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

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

Transcript

Ali Shapiro: Welcome to Truce With Food, the podcast where we stop fighting food and start addressing the deeper story of what you suspect is going on, but can't put your finger on. Because the focus on food is a waste of your precious time, resources and life. 

Resolving our food battle is serious business, when you understand the problem at its roots. It is of critical importance for your own personal health, okay? This doesn't get enough airplay, but women's health span or quality of life declines dramatically, in the 10 years post-menopause. 

I'm your host, Ali Shapiro, an integrated health expert with a 19-year proven track record of client success. I'm a 33-year and counting cancer survivor and creator of the research-based Truce With Food framework that came out of my own personal experience from recovering from cancer and yo-yo dieting. Because you name it, I had tried it. I also have a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. I'm affectionately called people's last best resort and a coach's coach, as people come to me, when they've tried everything and nothing's worked long term. This show is where we quiet the noise so we can go deep to get you the results you deserve. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute personal, individual or medical advice. Now onto the show. 

So especially if you're a woman, by the time you've reached 35 or older, you've probably had the personal experience of going to a medical provider, right? Most likely a doctor or someone in the traditional healthcare system and not be taken seriously enough to get the kind of care you need and frankly deserve. This could look like being told your sudden 30-pound weight gain and depression is just getting older. Or if you've struggled with something like endometriosis and you've been given a diagnosis and not much else, you know, and told kind of like, here's some Advil, right? I've had that happen to some clients. Or that's what happened to me with my infertility diagnosis, right? Or we've just been given medication like the birth control pill to mask symptoms, which I've had some clients, you know, they come to me in their 30s and this has been like, you know, been on birth control for 20 years to cover up symptoms. 

So these subpar choices and lack of choices is actually what happened to me and got me into doing this work. But I also want to say like this is, you know, before my infertility diagnosis, right? If you're new to the show, I had IBS, acne, depression, tried all the things and really figured out how healing my gut and my blood sugar were essentially essential to reversing a lot of that stuff. And that is what worked for me, that's not what works for everyone, but that's what worked for me. So the choices I was given were essentially just medications and I tried all of those, right? But they just didn't work for me. 

So I want to make it clear here, because we're in a very polarized time. I am not here to bash doctors or the medical system really, okay? Our medical system wasn't really designed for the modern chronic issues we have, nor was it designed with women in mind, okay? We know that from the research. So I want to emphasize that because there are really great, fantastic people in the medical system. And there's also not so great people in the system, like all professions. Okay. And the system has not evolved to keep up with what so many of us need now. Okay. And I'm also here to say, while that's also true, we can also do better. And this includes taking the pain of battling food seriously. Battling food causes incredible amounts of pain from the health challenges. Like, I mean, I've experienced so many health challenges, when I was battling food and didn't know how to use food actually as medicine. I only knew about calories and weight loss. 

But it also causes the pain of a lack of deep self-worth, or this sense that you're broken. And that affects every area of your life and how you show up in the world, okay? And yet, I've seen this food pain diminished and dismissed, including by some of the people claiming to be the biggest champions of women. And I think this is because this pain of battling food tends to fall into two camps. Did I say we're polarized? It's very much two extremes. 

The first camp is those still in diet culture, right? And the pain prescription here for battling food is about finding more, right? More willpower, more discipline, more ways to restrict yourself. These days, this is often rebranded as functional medicine, elimination diets, you know, all the things. And then on the other end, you have health at every size, intuitive eating and I'd also say in progressive woman camps, which I agree with on a lot of topics, I consider myself a progressive woman. Yet, there are many of those who portray food struggles as simply about weight, control and the patriarchy. Okay, and look, I get that. There can be elements of that. And, right, it's about holding the “and”, it's so much more interesting and rich than that, okay? And it's not really most deeply about control, but even more progressive women influencers often reduce it to that. 

I don't think they even know that this idea that women are pining for control is a huge stereotype about women. Oh, I get it, we're all swimming in the matrix to some degree. I'm not above it myself. And I'm here to point this part out. I'm sharing all this today, because I want to tell you why I created my relatively new food stage finder assessment. And I love that so many of you who listen to the pod have already taken it and found it so helpful and surprising. It's been really fun to email back and forth with those of you who do respond to the results. So, this Food Stage Finder is a free diagnostic tool that shows you where you are exactly, in your relationship with food and what's actually standing between you and the food freedom and results you want. Okay. I'll tell you more about it throughout this episode. But if you're already curious, the link is in the show notes or you can head to my brand new website, trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage. Okay. And that has hyphens in it. Find, hyphen, your, hyphen, food, hyphen, stage. Okay. 

