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.

Episode 15: Your Relationship With Food Is a Mirror

Disclaimer

The content shared in this blog post and podcast episode is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice.

If this episode brings up anything for you, or you feel like you need personalised support, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional, medical practitioner, or a trained therapy provider.

If you are in crisis or feel unsafe, please contact emergency services or your local crisis support line.

Your Relationship With Food Was Never About Food

I want to talk about something today that has been sitting in my system for a while.

Because I’ve realised something so clearly, both through my own healing and through working with women inside Release & Reclaim.

My relationship with food was never actually about food.

It mirrored my relationship to my emotions.

And I know that might sound strange at first, like, what does that even mean?

But I mean it literally.

The way I related to food was the exact same way I related to my emotional world.

For years, I thought I had a discipline problem. I thought I just couldn’t be trusted. I thought I needed more control, more consistency, more willpower. I had parts of me that would shame me and say, why can’t you just get it together?

And I was so frustrated, because I felt like, why can I get the rest of my life together… but not this?

Why can I show up in every other area, but when it comes to food, I feel like I lose control?

But I can say now, with so much compassion for my younger self, food was never the issue.

Food was the thing I reached for when I didn’t know how to hold what I was feeling.

When You’re Not Taught How To Feel, You Learn How To Be Fine

I didn’t know how to hold my emotions because I wasn’t taught how to hold them.

I wasn’t shown how to process emotion.

And I definitely wasn’t shown how to meet myself with compassion when I made a mistake.

When I was growing up, it felt like there was no room for mistakes. If I made one, I don’t remember being met with softness. I remember being met with blame. I remember being met with shame. I remember being told I should have known better.

Even when I was young.

Even when I was learning.

And that kind of messaging doesn’t teach you how to behave. It teaches you that your humanness is inconvenient.

It teaches you that your emotions are too much.

It teaches you that your needs are not welcome.

And a lot of women I work with have a version of this story.

Not always in big obvious ways.

Sometimes in subtle ones.

The “don’t cry.”

The “stop being so sensitive.”

The “pull yourself together.”

The “don’t make a fuss.”

The “don’t be selfish.”

And what you were expressing wasn’t dramatic.

It was sadness.

It was hurt.

It was disappointment.

It was fear.

It was a need.

It was a human moment.

But when you’re dismissed in those moments, you don’t learn how to hold emotion.

You learn how to abandon yourself.

And that becomes your baseline.

So you walk through life being fine.

You learn how to be easy to be around.

You learn how to be helpful.

You learn how to keep the peace.

You learn how to stay composed.

You learn how to not be too much.

And you become so high functioning that from the outside, it looks like you’ve got it together always.

But inside, you’re living in a body that is full of emotion you’ve been holding by yourself for years.

And it has nowhere safe to go.

This Is Where Food Makes Perfect Sense

So of course food enters the picture.

Food becomes the one place you can soften.

It becomes the one place you can let your shoulders drop.

It becomes the one place you can exhale.

It’s like you don’t take a breath all day, and then at the end of the day, you emotionally eat or comfort eat, and it’s like you take your first real breath at 9pm.

Food doesn’t ask anything of you.

It doesn’t ask you to be impressive.

It doesn’t ask you to stay composed.

It doesn’t ask you to keep the peace.

It doesn’t ask you to be the stable one.

It gives relief.

It gives comfort.

It gives you a break from holding it all together.

And that makes sense.

Especially for high functioning women who have been carrying too much for too long.

But the relief doesn’t last long.

Because for most women, the shame comes straight after.

If You Were Trained To Feel Shame For Having Needs, Of Course You’ll Feel Shame When You Receive

This is such an important piece.

If you were trained to feel shame for having needs…

Of course you’re going to feel shame when you receive.

Even if what you’re receiving is a piece of your favourite chocolate.

Even if what you’re receiving is relief.

Even if what you’re receiving is softness.

Even if what you’re receiving is love.

That’s how deep these patterns go.

And this is why emotional eating is not a willpower issue.

It’s not a discipline issue.

It’s a relationship issue.

Restriction Is Often The Same Pattern, Just In A Different Outfit

I also want to say something important here.

When I emotionally ate, I also restricted.

And for me, restriction was one thousand percent about control.

So many women don’t realise they’re in the exact same pattern, just on different ends of the spectrum.

Not everyone is bingeing.

Not everyone is emotionally eating in an obvious way.

Some women are controlling food in the same way they control their emotions.

They look composed.

They look disciplined.

They look “healthy.”

They look like they have it together.

But they don’t feel free.

They don’t feel relaxed.

They don’t feel safe.

And then when they’re alone, one tiny thing can happen on a random Thursday and they lose their shit.

Because emotions don’t disappear when you control them.

They build.

They stack.

They wait.

And eventually, if you’ve been controlling them all week, they demand your attention.

And they come out sideways.

This is where you end up crying in the bathroom at work.

Or snapping at your partner.

Or losing your patience with your kids.

Or feeling like you’re fine until you suddenly aren’t.

And food is one of the ways the system tries to prevent that.

