What happens when a lifetime of dieting, food rules and food noise finally gives way to food freedom? And what happens when a serious health diagnosis challenges everything you thought you knew about healthy eating?

In this episode of The Food & Body Podcast, I'm joined by Suanne, our first listener guest, who shares her journey from decades of restrictive eating and struggles with food and body image to finding a more peaceful relationship with food in her 60s. We explore how diet culture shaped her beliefs, the role of food restriction in her relationship with food, and how a kidney cancer diagnosis completely changed her understanding of what it means to eat healthily. It's a conversation about challenging food rules, redefining health and discovering that food freedom looks different for everyone.

In this episode, we discuss:

• [00:35] How Suanne's relationship with food began changing in her teenage years
• [01:09] The cycle of restrictive eating, overeating and feeling out of control
• [07:52] Shame, secrecy and feeling alone in your struggles with food
• [12:30] Why dieting and weight loss never provided lasting food freedom
• [16:17] Challenging food rules and learning to give yourself permission to eat
• [24:36] How a kidney cancer diagnosis changed Suanne's relationship with food and health
• [28:37] Why foods labelled as "healthy" aren't necessarily right for everyone
• [34:25] Weight stigma, body size and why we can't judge someone's health by looking at them
• [36:20] Navigating nutrition trends and conflicting health advice
• [40:37] Finding food freedom through permission, flexibility and satisfying meals
• [48:37] Making peace with body image and enjoying life beyond food rules

Connect with us:

💜 Suanne: @suannebd

💜 Find out more about my therapy services: https://www.beccarobinsonchinntherapy.com

💜 Instagram: @becomingwithbecca_therapist / @thefoodandbody_podcast

If Suanne's story resonates with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. What has helped you change your relationship with food? And if your experience has been different, you're welcome to share that too.

Don't forget to like, subscribe and share this episode to help more people discover a different way of thinking about food, health and body image.

#FoodFreedom #FoodNoise #IntuitiveEating #BodyImage #DietCulture

Is people-pleasing connected to overeating?

Do you find it hard to say no to people... and food?

In this episode of The Food and Body Podcast, therapist Harriet Frew joins me to explore the deep links between people-pleasing, masking, self-abandonment, and emotional eating.

We discuss why trusting your own experience can be so difficult, how people-pleasing overlaps with neurodivergence/ADHD, and how out of control eating can become a "protected space" or escape from constantly putting others first. If you struggle to recognize your own needs, find yourself trapped in cycles of resentment and guilt or find indulging in overeating is your only "you time", this honest conversation offers actionable strategies for building boundaries and finding safety within yourself.

📌 Subscribe to the channel for more honest conversations on finding a peaceful relationship with food, body image, and self-acceptance.

⏱️ Timestamps & Chapters

00:00 — Introduction: People-pleasing & eating disorders

03:30 — Harriet’s story: Bulimia and the need to please

08:15 — Kindness vs. Self-Abandonment

13:40 — The overlap with ADHD, neurodivergence & masking

21:10 — Why binge eating becomes a protected escape

29:45 — The roots of people-pleasing: Culture, family & rejection

37:20 — Practical steps: Moving past "just say no"

45:00 — How relationships change when you set boundaries

🔗 Connect with Us

Connect with Harriet:

• Instagram @theeatingdisordertherapist_
• Podcast: The Eating Disorder Therapist on all major platforms (1.5 million downloads). https://harrietfrew.podbean.com/
• YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@theeatingdisordertherapist
• Website: theeatingdisordertherapist.co.uk

Connect with Becca:

• Instagram: becomingwithbecca_therapist
• Email: becca@beccarobinsonchinntherapy.com
• Website: wwww.beccarobinsonchinntherapy.com (coming soon)

Follow the podcast info:

• Instagram: @thefoodandbody_podcast

What can nervous system regulation teach us about body image, food freedom and recovery? And how can somatic therapy help us understand the nervous system, emotions and the patterns we develop around food and our bodies?