So there are four distinct stages in how we relate to food. And again, the assessment is a free way to discover, you know, where you are, so that you can understand what's possible moving forward. And this deeper diagnosis is really why I went to grad school at the University of Pennsylvania. I did not study more nutrition, but I went to study how we really change, okay? And to understand we really change, you have to really understand the problem. While I didn't have this language at the time, because I was like 30, I was taking my own food battle pain and those of my clients seriously. Okay, so again, we've been having more and more new people to the pod, but just to catch you up. I started on this path 19 years ago and I really thought I was the only one with so many crazy food thoughts. 

And when I first started seeing clients, I was doing grocery store tours and teaching them about gut health and blood sugar. It was a different time. It was very fringe at the time. And after seeing clients after about the fourth session of working together, it was quite obvious that more information wasn't the problem anymore. Now they knew what to do on some level, but they weren't doing it. And it was wild to me that other people thought this way about food. And these were people like me, who were pretty successful, over-functioning, right? Not what you think of when you think of someone who doesn't have enough willpower or discipline. So I went back to grad school to understand what's really going on. Why was some of what I was doing working? Why was some of it not? I didn't really understand the, you know, to use a medical term, the underlying mechanisms of action. Why when people started, you know, working through their feelings, did their food get better? So here's what I started to understand in grad school that I went to now, oh my God, like 17 years ago. I started… it took me four years to finish, but here's what I started to understand in grad school. And now after 13 years of refining my Truce with Food model in real life, resolving our food battle is serious business. When you understand the problem at its roots. 

It is of critical importance for your own personal health. Okay. This doesn't get enough airplay, but women's health span or quality of life declines dramatically in the 10 years post menopause. Now, if you go on the gram or just read headlines, you know, a lot of it, oh, it's lifting heavy eating protein. Yeah. That's some of it. And I really think the underlying portion of that, why it's hard to do that, to make time for that, is a good portion of this is stress-related, which doesn't leave time to care for ourselves and will escalate our food battle, because we're not tending to our own needs. And I don't mean just nutrition needs, okay? And this is at a time of life, right, when we're over 40, we've got real wisdom. We've got, especially the more you have a menopause, the less you care what other people think, okay. And this is the time when we need women to be stepping into their wild wisdom years. So it matters for you personally in your health and being able to show up for the people and the things that you care about. 

But it also matters for our culture and collectively. We need truly wise women. If you look out here, it's obvious one of the biggest problems we have is we aren't being led by, as they call them, elders, right? Who are rooted in wisdom, right? Who can hold more than we can, when we're younger. Sociopathic men who are terrified of their own vulnerability trying to get their own insatiable and then finish line, right? Let me just make another billion, let me just, you know, go to war with another country, right? Like all of this stuff. They're taking us and the earth down with them, okay? That alone is a reason for midlife women to understand why they need them. We need all of us, not just alive, but thriving and leading right now, okay? We need a counterweight, a beautiful alternative amongst the collapse we're experiencing, so we can create something from these really changing times. 

So I'll be going more into how resolving our food battle is deeply political and not just like Republican/ Democrat in the States. It's, I'm talking about power, okay, not like political parties, although that is part of it. But I'm going to go more into that in a future episode about, you know, basically the world is on fire. Does this matter? Right. This comes up in my groups a lot. Like I'm struggling and this feels like a first world problem. We'll get into that in a future episode. But for now, I want to get back to why resolving our own food battle and its accompanying pain needs to be taken very seriously. As the saying goes, we all get older, but we don't all necessarily grow up, right? Again, see exhibit A of who's leading the world right now. And part of growing up is taking responsibility and not the over-responsibility that I or so many of my clients take that drive us to exhaustion, anxiety, and burnout, okay? 

I'm talking about the responsibility of learning about our own bodies. We have to accept that no one can know our body's patterns and quirks as well as we do. This doesn't mean you need a medical degree and you don't get professional help. But it means that you're a partner, you're a collaborator, that you know how to listen, pay attention, and then get support from there. And once you learn how to listen and pay attention, you start seeking out different types of support. But first, you have to know how to listen and pay attention. And this is not as easy as the package says. Can you imagine if our bodies came with a manual? So for example, lots of people who I work with struggle with intuitive eating and I did as well. Because intuition, including around eating, is rooted in patterns. Okay? I remember when like Esra was born and everyone's like, well, you know your kid. And I'm like, I don't know shit. Like I've been in a relationship with him for one or two days. Right? Now, over six and a half, almost six and a half years, I'm starting to know who he is. I mean, it changes, but there's certain things I know about him, but it took me time to figure that out, right? 