Because it’s fast.

It’s reliable.

It’s easy.

And it doesn’t require anything from you.

Digesting Food Requires Presence, And So Does Digesting Emotion

Here’s the part that really landed for me.

Digesting food properly requires presence.

Think about the difference between eating at your desk, eating in the car, eating while distracted, eating on the run, barely tasting it, barely noticing it…

Versus sitting down.

Slowing down.

Tasting your food.

Noticing the textures and flavours.

Letting it nourish you.

Letting it land.

That’s digestion.

That’s receiving.

And emotions are exactly the same.

If you can’t digest emotion, you won’t feel safe digesting food either.

Because it’s the same skill.

It’s capacity.

It’s presence.

It’s safety.

It’s the ability to stay with yourself.

And if you were never taught how to do that, of course food becomes the thing that helps you swallow everything down.

What IFS Teaches Is Not Control, It’s Relationship

This is why I love Internal Family Systems so much.

Because IFS doesn’t try to shame you out of emotional eating.

It doesn’t try to control you out of it.

It doesn’t try to give you another list of rules.

It doesn’t treat your system like it’s broken.

IFS brings you back into relationship with your parts.

The part of you that comfort eats is not a failure.

It’s a protector.

It’s often the most loving part of you.

Sometimes I describe it like this.

Imagine you’ve had the worst day ever, and you come home, and this part comes forward with this beautiful grandma energy.

Like she wraps you in a blanket and says, honey, you’ve had a rough day. Sit down. Here’s your favourite food. You deserve something soft.

And we get so angry at her.

But she’s trying to love on you in the only way she knows how.

The problem isn’t that she exists.

The problem is that she’s the only one who knows how to soothe you.

And your body doesn’t stop a survival strategy unless something else can take its place.

The Body Already Knows How To Heal, It Just Needs The Right Conditions

This is where I want to bring it back to something that happened to me recently.

At the time of recording this episode, I had two cysts removed from my scalp.

Nothing scary, nothing serious, I’m totally fine.

But the next day I was sitting there thinking, how incredible is the human body?

I could feel it healing already.

And I didn’t have to tell it what to do.

I didn’t have to force anything.

I didn’t have to micromanage the process.

My body just got to work.

It began repairing tissue.

It began moving towards healing.

That’s what the body does.

It’s always trying to resolve.

It’s always trying to bring things back into balance.

And the reason I’m saying this is because this includes the things we judge about ourselves, like emotional eating.

Your body doesn’t do anything for no reason.

Even if the strategy comes with consequences you don’t want.

Even if you wish you could stop.

The intention underneath is always healing.

Digesting Emotion Often Looks Like 5 Percent At A Time

Last week I had an IFS session with a colleague, and it reinforced everything I’m talking about.

We worked with parts of me that were afraid to be seen.

Parts that say don’t take up space.

Parts that say don’t speak up.

Parts that say don’t ask for what you need.

And underneath all of those protectors was grief.

Grief for a younger version of me who never felt met.

Grief for the little girl who learned early that needs were inconvenient.

Grief for the little girl who learned it was safer to stay quiet.

And what we agreed on was simple.

Not to flood myself.

Not to wallow all day.

Not to force a release.

But to sit with 5 percent of that grief each day.

A hand on my heart.

A couple of minutes.

Just asking, would it be okay if I sat with you for a moment?

Not to fix it.

Not to move it.

Not to make it go away.

Just to offer presence.

And that is digesting emotion.

It’s not always cathartic.

It’s often quiet.

It’s slow.

It’s gentle.

It’s the ability to stay with yourself.

And when you’ve never learned that, no wonder food becomes the thing you reach for.

Your Body Isn’t The Enemy

So if you take anything from this episode, let it be this.

Your relationship with food is not a food problem.

It’s a mirror.

And when you heal the way you relate to your emotions, the way you relate to food begins to change too.

Not through control.

Not through another nutrition plan.

Not through shaming yourself into being better.

But because your capacity expands.

Because your Self energy grows.

Because you learn how to stay with yourself.

And when you can stay with yourself, food doesn’t need to carry your emotions anymore.

Your body isn’t the enemy.

It never was.

It’s been trying to heal you this whole time.

And when you stop fighting it and start listening, healing stops being something you force.

And it becomes something that happens.

Episode 14: Your Body Isn’t the Enemy

Disclaimer

This episode is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical, psychological, or professional health advice.

If you are struggling with emotional eating, your mental health, or your relationship with food and your body, please seek support from a qualified health professional. If anything in this episode brings up distress for you, you don’t have to hold it alone.

Always consult your GP, therapist, or a qualified practitioner for personalised support.

At the time of recording this episode, I had two cysts removed from my scalp.

Nothing scary. Nothing serious. I’m totally fine.

But the next morning, I had this moment where I couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing the human body is.

Because my head had literally been cut open in two places.

And without me doing anything…

Without me giving it instructions…

Without me micromanaging the process…

My body immediately began healing.

It started repairing tissue. It started restoring balance. It started resolving what had been disrupted.

And I thought, this is what the body does.

