Truce with Food with Ali Shapiro, MSOD, CHHC

You finally understand what’s been driving your food struggles. You change how you eat, you feel better, maybe you even think, okay, I’ve got this now. Then months or years later, the cravings come back, your body changes, or you find yourself eating when you’re not hungry again. It can feel like all that progress disappeared and you’re somehow back at the beginning.
After more than 10 years of this podcast and 330 episodes, what I keep seeing is that you may not need another answer. You may already have the right information, just at the wrong point in your own change process. The blood sugar episode that feels life-changing when you’re first realizing your cravings aren’t a willpower problem may not help two years later when you already understand the physiology and what you’re wrestling with is why you still want cookies when you’re alone on a Thursday night. Same information, completely different need.
In this episode of Truce with Food, I explain why timing and sequencing matter so much when you’re changing your relationship with food, and why feeling like you’re starting over doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost your progress. I’m also introducing the new free Truce with Food podcast library, built from more than a decade of episodes and organized around the problem you’re actually trying to solve now, so you can find the right next conversation for where you are.
2:42 – Reflections on the good and bad of what happened during the summer season 
8:06 – Disillusionment with what’s currently happening in the wellness world
11:19 – The pitfalls of relying heavily on AI for written content
19:28 – The inferior-superior cycle that keeps you ping-ponging between all-or-nothing thinking
23:09 – What I mean by “right information, wrong timing” and why the order of things really matters
31:00 – A newly organized, decade-in-the-making tool designed to guide you toward solutions based on your situation
35:20 – Demonstration of how the new podcast library works using three people as examples
45:54 – How to use the library (including curated paths, how to search, and how it links with your food quiz) 
50:38 – Asking for two favors when you use the beta version of the podcast library

Mentioned In Why You Keep Feeling Like You’re Starting Over With Food
Truce with Food Podcast Library
Email: Ali@alishapiro.com
Find Your Food Stage Quiz
Content with Carlos
Episode 233: Quitting Alcohol and Managing Sugar Cravings with Laura McKowen | Books by Laura McKowen
Episode 330: How to Make Habits Stick When Your Life Is Unpredictable with Monica Packer
Episode 321: Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don’t with Erin Holt
Episode 267: Esther Blum Demystifies Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for Perimenopause and Menopause Relief
Episode 266: Dr. Stacy Sims on How “Women Are Not Small Men” (especially at midlife & with exercise)
Episode 188: The 4 Weight Loss Willpower Myths Sabotaging Your Results
Body Story Series with Sas Petherick: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6

How many times have you been in the middle of a habit challenge and quietly given up? You make it to day 19 of 21, then your kid gets sick, your period starts, or life blows up and you don’t have the time or energy to do the habit that day. The problem is that so much popular habit advice teaches consistency as doing the same thing, the same way, day after day. As Monica Packer puts it, what we’ve actually learned is perfectionism, not habit change.
Monica is a recovering perfectionist and the author of Sticky Habits. Her work looks at something most habit advice misses. Women often have less predictable time and energy because of caregiving, invisible labor, hormones, and the million moving pieces they’re managing. That doesn’t mean habits can’t work. It means we need a model for lasting change that accounts for how our lives actually work.
In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Monica to talk about how rethinking consistency can help you build habits that actually stick. She explains what she calls gentle diligence, why doing your best isn’t the same as doing something perfectly, and how creating a baseline gives you a version of your habit you can maintain when life doesn’t go according to plan. We also get into what long-term social change can teach us about our obsession with quick results and why sustainable change requires measuring something different than speed.
3:36 – A short overview of Monica’s background
6:33 – Why the habit advice that works for men can quietly set women up to fail
12:37 – A solo trip that revealed how much invisible work it takes to keep a family running
15:17 – Male-centered authority and leadership in the habit change industry
18:49 – Why a habit challenge stalls out right around day 19, and the redefinition of consistency that has nothing to do with perfection
24:07 – How to establish a baseline version of your habits for less-than-ideal days, and what shifts when you start to believe in it
30:00 – An example of how showing up matters more than doing it right, and how Monica’s perfectionism inspired her book
36:17 – The point of habits and the flexibility to renegotiate them when circumstances come up
39:48 – Reframing what "fast enough" means for your own change, and being sold the lie of overnight success
44:47 – Two things Monica often says to her clients who are worried about consistency and doing things right
46:27 – Monica’s hopes for how she wants her book to impact both women who read it and the self-help and wellness industry overall
47:28 – Monica’s message for you if you fear you can’t change

Mentioned In How to Make Habits Stick When Your Life Is Unpredictable with Monica Packer
Sticky Habits by Monica Packer
About Progress podcast | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon
Truce with Food: Consistency
Find Your Food Stage Quiz

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

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

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