapy and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or replace individual support.

If anything in this episode brings up something for you, please seek support from a qualified health professional, GP, psychologist, or therapist, especially if you are experiencing distress, disordered eating, or mental health concerns.

Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your health, nutrition, or treatment plan.