It moves toward healing.

Always.

And then I had this second thought.

What if the things you judge about yourself, like emotional eating, are not proof that your body is failing…

But proof that your body is trying to heal?

Emotional eating is not random

One of the biggest things I want women to understand is this:

Your body never does anything for no reason.

Even when the strategy it’s using is frustrating.

Even when it comes with consequences you don’t want.

Even when it feels like you’ve “done so much work” and you’re still looping.

Emotional eating is rarely self sabotage.

It’s not you being broken.

It’s not you being weak.

It’s not you lacking discipline.

It’s your system responding to an unmet need.

Sometimes that need is actually physical.

You’re underfed. You’re depleted. You’re running on fumes and your body is trying to get energy.

But often, the need underneath emotional eating is emotional.

Rest.

Relief.

Support.

Boundaries.

Softness.

Love.

Safety.

And when your system doesn’t know how to get those needs met directly…

Food becomes the fastest shortcut.

The hidden link between emotional eating and people pleasing

Something I see all the time in my work is this:

If you struggle with emotional eating, there’s a high chance you also struggle with people pleasing.

Not always in an obvious way.

Most of my clients don’t identify as “big people pleasers” anymore.

They’ll say things like, “I’m so much better than I used to be.”

And they are.

But when we go deeper, we find the subtle moments.

The tiny yes when they wanted to say no.

The automatic caretaking.

The over giving.

The pushing past exhaustion.

The staying agreeable when something didn’t sit right.

Because people pleasing isn’t about being too kind.

It’s about survival.

It’s a protective strategy that often develops when you’re young and you learn that being helpful, easygoing, low maintenance, or needed is the safest way to receive love or approval.

So you learn to override yourself.

You learn to push past your capacity.

You learn to keep going even when you’re tired.

And most high functioning women are extremely capable of doing that.

But here’s the truth:

Just because you’re capable doesn’t mean you have capacity.

When you override your capacity, pressure builds

When you don’t listen to your body, pressure starts to stack.

Resentment.

Anger.

Exhaustion.

The feeling of being unseen.

The feeling of being responsible for everyone else.

The feeling of having to keep it together.

And often, those emotions don’t feel safe to express.

So they get pushed down.

Not because you’re dramatic.

But because somewhere in your system, it still feels safer to be fine than to be real.

And when those emotions don’t have a place to go…

Food becomes the place.

Food becomes the exhale.

The relief.

The softening.

The comfort eating part isn’t the problem

I want you to imagine the part of you that comfort eats.

The part you get frustrated with.

The part you try to control.

The part you shame.

In this episode I described her like this:

She’s like a beautiful grandma energy.

You’ve had the worst day.

You come home.

And she wraps you in a blanket and says,

“Darling. You’ve had a rough day. Come sit down. Here. Have your favourite food. You deserve something.”

That’s what comfort eating is.

It’s not evil.

It’s not weak.

It’s not trying to ruin your life.

It’s trying to love you the only way it knows how.

And it works.

Fast.

Food doesn’t ask you to be vulnerable.

It doesn’t ask you to risk rejection.

It doesn’t ask you to disappoint anyone.

It doesn’t ask you to speak up.

It doesn’t ask you to feel everything you’ve been holding.

It just soothes you.

Immediately.

Why most approaches miss the point

Most approaches to emotional eating focus on the behaviour.

They focus on food.

They focus on control.

They focus on the symptom.

But they don’t offer your system an alternative.

And the body doesn’t stop a survival strategy unless something else can take its place.

That’s why shaming yourself doesn’t work.

That’s why forcing yourself doesn’t work.

That’s why trying to control your way out of emotional eating often makes it worse.

Because all shame does is create more stress in the body.

More cortisol.

More tightening.

More bracing.

And then the very thing you’re trying to stop becomes more urgent.

Your system already knows how to heal

This is one of the reasons I love IFS so much.

Because I’m not “fixing” you.

I’m guiding you back into relationship with your own system.

In IFS, we meet the parts underneath the pattern.

The part that people pleases.

The part that over functions.

The part that tightens.

The part that rebels.

The part that shuts down.

The part that reaches for food.

And when those parts feel seen, supported, and understood…

They soften.

Not through force.

But because they no longer need to do the job.

It’s like the difference between having a flotation device and learning how to swim.

When your system learns it can stay with emotion without being overwhelmed…

Food stops needing to be the only way you regulate.

Your body isn’t the enemy

This is what I want you to take from this episode:

Your body isn’t doing this to you.

It’s doing it for you.

Even if the strategy isn’t ideal.

Even if it’s messy.

Even if you’re tired of looping.

Your system is not broken.

It’s adaptive.

It’s intelligent.

It’s been trying to keep you going this whole time.

And when you stop fighting it and start listening…

Healing stops being something you force.

And becomes something that begins to happen.

Episode 13: Training for the Body You Need at 60 with Naz Demirtas

Disclaimer

This blog post is for educational and informational purposes only, and it is not medical, mental health, or nutritional advice. If you need personalised support, please consult a qualified health professional or therapist.

