Insatiable with Ali Shapiro, MSOD, CHHC

Diet culture, anti-diet rhetoric, and functional medicine all live in a messy middle ground. Our culture trains us to outsource authority, chase gold stars, and equate thinness with worth. We're taught to live by someone else's food rules, health rules, weight rules. So if you're still struggling to figure food out, it's not a failure of discipline. It's a misunderstanding of safety and belonging.
In this episode of Insatiable, I join Erin Holt on The Funk'tional Nutritionist podcast to talk about how functional medicine, adult development, and lived experience create pendulum swings in eating patterns. We get into why food feels like both the problem and the solution, and what it means to author your own choices around health and weight without shame, dogma, or perfectionism.
6:28 – How Ali’s history with cancer, functional medicine, and adult development work led her to see “falling off track” with food as a symptom instead of a core issue
10:15 – Erin’s history with eating disorders and how her story overlaps with Ali’s
14:00 – How the “good girl” (or socialized) mindset influences your thinking with food, weight, and health (even after you’ve rejected diet culture on the surface)
18:10 – Example of how seeing yourself (not others) as the author of your story changes what “success” looks like.
22:54 – Why people “go off track” with food and how it has nothing to do with willpower
27:45 – Erin’s food memories that illustrate the clash between the need for rest and resourcefulness vs. the need for approval and belonging 
34:34 – How tools like GLP‑1s aren’t inherently good or bad and can help or harm 
38:32 – Why weight loss alone can never deliver belonging, purpose, or a meaningful life
42:37 – Why it’s okay if you still feel like weight loss should be your focus right now
46:56 – Where to start if you don’t even know what emotional needs you have that need to be met 
52:26 – Seeing the inner critic as protection, not self-sabotage, and an example of how healing doesn’t always have to be difficult

Mentioned In Funk’tional Nutrition: How Belonging, Not Willpower, Shapes Your Eating
The Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast
Find Your Food Stage Quiz
Dr. Deborah MacNamara
Next Level by Stacy Sims

What happens after you've tried everything? The plans, protocols, cleanses, and tracking apps. The running, the restriction, the attempt to outrun the fork. At some point, the effort becomes its own kind of exhaustion. You're no longer chasing health, you're chasing relief.
In this episode of Insatiable, I sit down with Dee, a graduate of the Truce with Food: Consistency program, to talk about what actually creates lasting change when food has become comfort, numbness, and self-punishment all at once. Dee shares what it was like to move from binging and rigid thinking into something quieter and more powerful: just showing up.
3:51 – Why Dee felt stuck before joining Truce With Food: Consistency 
7:47 – Why Dee had no hesitation about signing up, even after having tried so many things before
11:04 – What changed for Dee when success was defined as simply showing up
13:47 – Having a safe space and the role of compassionate witnesses in ending her isolation 
21:13 – The unexpected power of language in reshaping Dee’s thinking and behavior
27:23 – Where things shifted for Dee and where she is now compared to when she started
30:50 – How Dee’s rigid thinking and perspective on movement and motivation have changed
34:40 – The biggest shift for Dee in her relationship with food and why intensity and duration matter more than perfection
37:19 – The shift from measuring thinness to measuring aliveness
40:32 – What else surprised Dee about the work within the program and her words for anyone considering joining
Mentioned In How Just Showing Up Ended Years of Binging
Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis
Find Your Food Stage Quiz

You tell yourself you're too busy and too tired to focus on yourself. You'll do it when things calm down, when work eases up, when the kids need less, when you finally get a good night's sleep. But food still calls your name at all the wrong times. You've tried to fix it, but the cycle keeps repeating.
You're not lazy. You're not broken. You're trying to solve exhaustion without understanding where it actually comes from.
In this episode of Insatiable, I break down why "too busy and too tired" is often protective resistance in disguise and why waiting for life to calm down costs you more than you think. I walk through how midlife physiology, perfectionism, lack of agency, and how we're conditioned as women all fuel the tired trigger. Plus, why turning to food makes complete sense as a solution, not a character flaw.
1:48 - Why “too busy and too tired” can be protective resistance disguised as practicality
4:48 – Example of how investing in your health earlier creates dividends you can’t see until later
6:33 - Biological shifts in midlife that quietly change hunger, satiety, and energy
9:16 - How perfectionism and over-functioning impact your energy
9:50 - Why sugar and “I deserve this” thinking are solutions before they’re problems
12:03 - Example of the surprising role of agency in chronic exhaustion
15:25 – How investing in the right support for yourself and self-compassion can energize you
19:25 - Final takeaways for this episode and an invitation to you
Mentioned In Why Being Too Tired Is Exactly Why You Need Support
Oura Ring
FREE Workshop on February 10th - ​​Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track
Find Your Food Stage Quiz

You've followed the plans. Upped the discipline. Doubled down on getting back on track. And still, food and taking care of yourself feel harder than they used to.
You're not the problem. The problem is trying to apply the same strategies you relied on in your twenties and thirties to a body and life that have fundamentally changed.
In this episode of Insatiable, I share the five shifts that finally make consistency possible when perfectionism stops working. You'll learn why your resistance to showing up imperfectly is protective, not personal, and how to stay in the game even when it feels like you're barely moving forward.
3:28 - Why old strategies no longer working for you isn’t a sign of your failure
11:06 - Why C-plus effort triggers disgust and why that disgust has nothing to do with laziness
19:52 - How certainty becomes a shield against vulnerability and keeps you repeating the same all-or-nothing loop
24:51 - Why “momentum” sounds like a soft metric but becomes the only measure that compounds into lasting change
28:52 - The protective resistance that shows up the moment you try to break the cycle and why planning for it is non-negotiable
34:25 – Quick recap of the five shifts that redefine what success actually looks like in midlife with food struggles

Mentioned In Five Shifts to Finally Stay Consistent With Food
FREE Workshop on February 10th - ​​Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track
Find Your Food Stage Quiz

You've done the work. Tried the protocols, followed the plans. And yet food still takes up way too much mental space. You're not the problem. Those one-size-fits-all protocols you've been handed were never going to work for where you actually are.
After nearly two decades working with clients, I've watched the wellness space get louder and louder with protocols and plans telling you what to do without knowing who you are or what stage you're in. Frameworks meet you where you actually are and help you figure out why you keep turning to food in the first place. That distinction is everything when it comes to lasting change.
In this episode of Insatiable, I explain why frameworks work when protocols don't, walk you through the four developmental stages most women move through in their relationship with food, and share details about my free Untangle Your Food Triggers workshop coming up in February for those ready to move beyond protocols. 
5:52 - How last year’s “composting phase” reshaped my body of work
9:46 - Why midlife women need frameworks instead of protocols
13:19 - An appetizer for the Truce with Food Consistency program to kickstart your year
15:16 - Stages in the developmental process to a truce with food
17:16 - Why stage two is both the most confusing and the most hopeful place to land (and how to leverage it)

Mentioned In Why Food Plans Fail After 40 and What Works Instead
FREE Workshop on February 10th (not 11th, misspoke in episode) - ​​Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track
Braid Creative and Consulting
How to Better Understand Stress with Andrea Nakayama
Find Your Food Stage Quiz