Truce with Food with Ali Shapiro, MSOD, CHHC

Jenny first learned to connect thinness with acceptance when she lost 30 pounds before eighth grade and returned to school getting attention she hadn’t received before. That connection shaped the next four decades of restriction, bingeing, bulimia, treatment, and trying to make peace with food.
By the time Jenny found Truce with Food, she already knew her struggle wasn’t really about food. What she didn’t understand was what kept pulling her back into the same patterns. Identifying loneliness as one of her eating triggers and recognizing the deeper need for belonging underneath it gave her a completely different place to start.
In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Jenny, a client who completed Truce with Food: Consistency, to talk about how her urge to binge fell away without more food rules or another plan to follow. We also get into the role perfectionism played in keeping her stuck, what helped her close the gap between knowing and doing, and what changed when she started building a life she genuinely wanted to be part of.
6:35 – Jenny’s history with disordered eating and body image
9:55 – Loneliness as Jenny’s emotional trigger for bingeing
19:22 – Valuing peace above thinness in our culture
21:18 – "C plus effort" in the group breaking Jenny’s perfectionism cycle 
25:56 – Attuning to yourself to satisfy the emotional trigger underneath the food struggle
28:47 – The "knowing" but not "doing" gap that kept Jenny stuck for years 
31:49 – Shrinking the gap by learning how to set up for success or for opting out
41:25 – Movement as a door opener to new friendships and more fun
46:01 – Bingeing as betrayal and Jenny’s refusal to let restriction run her life
50:16 – Why the urge to binge can disappear without explanation
55:23 – Bringing your body online to notice what feels good and what triggers you

Mentioned In How Jenny Stopped Binge Eating Without More Food Rules
Truce with Food: Consistency
Free Workshop: Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track
Find Your Food Stage Quiz
Join Ali on August 18, 2026, for her free masterclass, Untangle Your Food Triggers and Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track. You’ll unpack the four triggers behind that urgent, buzzy energy around food, what’s happening underneath them, and how to close the gap between knowing what to do and doing it. The recording will be available for one week.
Register at trucewithfood.com/consistency.

You know you’re not hungry, but there’s still this urgent, buzzy energy around food. You find yourself standing in front of the fridge needing something, even though you can’t say what you’re looking for. Maybe you wait until you’re alone to eat, or decide the diet starts tomorrow. You know what to do, so why can’t you do it?
The problem isn’t that you need more information or haven’t tried hard enough. When that knowing and doing gap shows up, your survivor self is in the room. Its job is to protect you from a change that feels too risky, and food almost works. It soothes you and makes you feel less alone without asking you to risk failure, rejection, criticism, or looking bad.
In this episode of Truce with Food, I’m sharing a masterclass I taught inside my client Diana Feinstein’s community about why eating when you’re not hungry makes so much sense. We talk about why starting habits and stopping habits require different strategies, why the survivor self can’t be coached or white-knuckled into changing, and how growing your healthy adult self helps food become obsolete as a coping strategy. Diana also shares how these patterns showed up in her own life and what changed when she finally understood what was happening underneath the food.
1:42 – How this masterclass supports everyday eaters and the coaches helping them
7:30 – Why health coach Diana Feinstein turned to Ali despite knowing what to do
10:05 – Why what looks like self-sabotage may actually be self-protection
12:27 – How the hidden “why not” can outweigh your reasons for changing
18:33 – Why hearing other people name the same food patterns helped Diana feel less alone
20:28 – Why starting a new habit and stopping an unwanted habit require different strategies
23:50 – Why the knowing and doing gap isn’t a character flaw or personal failure
26:43 – How the survivor self creates resistance to change and why it can’t be coached
31:41 – Why food is such a powerful coping strategy and the deeper need it almost meets
35:26 – How hustling and overworking show up in your patterns with food
42:22 – How growing your healthy adult self helps close the knowing and doing gap
45:29 – The four stages of closing the gap between knowing and doing
51:16 – How compassionate witnessing helped Diana stop fighting her feelings
55:17 – What compassionate witnessing looks like and why it isn’t the same as fixing someone
1:00:08 – How food noise can signal that your survivor self is active

Mentioned In How to Close the Knowing-Doing Gap with Food
MaxPact Health | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn
Diana Feinstein on LinkedIn
What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term
Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track
Get Clients Unstuck and Why Another Tool Isn’t the Answer
Truce Coaching Certification
Find Your Food Stage Quiz
Join Ali on August 18, 2026, for her free masterclass, Untangle Your Food Triggers and Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track. You’ll unpack the four triggers behind that urgent, buzzy energy around food, what’s happening underneath them, and how to close the gap between knowing what to do and doing it. The recording will be available for one week.
Register at trucewithfood.com/consistency.

