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