So if you've never had healthy eating patterns, it's really hard to intuit what you need food-wise, okay? Especially with a food supply system designed to hijack your natural biological hunger and satisfaction cues. So I think of learning to listen to your body as developing deep tree roots that ground you, so you aren't overwhelmed by all the noise out here. And it's just going to get louder and noisier. Okay. Because when that happens, you'll scroll Instagram and panic and think, I'm missing out on that to look younger or thinner or live longer. Right. Or when a doctor doesn't give you the care you need or want, you listen to a quieter knowing that says you need to find other alternatives and you take that seriously. And this maturity is hard, because we live developmentally in an adolescent culture, right? I think this is why so many of our leaders are at an adolescent mindset level, right? We're in a democracy, but we're often electing adolescent leaders. 

So in my opinion, the US, which exports much of its food, food culture and culture in general, is in the rebellious teenager stage of development, okay? This is healthy for teenagers, because they have older adults and hopefully mentors to check the limits they're experimenting with and pushing. That rebellion has its place, when it has guardrails, when it's part of a whole system, okay? And it's a phase. It's not something that you stay with forever. I mean, some people do, but it doesn't go very well. But the US as a rebellious teenager has no one to really check them. Okay, and this is probably shifting. I mean, I don't want… this isn't a podcast debate about America's decline or not, but it's definitely shifting, right? But for now, we're in an adolescent culture and we're exporting an adolescent culture and that culture is short-sighted, right? Hence why quick fixes are popular. It doesn't have their full prefrontal cortex developed. So black and white thinking is the default, all or nothing. It's hard to do a lot of shades of gray and nuance. 

And most of all, it's rewarding those who push their bodies beyond the limits, right? I mean, how many times is it like, are you sheepish to say if you weren't so busy and productive, right? It's like cool to be burnout, right? So it rewards those who push their bodies beyond its limits. And this culture that we're exporting and living in is exceeding the limits of our political body and the earth's body. Okay. How is that going for us? Okay. And why I love my clients and those of you who listen to this Truce with Food podcast is, because you kind of already have a giant side eye toward normal, right? I'm not telling you anything, quote unquote, radical, right? My clients like me tend to already be skeptical of normal mainstream. We already feel like outsiders for better or for worse. And we're the ones who are trying to show up differently, care for other people, care for animals. I have so many clients that care so deeply for animals. It's wonderful. Trying to relate to ourselves differently. They're breaking barriers, right? First ones to go to college and their family. First woman in this leadership role, right? All kinds of breaking barriers. And they're also trying to end dysfunctional generational patterns, okay? From alcoholism to general abuse, okay? And chances are, again, if you're listening to this podcast, you're on that path already, in some form, right? I have a lot of integrative health practitioners that listen to this, right? Trying to take the best of what we know and then integrate it with the best of a more holistic framework, for example. 

But you can be in an adolescent culture and yet be very skeptical and frustrated by it. But I want to do a little asterisk here on a total opt out, right? Like rebelling against the rebellion, the rebellious teenager of America, right? Because often when we're opting out in reaction to dysfunction, we can create that same dysfunction. Just sometimes what we think of as more noble dysfunction. Okay. So for example, diet culture, right? Diet culture is pretty toxic. And I'm defining diet culture as thin at all costs, okay? Because your worth is determined by your weight. That is the extreme. And then it comes on a continuum. And then the other extreme is kind of, you know, what we have body positivity, health at every size, right? And we needed that. Again, you need a compelling alternative. And I think there's elements of those that are essential. Your worth is not rooted in what you weigh. A weight does not always guarantee health, right? It's important to feel good in your body, right? It's not all or nothing. Sometimes your weight is correlated with your health. You don't have to always feel positive about your body. I'm all about body neutrality. I don't love anything all the time. That's a lot of pressure on your body. 