Strength Training Isn’It’s about the body you’ll need at 60

I’m so excited to share this conversation with you because it’s one of those episodes that hits on something I think so many women need to hear, especially if you’ve spent years in that loop of trying to “fix” your body.

This episode is with Naz Demirtas, a certified strength coach and Australian sports nutrition and health coach, who believes strength training is less about how you look and more about how well you live.

And honestly, I love her for it.

Naz works with women both online and in person, and she’s helped hundreds of women build strength, confidence, capability, and self trust, not by shrinking themselves, but by learning how to take up space in their bodies again.

Because this is the thing.

Most women have been trained to think health equals being smaller.

Naz is here to flip that on its head.

Naz’s turning point: pregnancy and realising what her body could do

Naz shares that her relationship with her body used to revolve around control. Dieting. Trying to be her smallest self. Like so many women, that was the only way she felt she could have power over her body.

But pregnancy changed something.

For the first time, she wasn’t looking at her body as a project to manage.

She was looking at her body as something capable. Something powerful. Something sacred.

Growing a human.

Giving birth naturally.

Experiencing the intensity and the oxytocin and the rawness of what women can do.

And that experience became the seed of her entire philosophy.

Strength training isn’t about being smaller.

It’s about being stronger.

“Train for the body you’ll need at 60”

This is one of the core messages Naz is known for, and it’s such a powerful reframe.

Because the truth is, most women in their 30s and 40s are not thinking about what their body will need at 60, 70, or 80.

They’re thinking about their stomach.

Their thighs.

Their weight.

Their jeans.

But Naz speaks about something that matters so much more than aesthetics.

She’s talking about muscle preservation.

Bone density.

Independence.

The ability to get on and off the toilet.

To lift your groceries.

To pick up your grandchildren.

To not be frail, hunched, and afraid of falling.

And she shares a statistic that should honestly be talked about more often:

After 30, women can lose around 3 to 8 percent of muscle mass each decade.

And after menopause, it gets even more intense.

And when you lose muscle, you lose independence.

This isn’t fear mongering.

This is reality.

The hidden problem: women are under eating protein

One of the biggest things Naz sees in her work is how many women are unintentionally under eating, especially protein.

Not because they don’t care.

But because diet culture has trained women to think eating less equals being healthy.

So women cut back.

They snack instead of eating meals.

They try to “be good.”

They skip breakfast.

They under eat during the day.

And then they wonder why they feel exhausted, irritable, depleted, and ravenous by 5pm.

Naz speaks about that moment so many women know well.

The 5pm snap.

You’ve worked all day.

You’ve picked up the kids.

They’re asking what’s for dinner.

Your nervous system is cooked.

And you have zero capacity.

If you’ve been fasting, restricting, or barely eating, you’re not just tired.

You’re depleted.

And your body will demand something.

This is where cravings get louder.

This is where emotional eating can kick in.

And this is where women often blame themselves, when the truth is, their body is just trying to survive.

The connection between dieting and emotional eating

This is where my world and Naz’s world overlap so perfectly.

Because I see this all the time.

Women think they have an emotional eating problem.

Or they think they have a bingeing problem.

But often, underneath, there’s a cycle of restriction, control, pressure, and self punishment.

And it creates the exact outcome they’re trying to avoid.

Naz said something that I deeply agree with:

If diet culture didn’t exist, emotional eating would be so much less common.

Because so much emotional eating is actually a rebound response.

Restriction creates obsession.

Pressure creates rebellion.

Control creates the snap.

And then the shame part comes in after.

It becomes a loop.

Not because you’re broken.

Because your system is responding normally to deprivation.

What changes when a woman gets stronger

One of my favourite parts of this episode was hearing Naz speak about what she sees happen in women when they start strength training.

Not just physically.

But emotionally.

Mentally.

Energetically.

She said something that landed so deeply:

A woman becomes more capable in her belief system.

She stops living by society’s rules.

She stops outsourcing her body and her worth to trends.

She starts trusting herself.

She starts feeling like she can do hard things.

And she starts realising something huge:

The real control isn’t restriction.

The real control is health.

It’s nourishment.

It’s strength.

It’s capacity.

It’s being able to trust your body again.

“Aesthetics are cute. Osteoporosis is not.”

Naz shared some powerful insights about osteoporosis and bone density, and this part matters.

Because women don’t really understand osteoporosis until they see it.

Naz spoke about her grandmother in aged care, and how confronting it is to witness what happens when independence is taken away.

Not because someone “got unlucky.”

But because the body wasn’t supported.

Bone density wasn’t protected.

Muscle mass wasn’t built.

And the reality is, one fall can change everything.

A hip fracture can become the beginning of a major decline.

Strength training and power work can help protect bone density.

Eating enough protein and fat supports hormone function.

This is not about vanity.

This is about your future.

Training and eating from love, not hate

Toward the end of the episode, I asked Naz what she sees when women start training and eating from a place of love and respect for their body, instead of hate.

And her answer was perfect.

When the nervous system is calm, the results happen.

There is no sustainable change that comes from hate.