You can know exactly what to do and still find yourself repeating the same behavior. You make the plan, feel motivated, and get going, only to hit that point where the novelty wears off and the old pattern comes right back. Then the question becomes whether you need more discipline, a better tool, or someone else to finally tell you what you’re missing.
That confusion is the messy middle of change, and it’s where both clients and coaches can start to lose the plot. What gets you started isn’t always what gets you through this part, especially when shame, identity, and old protective patterns get involved. It’s also where coaches can start wondering if they don’t know enough, if the client isn’t ready, or if they should be doing more to fix what’s happening.
In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Christen Conly, a yoga teacher, holistic health and embodiment coach, and graduate of my Truce Coaching Certification, to talk about what changed when she stopped relying on more tips and tools. We get into why falling off track can make sense, how the urge to fix clients creates its own problems, and what becomes possible when change is treated as a process to navigate rather than something to eradicate.
6:34 – What led Christen Conly to Truce Coaching Certification
12:48 – Why starting and stopping behaviors require different coaching skills
16:17 – The client Christen wishes she could support with what she knows now
17:58 – When helping clients becomes entangled with approval
20:20 – Reframing self-sabotage as a protective response
23:10 – Shame-based motivation versus sustainable motivation
27:12 – Letting go of the responsibility to fix clients
32:21 – How Truce Coaching Certification helped Christen coach with more confidence
37:04 – The difference between mindset, identity, and story
39:26 – Technical versus adaptive change and creating safety to experiment
41:41 – How Christen’s coaching changed after certification
44:45 – Using the emotional immune system with clients

Mentioned In When Tips and Tools Aren’t Enough to Create Lasting Change with Christen Conly
Christen Conly | Instagram
Get Clients Unstuck and Why Another Tool Isn’t the Answer
Truce Coaching Certification
Find Your Food Stage Quiz
Join Ali on August 18, 2026, for her free masterclass, Untangle Your Food Triggers and Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track. You’ll unpack the four triggers behind that urgent, buzzy energy around food, what’s happening underneath them, and how to close the gap between knowing what to do and doing it. The recording will be available for one week.
Register at trucewithfood.com/consistency.

You find yourself standing in front of the kitchen counter, not knowing why you’re there. Or you’re out at a work event already thinking about when you’ll be able to get home and be alone with food. You’re not actually hungry, but you feel pulled there anyway. It’s urgent, buzzy, and hard to talk yourself out of, even when some part of you knows this isn’t really about the food.
What we often call emotional eating is usually a message from your nervous system. Food can soothe. It can give you the almost-feeling of being comforted, supported, and cared for. But as Dr. Deborah MacNamara says, “There’s nothing as addictive as something that almost works.” When the deeper need is safety or belonging, managing the behavior without understanding what it’s protecting only keeps you stuck in the same loop.
In this episode of the Truce with Food podcast, I’m sharing my conversation with dietitian Tara Schmidt from Mayo Clinic’s On Nutrition podcast to walk through the first step of my Truce with Food framework and what it reveals about emotional eating. We talk about why food noise can feel so urgent, the patterns that keep people from getting their needs met, what our food memories reveal about belonging, and how to begin breaking the cycle without turning it into another perfectionist project.
4:00 – How Ali’s interview on Tara’s podcast came together, and why I wanted to re-air it on Truce with Food
10:07 – The next best step you can take after listening to this episode
14:03 – What inspired Ali to specialize in helping people heal their relationship with food
17:15 – Four main triggers (and the unmet needs within) behind emotional eating
22:11 – How your physiology and psychology can influence each other due to the tiredness trigger
23:41 – The types of food emotional eaters go to, and the relationship between food noise and emotional eating
30:02 – Three behavioral patterns of comfort eating and how they serve as protection strategies 
35:25 – Those who don’t eat based on their emotions, and why some people mindlessly overeat
37:36 – How to support someone who you think struggles with emotional eating without making them feel uncomfortable
39:28 – How to pause the reflex of emotional eating (and the one time you shouldn’t)
42:37 – How one client went from decades on medication to selling her business and feeling at home in her own body by ending her emotional eating cycle

