"What's wrong with me?" You've probably asked yourself this after another night of eating when you weren't hungry, scrolling when you meant to go to bed, or saying yes to something you had no energy for. The late-night sugar, the people-pleasing, the crashing after weeks of overdoing everything. You're not lazy and you're not broken, but you are asking the wrong question.

The real question is what's happening in your body because so much of what we chalk up to bad habits or weak willpower is actually driven by biology. Your nervous system is keeping you in familiar patterns because familiar feels safe, even when it's not working. Your cortisol is spiking your hunger and blunting your fullness signals, and if you're in perimenopause, all of it hits harder because the hormonal buffer you used to have is disappearing.

In this episode of Truce with Food, I sit down with Amber Romaniuk, an expert in emotional eating, digestive health, and hormonal balance with over 12 years of clinical and lived experience, to discuss the biology behind the behaviors we call self-sabotage. We get into how chronic stress and cortisol reshape your hunger and cravings, why everything from sugar to people-pleasing hits differently in perimenopause, and what it actually looks like to stop fighting your body and start understanding what it's telling you.

7:16 – Why mindset work fails when you ignore your body's role in behavior

9:27 – Why your nervous system keeps you stuck in familiar patterns even when you want to change

15:22 – How cortisol changes your hunger, cravings, and capacity to handle stress

21:55 – Why everything from sugar to stress hits differently in perimenopause and menopause

28:34 – How low progesterone drives people-pleasing, overworking, and chasing the next accomplishment

34:19 – Getting off the addiction to intensity and what to do instead of chasing cheap dopamine

41:17 – Amber's cortisol test recommendations and what to actually do with the results

48:19 – What guilt does to your amygdala and why it keeps you from prioritizing yourself

Mentioned In Your Sugar Cravings Make Sense When You Understand Your Hormones with Amber Romaniuk

Amber Approved | TikTok | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn

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No Sugarcoating Podcast

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

For many of us, the body has long felt like an inconvenient, separate entity. Our intellect does the heavy lifting while our physical selves get relegated to the background. You know how to think your way through problems, build a career, figure things out. But when it comes to looking down and asking your body what it actually needs, there's a tight ball of feelings most of us would rather not touch.

My dear friend and developmental coach Sas Petherick used to live that way. Over the past year, through a process she describes as one of the most vulnerable experiences of her life, Sas has gone through a complete identity shift in how she relates to her body, her marriage, and herself. She's lost 52 pounds and built her most developed muscle mass as an adult. But what surprised her most wasn't the physical change. It was that figuring out her body stuff required more growing up than changing careers, getting sober, or losing a parent.

Sas returns to close out a year-long conversation about what it actually takes to change your relationship with your body. We get into why body image lives in the brain and not the mirror, how the padding she carried was protection against vulnerability she wasn't ready to feel, and what it means when your insides finally match your outsides. This is what it looks like to move from self-monitoring to true self-awareness and become more fully yourself.

7:21 – Why Sas ranks this body journey alongside sobriety, grief, and career change as one of the most identity-altering experiences of her life

13:00 – Difficulties of the journey and how much Sas’s relationship with her body has impacted her nearly 20-year-old relationship with her partner

19:08 – Highlights of the journey and what Sas noticed while watching a stranger at dinner that revealed just how far she's come

32:50 – Why maintenance (which everyone says is the hardest part of this journey) has actually become easier for Sas

46:23 – Why Sas’s relationship with food is more difficult than her relationship with exercise, and how she’s learning to work through it

50:11 – Why body dysmorphia might have a root emotion that doesn't get talked about enough

1:00:07 – Defining body image, embracing the body positivity movement, and why grief isn’t just about loss

1:02:37 – Sas's honest take on GLP-1s: what’s missing from the conversation, what she'd do if she were taking them, and what everyone should be asking before they decide

1:09:12 – How exploring her relationships with food, movement, and her body are no longer tied to the scale for Sas

How to Lose Weight and Love Yourself (because you can do both!)

“We’re the Brave Ones” – Discipline vs Devotion, Macros & Being Sporty

Emotions & Embodiment for Sustainable Weight Loss

How to Hold Your Weight Loss Goals Loosely (for better results)

How to Finally Stop White-Knuckling Your Weight-Loss Journey

Sas Petherick

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

The world is a lot right now. Globally, personally, often both. And when things are this intense, it can be easy to feel like your relationship with food is a first world problem, or that nothing matters, you're just going to eat. To dismiss the battle as something to deal with later, when things calm down.

But this is exactly when it matters most. We can't all collapse at the same time. If you're hungry, depleted, or consumed by overriding your cravings, you don't have the energy for your own life, let alone for showing up with the values you want to see ripple out into the world. And the conditioning that tells you investing in yourself takes from others, that you should be able to power through, that your needs are too much, is the same conditioning that keeps the cycle going.

In this episode of Truce with Food, I walk through three reasons your food battle matters more in hard times, not less. I cover why you need to be physically nourished to show up for what you care about, why the all-or-nothing thinking that says investing in yourself takes from others is the same conditioning we need to change, and why most weight and food struggles are really about a complicated relationship with power. Healing your relationship with food isn't a distraction from the work of this moment. It's part of it.

5:47 – Why overriding your hunger actually robs you of the rebelliousness and energy needed for your life

11:17 – Why learning to connect how you eat to how your body works is revolutionary

13:52 – The cultural conditioning that makes you believe investing in your own health must come at the expense of your family or work

17:23 – How this zero-sum cultural conditioning trap exists on every level

19:55 – How a client learned the emotional work of tending to her needs, instead of trying to fix issues for her daughter

21:13 – Your food battle as a doorway to examine where you’re still sacrificing yourself to unsustainable norms

24:01 – How that guilty feeling you get for overeating or not working out is often a symptom of internalized capitalist productivity

26:42 – Backlash as a sign of actual progress and how “slow and steady” keeps you in the game

31:41 – How stubborn weight issues are often linked to an unconscious resistance to dominative power, and the need to redefine power as collaborative

36:03 – The yin archetype’s association with food and body issues (including eating disorders)

Mentioned In Healing Your Relationship With Food Is a Rebellious Act

Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don’t with Erin Holt

What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term

Freedom from Cravings course

Truce with Food

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