In this episode of Once Upon A Binge, I’m joined by Stefanie Michele. As a recovery coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Stef takes a somatic approach to recovery, body image and emotional wellbeing. After recovering from decades of out of control eating and restriction herself, Stef helps women understand and change their relationship with food and body image. Her work focuses on the intersection of nervous system regulation, eating behavior, body image, and self-trust.

We explore what somatic therapy actually means, how trauma and the nervous system can affect our relationship with our bodies, and how simple body-awareness practices can support healing without becoming another thing to “get right”.

Together, we explore:

• What a somatic approach to recovery actually means and how it differs from simply thinking differently
• How trauma and the nervous system can influence the way we experience our bodies, emotions and food
• Why behaviours can serve different purposes and what our nervous system may be communicating through them
• How different nervous-system states can feel in the body, including heightened energy, heaviness, numbness and calm
• Why changing a habitual nervous-system response isn't about simply trying to stop an urge or feeling
• Simple ways to work with nervous-system regulation in everyday life
• How parts work, curiosity and compassion can help us understand conflicting feelings and protective responses
• The role of movement and stillness in somatic work, including using movement for release, regulation and soothing
• Why our bodies can continue to associate certain situations with danger even when we consciously know we are safe
• The difference between changing the way you think about your body and changing the way your body actually feels
• How body image, safety and belonging can become connected to ideas about body shape and appearance
• Becca's experience of sitting with difficult old photographs rather than immediately avoiding or deleting them
• How seeing other people's bodies differently can help create new associations around confidence, self-expression and body acceptance
• Reconnecting with hunger and fullness cues without relying on numbers, scales or intensive tracking
• Learning to notice subtle physical signals such as hunger, fullness and discomfort with less judgement or fear
• Why recovery can involve a much broader process of reconnecting with yourself rather than simply trying to fix one particular symptom
• How body awareness can gradually become more instinctive and natural
• Why somatic therapy doesn't have to be spiritual, “woo-woo” or complicated
• What Steph means by “somatic drops” or “somatic sprinkles” — small moments of body awareness that can be incorporated into everyday life
• How to begin reconnecting with your body without turning it into another task, rule or form of perfectionism

This is a conversation about somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, body image, food freedom and recovery — and about learning to listen to your body with a little more curiosity, compassion and less judgement.

If you're interested in body image recovery, improving your relationship with food, understanding your nervous system or exploring a more compassionate relationship with your body, this episode is for you.

💜

Connect with the podcast:

- Instagram - @onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - podcast.onceuponabinge@gmail.com

Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – @bingefreeandbeautiful

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - bingefreeandbeautiful@gmail.com

Connect with Stef:

- Email – stefanie@iamstefaniemichele.com

- Instagram - @iamstefaniemichele

- Website - https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/

What if your relationship with food and your body isn’t a failure of willpower — but a response to trauma?

In this episode of Once Upon a Binge, I’m joined by psychotherapist, professor and body liberation activist Paula D Atkinson to explore a concept that may completely change the way you understand binge eating, dieting and body image: diet culture trauma.

We talk about how dieting and restriction can affect the brain and nervous system, why binge eating can continue even when you don’t think you’re restricting, and how shame and self-abandonment can keep the binge cycle going.

We also explore something I found particularly powerful: the idea that disordered eating can sometimes become a way of reclaiming ownership of your body after years of feeling that your body belongs to everyone else.

And if you’ve ever thought, “But I’m not restricting — I just binge,” this conversation may give you a very different, trauma-informed way of understanding what’s happening.