You can punish your body all you want.

You can restrict.

Youcan force.

You can push harder.

But your body will respond with stress.

With cortisol.

With resistance.

With fatigue.

With cravings.

With flatlining.

And eventually, with rebellion.

But when you shift into nourishment and self respect, everything changes.

Because your body stops bracing.

And it starts responding.

Three things Naz recommends if you’re ready to do this differently

Naz shared three simple but powerful places to start.

1. Start strength training, even at home

If the gym feels intimidating, start with body weight. It’s harder than people think, and it builds real connection with your body.

2. Build meals around protein, fibre, and healthy fats

Aim for protein in every meal. Add fibre through fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and include fats to support hormones.

3. Prioritise stress and sleep

Because you can be doing everything “right” and still feel stuck if your system is living in survival mode.

And I added something I’ve been sharing with clients lately too.

If slowing down feels impossible, don’t try to overhaul your life overnight.

Just move half a second slower.

No one will notice.

But your nervous system will.

The real goal is a body you can live in

This conversation is one I hope every woman listens to.

Because if you’ve been stuck in cycles of dieting, control, shame, and emotional eating, you deserve a different relationship with your body.

One built on capability.

Trust.

Strength.

And long term health.

Not punishment.

Not shrinking.

Not constantly trying to earn your worth.

Your body isn’t something to fix.

It’s something to live in.

Episode 12: The Tiredness That Food Can’t Fix

Episode 12: The Tiredness That Food Can’t Fix is available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

If you want to go deeper into this work, this is the kind of healing we do inside Release & Reclaim, my 12-week 1:1 emotional eating therapy journey.

You can explore the podcast, or learn more about working together via the links on my website.

There’s a kind of tiredness I want to talk about today.

Not the tiredness that sleep fixes.
Not the tiredness a holiday fixes.
But the exhaustion that comes from carrying too much for too long.

The kind of tiredness that sits in your body like a weight.
Like you’ve been managing life, holding everything together, staying capable, staying “fine” for so long… that something in you is just done.

And if you’re listening to this podcast, chances are food plays a role in your life where it gets loud in moments like that.

Maybe it’s not every day.
Maybe you’re mostly okay.
But there’s enough noise around food that it takes up space in your head.

Enough to feel like something is still unresolved.

You’ve probably tried a thousand versions of “I’ll start Monday.”
You’ve had the weeks where you’re organised, disciplined, eating well, doing all the right things… until you’re tired. Until you’re stressed. Until life asks too much of you.

And that’s when things unravel.

Not because you’re weak.
Not because you’re undisciplined.
Not because you don’t know what to do.

But because your nervous system is overloaded.

This isn’t a willpower issue. It’s a pattern.

One of the most important things I want you to hear in this episode is that emotional eating isn’t random.

It isn’t chaos.
It isn’t a character flaw.
It’s a pattern.

It’s your system following the most logical path it knows when you’ve been holding it together for too long.

Because when you’re exhausted and stretched beyond your capacity, food becomes the fastest, most reliable way to create relief.

Food doesn’t require anything from you.
It doesn’t ask you to be vulnerable.
It doesn’t ask you to explain yourself.
It doesn’t ask you to slow down in front of anyone else.
It doesn’t ask you to ask for help.

And for so many women, at some point in their lives, food became safer than needing something from another person.

The parts behind emotional eating

In this episode, I talk about how emotional eating isn’t driven by one part of you.

It’s a whole internal system.

There are the responsible parts. The ones who keep you functioning. The ones who push you through. The ones who manage, organise, hold everything together, stay on top of it, stay “good.”

The ones who learned a long time ago that being capable was safer than being messy.

And then there are the parts that come in later.

The comfort part. The one who wants relief. The one who wraps you up in the emotional equivalent of a blanket and says, “You’ve had a hard day. You deserve something.”

The rebel part. The one who snaps when perfectionism has been running the show for too long. The one who says “fuck it” when the pressure becomes unbearable.

And then, right on cue, comes the inner critic.

The part that swoops in after the eating and shames you.
The part that tells you you’re out of control.
The part that says you should know better by now.
The part that promises you’ll be “good” tomorrow.

This is why knowing better doesn’t translate into doing differently.

Because emotional eating isn’t responding to logic.
It’s responding to safety.

Why trying to “fix” the behaviour often makes it worse

One of the most frustrating parts of emotional eating is that the mainstream approach is still focused on control.

More rules.
More restriction.
More pressure.
More discipline.

But if your system is already overwhelmed, adding more pressure doesn’t help. It just makes the loop tighter.

The behaviour doesn’t soften.
It just waits.

It waits until the next stressful week.
The next lonely night.
The next moment you’ve carried too much alone.
And then it comes back again.

Because emotional eating is not a food issue.
It’s a nervous system issue.

And if we don’t address what’s underneath, the behaviour keeps returning as a solution.

The tiredness food can’t fix

This is the part that feels so important.

Because the tiredness underneath emotional eating is rarely physical.

