Truce with Food with Ali Shapiro, MSOD, CHHC

Twenty years ago, functional medicine changed everything for me. My IBS cleared. My skin cleared. My depression lifted. And for the first time, I understood food as medicine instead of just calories. But somewhere in the last five years, functional medicine started looking a lot like what it was railing against. A supplement for every lab marker. A protocol for every person. A business model that profits from making you feel more broken than when you walked in.
So I stopped talking about it much here. But I still believe in root cause resolution. And I wanted to bring on someone who practices it the way it was meant to be practiced. That's why I brought Erin Holt on the show. Erin is a seasoned clinician, clinic founder, and trainer of other practitioners who has been vocal about what's gone wrong in this industry while still believing fiercely in what it can be. She practices what she calls intuitive functional medicine, a framework that starts with the physical body and refuses to stop there.
In this episode of Truce with Food, Erin and I get into what's actually broken in functional medicine right now, why data can never replace discernment or lived experience, and how her five-phase formula bridges the physical, mental, emotional, and energetic aspects of healing. We also talk about why you can't rewire an inflamed brain with mindset work, and what it really means to self-source your health instead of outsourcing it to someone in a white coat.
2:48 – Introduction to Erin and how she and her trainees help one-on-one clients
7:56 – The shift in functional medicine over the last five years that’s recreating the exact problem it was designed to solve
11:25 – Defining functional medicine and comparing it to more conventional medicine
16:46 – What intuitive functional medicine is and what it looks like in Erin’s practice (and her training of other practitioners)
24:08 – Self-sourcing vs. outsourcing your health and the long, underexamined history of the loss of self-trust in so many people
34:09 – A basic example of how Erin helps her clients rebuild their self-trust (without forcing it)
39:55 – Why too many choices in the name of empowerment can actually cause someone to freeze in response (and what skilled practitioners do differently)
44:11 – The real point of fear-based marketing and how to spot it before it sells you something you don't need
47:00 – Why the nocebo effect, medical hexing, and the labels a practitioner puts on you can quietly become the ceiling on your healing
49:15 – Functional labs that are actually worth it and the very contextual, individualized way Erin administers them as a practitioner
51:43 – Erin’s framework for whole-person healing, why the starting point doesn’t matter, and what needs to happen before you can rewire your brain using mindset work
1:00:42 – The importance and meaning of self-compassion and why you must only work with those who see your potential to heal
Mentioned In Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don't with Erin Holt
Manifest Your Health™
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Funk’tional Nutrition Academy (FNA) 
Funk’tional Nutrition: How Belonging, Not Willpower, Shapes Your Eating
Find Your Food Stage Quiz

You've tried the plans. The protocols. Maybe therapy, journaling, intuitive eating. And food still feels like a battle. The problem isn't that you haven't tried hard enough. It's that no one has ever shown you where you actually are.
I've spent 19 years working with women who've tried everything and nothing's worked long term. What I keep finding is that the approach mismatches the stage. And you can't know what to do next until you know where you're starting from.
In this episode of Truce with Food, I walk through I walk through the four developmental stages of resolving your food battle and introduce my free Food Stage Finder Assessment. If you've ever wondered why you're still struggling despite everything you've done, this is where to start.
1:40 – How women's healthcare concerns get dismissed and what led Ali to this work
3:59 – Why food struggles fall into two extremes and why both miss the point
6:26 – What the Food Stage Finder Assessment is and why Ali created it
7:34 – Why more information stopped being the problem for Ali's clients
9:03 – Women's health span post-menopause and why midlife is the time to get this right
11:56 – Taking responsibility for your own body literacy without burning out
13:11 – Why intuitive eating is hard when you've never had healthy eating patterns
14:06 – How adolescent culture shapes our food culture and why quick fixes dominate
19:50 – Why maturity, not more learning, is what actually creates food freedom
22:38 – The four developmental stages of resolving your food battle
25:53 – Stage one: Gathering Evidence
27:04 – Stage two: Breakthrough Ready
29:37 – Stage three: Practicing Freedom
32:48 – Stage four: Trusting in Satisfaction
36:19 – Why most people are surprised by their Food Stage Finder results
36:32 – How to take the free Food Stage Finder Assessment
Mentioned In What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term
Truce with Food
Food Stage Finder Assessment

After nearly a decade of conversations about food, culture, and psychology, this podcast has a new name. What was Insatiable is now the Truce with Food Podcast. What started as a rebrand turned into an honest look at how success, ambition, and identity shift over time.
Ten years ago, metrics like downloads and productivity felt like the scorecard. Then motherhood happened. Menopause happened. The realities of limited time and energy became impossible to ignore. I had to ask what actually feels like success now.
In this episode of Truce with Food, I share how hustle culture quietly shaped my definition of success and how I used my own framework to work through overworking. Because creating a truce with food often means creating a truce with the relentless pursuit of success itself.
4:26 – How a decade of podcasting quietly reveals how cultural definitions of success shape our goals and habits 
9:57 – When things began to shift in my energy and capacity regarding hustle culture
13:13 – What the rebrand is about and why a years-long evolving framework involving work with real people matters now more than ever
16:48 – The Truce with Food framework as a way to take back your power and how I used it to stop overworking
23:32 – Re-evaluation of time, energy, and capacity as a result of hustle culture limits in midlife 
32:54 – What is and isn’t changing about the podcast
Mentioned In What a Truce with Food Taught Me About Redefining Success
Truce with Food
How Just Showing Up Ended Years of Binging
Content with Carlos | my husband, who designed my new website and content strategy
Braid Creative | Kathleen Shannon on Skipping One-Size-Fits-All and Experimenting Instead
Health, Body, and Business with Ali Shapiro (Being Boss Podcast)
Find Your Food Stage Quiz

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