In this episode, we discuss:

• 1:46 - Paula’s personal journey from childhood body shame and anorexia to becoming a therapist and body liberation activist
• 10:22 - What “diet culture trauma” actually means
• 10:54 - The trauma of starvation and what the Minnesota Starvation Experiment can teach us about restriction
• 11:18 -Why your body may respond to dieting as though it is experiencing a threat to survival
• 12:18 - Why you can still be affected by restriction years after your first diet
• 12:51 - How diet culture can create body obsession and disordered eating
• 13:00 - Self-abandonment, body abandonment and internalising other people’s opinions about your body
• 17:16 - What diet culture trauma might look like if you binge but don’t believe you restrict
• 19:18 - Why food can be a way of regulating the nervous system
• 20:56 - Mental restriction, food rules and the “famine tomorrow” that can keep binge eating going
• 24:05 - How shame after a binge can actually reinforce the binge cycle
• 28:08 - Whether diet culture trauma affects people in thin/straight-sized bodies differently from people in larger bodies
• 25:12 - How diet culture can teach us to distrust our own bodies and instincts
• 28:41 - Why fatphobia harms people of all body sizes
• 32:15 - Acute, chronic, complex and vicarious trauma — and where diet culture trauma fits
• 34:07 - The connection between body comments, objectification, sexual trauma and disordered eating
• 35:06 - How food and eating behaviours can become a way of reclaiming ownership and control of your body
• 40:16 -What it means to stop abandoning your body and begin seeing your body as being on your side
• 42:29 - How curiosity can help you begin questioning the beliefs you’ve inherited about your body
• 44:03 - Paula’s experience appearing on Jubilee’s Surrounded with Jillian Michaels — and what really happened behind the scenes

If you’re struggling with binge eating, emotional eating, food guilt, body hatred or the feeling that you’re constantly fighting against your body, I hope this conversation gives you a different perspective.

You don’t have to learn how to control your body better. What if the work is learning how to stop fighting it?

💬 Have you ever thought about your relationship with food or your body through a trauma lens? Let me know in the comments — I’d love to hear your thoughts.

💜

Connect with the podcast:

- Instagram - @onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - podcast.onceuponabinge@gmail.com

Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – @bingefreeandbeautiful

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - bingefreeandbeautiful@gmail.com

Connect with Paula:

- Email – pauladatkinson@gmail.com

- Instagram - @pauladatkinson

- Website - https://www.pauladatkinson.com/

What happens when years of dieting stop working? When you’re done with hating your body?

In this episode of Once Upon a Binge, Becca is joined by Flo, a coach and diversity & inclusion consultant, who shares her powerful lived experience of disordered eating. From growing up watching her mum diet, to years of restriction, binge eating and believing that losing weight would finally make her confident and happy, Flo opens up about what really kept her stuck—and the unexpected moment that changed everything.

Together, they explore why dieting can become an eating disorder, why recovery only works when you're truly ready, and how curiosity, intuitive eating and reconnecting with your body can help you find freedom from food obsession. They also discuss body image, diet culture, "fitspiration", friendships, values, and why recovery is about so much more than food.

If you've ever wondered whether life without constant thoughts about food and your body is really possible, this conversation offers both honesty and hope.

Becca and Flo talk about:

00:00 Meet Flo 01:30 Coaching Meets Recovery 05:03 Why Diet Culture Is Everywhere 06:08 How Childhood Shapes Body Image 07:07 From Restriction to Binge Eating 17:24 The Promise of Thinness and Power 20:16 When Therapy Doesn't Help 21:14 The Hen Do That Changed Everything 26:21 Recovery Readiness & The Fitspiration Era 28:38 Why Recovery Isn't Black and White 29:14 The Anger That Fuelled Recovery 29:59 Learning to Trust Body Signals 32:58 Gentle Nutrition vs Food Freedom 35:01 Emotional Emptiness & Using Food to Cope 36:33 Curiosity Instead of Self-Judgement 39:15 Why Women Bond Through Body Talk 41:58 Values, Identity & Life Beyond Food 48:16 When Recovery Changes Friendships 50:23 Creating a Recovery-Friendly Social Media Feed 53:17 Final Takeaways & Hope for Recovery

If you found this episode helpful, please like, comment, subscribe and share as it helps my channel grow and reach more people who need to hear these conversations.