Mentioned In Mayo Clinic on Nutrition: The Four Triggers Behind Emotional Eating
A Holistic Approach to GLP-1s with Mayo Clinic Dietitian Tara Schmidt
Mayo Clinic on Nutrition Podcast with Tara Schmidt, RDN
Institute for Integrative Nutrition | Dr. Mark Hyman
Dr. Deborah MacNamara | Nourished: Connection, Food, and Caring for Our Kids (And Everyone Else We Love) by Dr. Deborah MacNamara
Find Your Food Stage Quiz
Join Ali on August 18, 2026, for her free masterclass, Untangle Your Food Triggers and Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track. You’ll unpack the four triggers behind that urgent, buzzy energy around food, what’s happening underneath them, and how to close the gap between knowing what to do and doing it. The recording will be available for one week.
Register at trucewithfood.com/consistency.

Women are hearing a lot right now about eating more, building muscle, healing their metabolism, and using GLP-1s for weight loss. But so much of the conversation still skips over what actually matters for women’s bodies, especially in perimenopause and menopause. If you’ve ever tried to nourish yourself more and immediately watched the scale go up, it can feel like your body is broken. It’s not, but your metabolism may need repair before it’s ready for fat loss.
That’s why I wanted to talk with Ashley Fillmore, founder and president of Metabolic Fix. Ashley is a leading expert in sustainable weight and fat loss with over 20 years of experience helping women heal their metabolism, balance their hormones, and change their body composition without staying stuck in chronic dieting. She also brings something I always appreciate, real client data, real lived experience, and a clear-eyed take on the online muscle-building and GLP-1 claims that don’t match what actually happens in women’s bodies.
In this episode of the Truce with Food podcast, I sit down with Ashley to talk about how to use GLP-1s without losing the muscle you need, and why they can support weight loss but can’t replace metabolic repair. We get into her Repair, Rebuild, Results framework, why eating more can feel so scary when your body has adapted to under-eating, and what sustainable fat loss actually requires if you want results that last.
6:27 – Defining metabolism, what the repair phase does, and the impact of hormones on your metabolic health 
12:57 – Why you might be stuck even if you’re doing many of the right things
17:25 – How the reverse diet in the repair phase helps your metabolism safely adapt to more calories
25:28 – How long the repair phase lasts, and why Ashley’s took longer than average
32:03 – What happens during the rebuild stage, and why it’s crucial before entering fat loss
36:19 – Debunking media claims and setting realistic expectations about muscle gain
47:02 – Why lean muscle is the body’s currency for longevity, not just an aesthetic bodily upgrade
50:06 – Why GLP-1s should be a supplement, not your primary weight loss strategy
53:22 – The importance of careful GLP-1 microdosing usage and greater metabolic health knowledge among doctors
1:03:19 – Why not all weight loss is a good thing, and the problem with overfocusing on protein alone in your diet
1:06:25 – Ashley’s free tool for estimating a healthy calorie target based on your weight loss goals
Mentioned In How to Use GLP-1s Without Losing the Muscle You Need with Ashley Fillmore
Dr. Stacy Sims 
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Metabolic Fix | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | YouTube
Metabolic Fix Weight Loss Calculator 
Cheers to Your Success Podcast
Find Your Food Stage Quiz
Join Ali on August 18, 2026, for her free masterclass, Untangle Your Food Triggers and Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track. You’ll unpack the four triggers behind that urgent, buzzy energy around food, what’s happening underneath them, and how to close the gap between knowing what to do and doing it. The recording will be available for one week.
Register at trucewithfood.com/consistency.