It’s the tiredness of being the responsible one.
The tiredness of being the regulated one.
The tiredness of being the one who doesn’t need much.
The tiredness of being the one who holds everything.

The tiredness of living in a system that was built on coping, not being cared for.

And food becomes the place where your body finally gets to exhale.

Even if it’s temporary.
Even if it comes with shame afterwards.

It makes sense.

What actually changes things

In this episode, I share something I wish more women were told.

Healing doesn’t happen when you relate to food differently.
Healing happens when you relate to yourself differently.

Because your relationship with food is downstream from your relationship with your body.

And your relationship with your body is downstream from your relationship with your internal world.

Your emotions.
Your needs.
Your capacity.
Your boundaries.
Your softness.
Your grief.
Your anger.
Your exhaustion.

The things you’ve learned to swallow.

And when you start meeting the parts of you that learned to cope in silence, the behaviour doesn’t need to be controlled.

It dissolves.

Not because you’re trying harder.
But because the job food was doing is no longer required.

A new way of living in your body

One of the most powerful shifts I talk about in this episode is learning to slow down in a way your system can actually tolerate.

Not “go meditate for an hour.”
Not “take a break” like you’re a robot who can just switch off.

But something smaller. More realistic.

Move through your day half a second slower.

No one will notice on the outside.
But internally, it changes everything.

Because it’s enough to bring you out of survival mode.
Enough to feel your hunger cues.
Enough to feel your exhaustion.
Enough to notice your sadness.
Enough to feel your anger and realise a boundary needs to be set.

Enough to stop outsourcing your needs to food.

And over time, your body starts to feel like a place you can actually be.

Food was never the problem. And neither were you.

If this episode lands, I want you to take this with you:

You were never failing at food.

Your system adapted brilliantly to survive.

But now, it’s asking for something different.

Not fixing.
Not pressure.
Not control.

A safer relationship with yourself.

Because when you stop fighting yourself, food stops needing to run your life.

Listen to Episode 12

Episode 12: The Tiredness That Food Can’t Fix is available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

If you want to go deeper into this work, this is the kind of healing we do inside Release & Reclaim, my 12-week 1:1 emotional eating therapy journey.

You can explore the podcast, or learn more about working together via the links on my website.

Episode Disclaimer

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice and does not replace individual mental health or medical care. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or feel unsafe in your relationship with food, please seek support from a qualified health professional. If you are in immediate danger or need urgent support, contact emergency services or your local crisis support line.

Episode 11: Your Body Was Never the Problem

Content Note:
This episode explores emotional eating, weight, body image, trauma, and nervous system protection. It may bring up feelings around shame, body criticism, or past experiences. Please take your time with it, and only listen in a way that feels supportive for you.

Most women don’t realise how deeply they’ve internalised this idea: that their body is the problem.

That their eating is the problem.
That weight changes, emotional eating, restriction, bingeing, or body hatred mean they’ve failed in some way.

And when you’ve been taught that, it makes sense that your whole life becomes a project.

Fix the food.
Fix the body.
Fix the willpower.
Fix the discipline.
Fix the cravings.
Fix the emotional eating.

But from an Internal Family Systems and somatic trauma lens, your body was never the problem.

Your body has been responding intelligently to what it lived through.

The body doesn’t just react to life. It adapts to it.

One of the biggest shifts in trauma informed work is this:

We stop seeing the body as something that’s malfunctioning, and start seeing it as something that’s protecting.

Because the body doesn’t behave randomly.
It organises itself around what feels safe, what feels threatening, and what it believes it needs to do to survive.

This is why posture, muscle tension, digestion, weight, and eating patterns are not just “health issues” or “bad habits.”

They can be protective strategies shaped by lived experience.

Your parts don’t only live in your thoughts. They live in your body.

In IFS, we talk about parts as inner aspects of the psyche.
But parts are not just thoughts.

They show up in your nervous system.
They show up in your body.

They affect:

The way you hold yourself
The way you breathe
The tension in your jaw
The tightness in your chest
The heaviness in your shoulders
The way your stomach clenches
The way your appetite changes
The way your body holds weight

And sometimes the body becomes the main site of protection.

Posture can be protection

You can see this in real life if you know what to look for.

You might notice a young woman walking down the street with her shoulders rounded forward and her chest collapsed inward.

She might not be afraid in that moment.
She might just be walking.

But her body learned somewhere along the way that it was safer to protect her heart.
To make herself smaller.
To take up less space.

That posture doesn’t come from laziness.

It comes from adaptation.

The body isn’t being poetic. It’s being literal.

Facial tension can change the way people respond to you

This blew my mind when I first learned it.

There are studies showing that people who experienced significant childhood trauma or relational trauma often struggle later in life with friendships.

Not because they’re unkind.
Not because they’re socially awkward.

But because their faces hold more tension.

Maybe in the jaw.
Maybe in the brow.
Maybe around the eyes.

Not enough that you’d consciously notice it.
But enough that their micro expressions don’t signal safety in the same way.

And at the same time, those who’ve experienced relational trauma often interpret other people’s facial expressions differently too.