💜

Connect with the podcast:

- Instagram - @onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - podcast.onceuponabinge@gmail.com

Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – @bingefreeandbeautiful

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - bingefreeandbeautiful@gmail.com

Connect with Flo:

- Email – flo@diversityintheboardroom.co.uk

- Instagram - @diversityintheboardroom

- Website - https://www.diversityintheboardroom.co.uk/

Are GLP-1 weight loss injections really the breakthrough they're being made out to be? Or are we missing some of the bigger psychological and physical questions?

From Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro to "food noise", binge eating, body image and weight stigma, GLP-1 medications are dominating conversations online. But are they really the answer?

In this episode of Once Upon a Binge, host and psychotherapist Becca Robinson sits down with nutritional therapist Lisa Unger for a balanced, evidence-informed conversation about the benefits, risks and unanswered questions surrounding GLP-1 medications.

Rather than taking a "for or against" position, this episode explores the complexity behind these drugs—including why they can be genuinely life-changing for some people, why they may not work for others, and the potential psychological and physical risks anyone should know before making a decision.

They discuss:

01:39 Why GLP-1s are divisive

02:57 Clients and eating disorders

05:26 Poll results and why now

06:42 How GLP-1s work

10:27 Research gaps and dosing

12:17 Weight loss vs food noise

13:54 Shame and fatphobia pressure

17:00 When it fails and coping swaps

20:46 Therapy without food noise

24:42 Nutrition and muscle loss risks

27:21 Training Injuries Concerns

28:21 Low Energy and Nutrition

28:43 Staying on for Life

31:20 Shame and Medication Parallels

32:56 Eating Disorder Motivations

34:56 Access Risks and Black Market

39:30 Body Image Backlash

43:12 Food Culture and Portions

45:13 No Magic Wand Wrap Up

49:16 Final Thoughts and Feedback

💜

Connect with the podcast:

• Instagram - @onceuponabingepodcast
• Email - podcast.onceuponabinge@gmail.com

Connect with Becca:

• Instagram – @bingefreeandbeautiful
• LinkedIn - / beccarobinson
• Email - bingefreeandbeautiful@gmail.com

Connect with Lisa:

• Email – lisa@lisaunger.co.uk
• Instagram - @_lisaunger
• Website - https://lisaunger.co.uk/

Can you be healthy in a larger body? Does BMI really measure health? In this episode of the Once Upon a Binge Podcast, registered dietitian Alice joins Becca to discuss Health at Every Size (HAES), intuitive eating, body image, menopause, eating disorder recovery, weight stigma, and why weight isn't the whole picture when it comes to health.

Many of us have been taught that losing weight automatically means becoming healthier. But is that actually true? Together, Becca and Alice explore what the research says about BMI, Health at Every Size, intuitive eating, and how to support your physical and mental health without becoming trapped in the cycle of dieting, restriction and shame.

They also talk about the emotional impact of body changes caused by menopause, cancer treatment, illness, ageing, and eating disorder recovery, and why learning to trust your body again can be one of the hardest—and most important—parts of healing.

In this episode:

00:00 – Introduction to Alice and her work as a registered dietitian

02:00 – What Health at Every Size (HAES) really means

05:20 – Supporting people through body changes after cancer treatment

10:00 – Why weight gain after illness can be so distressing

15:00 – The similarities between cancer recovery, menopause and eating disorder recovery

19:00 – Why women's bodies naturally change throughout life

24:30 – Challenging unrealistic expectations around body image

28:00 – Using science and CBT-informed strategies to build body acceptance

34:00 – The role of a dietitian alongside therapy

39:00 – Common fears about weight gain, health and identity

43:30 – Debunking myths about BMI and health

51:00 – Why BMI is a poor measure of individual health

56:30 – The dangers of weight cycling and repeated dieting

59:30 – What intuitive eating actually is (and what it isn't)

1:05:00 – Rebuilding trust in your body after illness or an eating disorder

1:10:00 – How to advocate for yourself if your healthcare provider focuses only on weight

1:17:00 – Weight stigma, anti-fat bias and navigating healthcare

1:24:00 – Gentle nutrition after eating disorder recovery

1:32:00 – How to improve your health without returning to restrictive dieting

1:38:00 – Why food is about connection, culture and joy—not just nutrition

1:44:00 – Final thoughts on healing your relationship with food and your body

If you've ever struggled with body image, binge eating, emotional eating, dieting, weight gain, menopause, or eating disorder recovery, this episode will help you understand your body with more compassion and confidence.

If you enjoyed this conversation, please like the video, subscribe to the channel, and leave a comment below – this helps the channel grow and help others through our conversations. We'd love to hear your biggest takeaway or any questions you'd like us to answer in a future episode.

#HealthAtEverySize #IntuitiveEating #EatingDisorderRecovery #BodyImage #Menopause #FoodFreedom

💜

Connect with the podcast:

- Instagram - @onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - podcast.onceuponabinge@gmail.com

Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – @bingefreeandbeautiful

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - bingefreeandbeautiful@gmail.com

Connect with Alice:

- Instagram – @hamptonnutrition

- Website - https://hamptonnutrition.co.uk/

- Email - alice@hamptonnutrition.co.uk

In this powerful episode of the Once Upon a Binge Podcast, therapist Becca sits down with Claire Ashton for an honest conversation about binge eating recovery, body image healing, and breaking free from diet culture.

Claire Ashton is a Body Confidence Coach and intuitive eating counsellor, nurse, and personal trainer who helps women over 35 stop waiting for weight loss to feel confident and start living fully now.

After years of working in the health and fitness industry, Claire realised that the problem was never a lack of discipline—it was the belief that confidence had to be earned through changing your body. Through her coaching she helps women break free from dieting, food guilt, and body battles so they can feel confident without conditions.

As a mum to three daughters, Claire is passionate about modelling a healthier relationship with food, movement, and body image for the next generation, while helping women reclaim their own confidence in the process.

In this episode, Claire shares her deeply personal journey through disordered eating, bulimia, compulsive exercise, and years of yo-yo dieting — including how working in the fitness industry reinforced harmful beliefs about worth and body image. She also opens up about the life-changing accident that left her unable to walk and how relearning to walk completely transformed her relationship with food, movement, control, and self-worth.

Together, Becca and Claire explore:

✨ Treatment for bulimia and what was missing

✨ The binge-restrict cycle and why dieting feels so addictive ✨ Bulimia recovery and the emotional side of purging ✨ Exercise addiction and toxic fitness culture ✨ The impact of the “heroin chic” era and modern GLP-1 diet trends ✨ Intuitive eating and rebuilding trust with your body

✨ How learning to walk again helped Claire see her body in a different light

✨ Learning to let go of food rules and finding meaning in suffering

✨ Body image struggles in motherhood and raising daughters in diet culture ✨ Social media, comparison, filters, and teenage body confidence ✨ Why your worth has nothing to do with your weight or appearance ✨ How to stop waiting for weight loss to start living your life

This episode is a must-watch for anyone struggling with binge eating, emotional eating, body shame, chronic dieting, or feeling trapped in the cycle of trying to “fix” their body.

If this episode helped you, please like, comment or follow to stay up to date with the latest episodes releases. This also helps spread the message of body acceptance, intuitive eating, and eating disorder recovery to others who might need it.

💜 Connect with the podcast:

- Instagram - www.instagram.com/onceuponabingepodcast

- Email - podcast.onceuponabinge@gmail.com

💜 Connect with Becca:

- Instagram – www.instagram.com/bingefreeandbeautiful

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccarobinson/

- Email - bingefreeandbeautiful@gmail.com

💜 Connect with Claire:

- Instagram – www.instagram.com/claireashton_

- Website - https://claireashton.co.uk