A neutral face can feel like rejection.
A blank face can feel like anger.
Ambiguity can feel threatening.

That’s not weakness.

That is a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do.

Weight can be protection too

Weight is one of the most misunderstood areas of trauma and the nervous system.

We’ve been taught to think weight is only about food.

But weight can also be:

Insulation
Protection
A boundary
Distance
Safety

If someone has experienced repeated boundary violation, emotional, physical, relational, or sexual, the body may decide it needs more protection.

More space.
More buffering.
More safety.

So weight gain isn’t always a sign of failure.

Sometimes it’s the body trying to keep you safe.

Digestion often goes offline under chronic stress

Digestive issues are incredibly common in women who’ve lived in chronic stress.

IBS.
Bloating.
Poor nutrient absorption.
Food sensitivity patterns.
Feeling inflamed no matter what you do.

And it makes sense.

When the nervous system is braced for too long, digestion is one of the first systems to go offline.

Because the body prioritises survival over digestion.

If your system is constantly scanning for threat, it doesn’t have the resources to fully break down food, absorb nutrients, and regulate appetite the way it was designed to.

Again: not failure, its adaptation.

Your shoulders are not “tight.” They’re carrying something.

One of the most common things I hear in sessions is:

“I feel it in my shoulders.”

And while it’s not true in every single case, very often, shoulder tension is connected to one thing:

Responsibility.

Carrying too much.
Holding everything together.
Being the one who manages it all.

Even the language we use gives it away.

The weight of the world on your shoulders.
Everything resting on you.
Holding it all together.

The body isn’t being metaphorical.
It’s being literal.

Why “doing all the right things” doesn’t always work

This is the part I really want you to hear if you’ve ever felt confused, frustrated, or ashamed.

If you’ve been doing the “right things” with food, and your body isn’t responding, it does not automatically mean you’re doing something wrong.

For some people, calorie deficits and dietary changes lead to weight loss.

But for many women, if the nervous system still believes protection is needed, the body will push back.

Because the body does not just give up protection because you tell it to.

It doesn’t respond to force.

It responds to safety.

The IFS lens: Manager parts and Firefighter parts

In IFS we talk about two main protective styles.

Manager parts

These are the parts that try to prevent pain, chaos, or vulnerability.

In emotional eating, they can look like:

Body checking
Food rules
Weighing yourself
Bargaining
“I ate this so I’ll work out later”
“I’ll be good tomorrow”
“Starting again Monday”
Control
Monitoring
Restricting

Managers can also use weight as protection.

Sometimes they hold onto weight because it keeps you safer.

Because the system believes being smaller, being more visible, being more desired, or being more exposed could be dangerous.

Firefighter parts

Firefighters come in when something feels too tender, too overwhelming, or too much.

They want relief now.

They can look like:

Bingeing
Compulsive eating
Numbing
Over-drinking
Over-scrolling
Shutting down
Dissociating
Avoiding

Firefighters aren’t trying to ruin your life.

They’re trying to put the fire out.

Food is often the fastest way to regulate

This is why food becomes such a common tool.

Because it works.

It changes state quickly.

It brings the nervous system down.
It creates relief.
It numbs.
It distracts.
It gives comfort.
It gives a moment of softness.

Especially for women who grew up without consistent emotional attunement, safety, or support.

Food becomes something reliable.

And the more your system has had to acknowledging needs, the more food becomes the substitute.

Why insight doesn’t always create change

This is the hardest part for high functioning women.

Because you are smart.
You are self aware.
You can connect dots.
You can explain your patterns.

You know why you emotionally eat.

But knowing is not the same as releasing a role.

Insight without attunement doesn’t heal the nervous system.

It might make sense of the story, but it doesn’t create safety in the system.

And without safety, protection doesn’t soften.

Why “just listen to your body” can feel impossible

This is why some advice, even well meaning advice, can feel frustrating.

Because if your body has been a place of danger, overwhelm, shame, or intensity…

Then “just listen to your body” isn’t soothing.

It’s threatening.

Listening becomes possible when safety exists.

Sometimes you need support.
The right container, pacing, titration and a therapeutic relationship where your system doesn’t have to do it alone.

Healing is not force. It is attunement.

The healing path is not about pushing harder.

It is not about controlling food harder.

It is not about trying to discipline your nervous system into behaving.

Healing happens through:

Curiosity instead of control
Respect instead of force
Slowing down
Listening
Meeting the protective parts with compassion
Building enough internal safety for protection to soften

And when that happens, things begin to change.

Not overnight.
Not in one breakthrough.

But slowly.

Quietly.

In a way that finally lasts.

Your body has been doing its best to protect you

If you take nothing else from this episode or this post, take this:

Nothing in you is random.
Nothing in you is broken.

Your body has been responding intelligently to what it learned it needed to survive.

And when you start relating to it that way, something shifts.

Not because you’ve finally found the perfect plan.

But because you’ve stopped turning against yourself.

Want to go deeper?

If you want support working with emotional eating, binge cycles, and the deeper patterns underneath, you can explore my 12 week one on one therapy container:

Release & Reclaim
A trauma informed therapy journey for emotional eating and binge cycles.

The first step is a free Release & Reclaim Consultation, which is a contained orientation and fit session.

Not a sales call.
A clinical conversation to explore what’s driving your pattern and whether this level of support is the right next step.

You can book that through the link in my bio or via my website.

Podcast disclaimer

This podcast is for education and reflection only. It is not a substitute for therapy or healthcare. If this episode brought things up for you and you need support, please reach out to a trained therapy practitioner or health professional in your area.

EPISODE 10:The Hidden Roles Behind Emotional Eating - Family dynamics, nervous system load, and why food steps in

This episode includes discussion of eating disorders, including bulimia, and explores emotional eating through a therapeutic lens. Please listen or read with care and take what feels supportive for you.

There is something that gets missed in almost every conversation about emotional eating.

Because food is not always just regulating emotions.

Sometimes, food is holding roles that never should have belonged to you in the first place.

In this episode, we explore emotional eating through an Internal Family Systems and nervous system lens, looking at how early family dynamics shape the way our bodies cope later in life. How becoming the responsible one, the peacekeeper, the emotional buffer, or the caretaker can load your nervous system with far more than it was ever meant to carry.

And when that load becomes too heavy, food often steps in.

Not because you are weak.
Not because you lack discipline.
But because your system is trying to discharge what it never had support to process.

When food is holding responsibility, not feelings

Much of the mainstream conversation around emotional eating frames food as a way to regulate feelings like stress, sadness, or boredom.

But in my work, and in my own journey, I see something deeper happening.

Sometimes food is not regulating emotion at all.
It is holding responsibility.

It is holding together family roles that were taken on very early, often unconsciously, and never should have belonged to a child in the first place.

Roles like being the emotional support, the peacekeeper, the caretaker, the one who keeps everything calm, or the one who does not need too much.

When these roles are taken on young, the nervous system learns something very specific.
Containment becomes a survival strategy.

And containment has a limit.

How early family dynamics shape eating behaviour later in life

In the episode, I share an example from an Internal Family Systems case study involving a woman with bulimia.

What stood out was not the eating behaviour itself, but the family system she grew up in.

She had become emotionally involved in her parents’ relationship.
She was confided in.
She was regulating adult emotions.
She was parentified.

She did not get to be a child.

From a nervous system perspective, this creates hypervigilant, responsible, controlled protective parts. Parts that track moods, manage tension, and hold emotional weight that is far too much for a developing system.

And when that load becomes overwhelming, other parts step in to create relief.

Often, those parts use food.

Not because food is addictive.
Not because of a lack of discipline.
But because food is one of the fastest and most socially acceptable ways to discharge what the system can no longer hold.

Why restriction and bingeing make sense through a nervous system lens

Many eating patterns follow a familiar rhythm.

Control, then relief.
Responsibility, then release.
Holding it together, then falling apart.

This is not pathology.
It is adaptation.

Restriction, over control, or perfectionism often come from parts seeking safety.
Bingeing or emotional eating often comes from parts seeking relief.

Both are trying to create balance.

From a nervous system perspective, this makes complete sense.

If you spent your childhood containing everything, your system learned that containment equals survival. But when containment exceeds capacity, something has to give.

Food often becomes the place where it finally does.

Knowing is not the same as releasing

Many of the women I work with are deeply self aware.

They understand their patterns.
They can trace them back to childhood.
They know why they emotionally eat.

And yet, nothing truly changes.

This is because intellectual insight does not dismantle a system.

Using the analogy of a riverbed, emotional eating becomes the default pathway because it has worked for a long time. Trying to override it with more discipline or control is like standing in front of the river and asking the water not to flow.

Without another system in place, it has nowhere to go.

This is why working with parts, rather than fighting behaviour, matters.

You are not addicted to sugar. You are hungry for softness

Sweet food activates soothing and bonding pathways in the brain.

Dopamine.
Opioid receptors.
Oxytocin.

If love, safety, or softness were inconsistent or conditional growing up, sweetness often becomes a substitute.

This is not conscious.
It is somatic wisdom.

What gets labelled as addiction is often an unmet relational need that never had another outlet.

You are not broken.
Your system adapted brilliantly.

Releasing roles rather than fixing food

Internal Family Systems does not ask you to stop eating certain foods or follow another plan.

It asks different questions.

What role is this part playing.
What is it protecting you from.
What is it carrying that was never yours.

When the parts that learned they had to hold everything are supported to release those roles, the system reorganises itself.

The eating behaviour softens not because it is forced to, but because it is no longer needed.

This is the foundation of my 12 week Release and Reclaim work. We are not fixing food. We are meeting the parts that learned to survive by holding too much.

A gentle question to sit with

What role did I play in my family as a little girl that I am still playing now?

There is no blame in this question.
Only information.

Food is rarely the problem.

It is often the last place your system could finally let go.

When we stop fighting that and start listening to what is underneath, something very different becomes possible.

Thank you for being here and for listening.
If this brought anything up for you, please reach out to a trained therapy practitioner or health professional for support.