So what you can see is I'm advocating for this middle way. I joke like, moderation is the new radical. But I'm saying all that, because when we're reacting, it was like diaculture, anti-diaculture, right? So when we're rebelling to the rebellious nature, we're kind of just going to end up ping-ponging, okay? And then when you get to midlife, you're probably going to need something more, something more nuanced and down the middle, right? Especially if you start having some health challenges, which often come with aging and menopause if you aren't educated in it. And again, I do this for a living. And when I was going through menopause, I had no idea that's what was happening. And again, it was before the menopause information explosion. But now it's so overwhelming, because there's almost so much even though a lot of it isn't even rooted in anything real, but that’s aside. 

Meaning 35 and older, you're going to need a moderate approach. Okay. And we need to be able to grow up and out of that rebellious teenager stage, even that early 20's stage, where we're kind of searching for things right and trying on different things. And we realize the answer is usually it depends, right? When it comes to our bodies, like really accepting that requires maturing. And if you think of an area of your life where you have a lot of experience with, right? Maybe it's parenting, your work in the world, growing a business. The more expert you become at something, the more you know the answer is it usually depends, right? Or you know it's a lot more nuanced or complicated than most people realize. That's maturity. That's depth, right? Bodies are no different, okay? So now that I've hopefully made the big picture case for maturing, we need wise women who can show us what's possible for aging and leading well. That is not always easy, but it is totally worth it. Okay.

Now here's the loving tender truth, okay? This maturity is not done by learning more, listening to more podcasts. There is a big difference between learning about change and then actually embodying the change. Okay? So I created this assessment to know where you are essentially in the various stages of change to having a Truce with Food. And a Truce with Food is, I'm going to do a future episode on what does that even mean, but it's essentially you eat when you're hungry, you stop when you're full, you can enjoy your food, when it really matters to you, like the holidays, the birthdays. And there's no drama. There's no pressure for perfection. It's just like food is food, right? And in this process, you can see how food is about so much more than weight loss. So you understand the agency you had and how well you age. This is baked into my Truce with Food process. So what I mean for this, by example, especially those of us in midlife, we mostly all grew up in diet culture and we kind of only learned about food through a calorie lens, or how to really think about food in terms of weight loss. But I have clients who, you know, again, a lot of my clients tried intuitive eating, or they did health at every size, right? And again, all of that is an important part. And I'll get into what stage that is in a minute. But then they're realizing, okay, right, they get an ADHD diagnosis. 

And through the Truce with Food work, realize like, oh my God, if I eat the right foods for my body, my ADHD gets better. I'm not saying it solves ADHD. Or I have all this anxiety, but half of my anxiety is my blood sugar crashing, okay? And so as we start to mature and see how food can be this moderate middle, not that we ignore it and can eat whatever we want and not because our worth is tied to it, but we want to support ourselves better. And it's not just about weight loss. We find this radical middle, right? Where food, it can still be about weight loss, but it's also about sleep, energy, feeling better, feeling alive. It can be both, right? Holding that and, and honoring how your biology and body works, especially as you age, okay? So to get to that Truce with Food place, where there's no drama around food and part of that getting there, is seeing how food can support you, right? Not just using it around weight loss to get there. You have to go… and weight loss, usually we toggle between feeling very noble, because we're eating well and losing weight. And Oh my God, look at us, we're taking ourselves and then shame, I can't keep it up, you know, all that kind of stuff. So we're trying to get out of that, right? That's what a Truce with Food is about, getting out of that battle. 

So, to get there, you have to go through four developmental stages of maturity, or the more mainstream sexy marketing messages, personal growth and development, you know, up leveling. And at each stage, there's work to do to get to the next stage. And if you try and do things out of order, you end up thinking you're somehow broken or not getting it. Okay? But it's more often not you, it's your approach that needs to be questioned. I can't say this enough. You aren't broken. You aren't broken. Or one of my clients in the TRUCE FOR FOOD program, this made me tear up and it made her cry. She said, you know, for decades, I thought I was broken. Now I see I was just confused. And like, the power that that unleashes, in women, once they get that. 

So today I'm going to offer a broad overview of each stage and encourage you to take this assessment, because it will resonate more if you actually experience it. And I really want you to understand this isn't a typical quiz. If you know me, I don't really do fluff, right? It's like I laugh so hard about how the body speaks a metaphor. And as a kid, I had a lazy eye and like they overcorrected the problem. And so I don't have depth perception. They told my parents I could never be a pilot. I could never be a dentist, because of drilling. And I just laugh so hard that I don't have depth perception, because people are like, whoa, as they get more into this, like, this is really deep. And I'm like, it is? Like, I thought this was just life. But yes, it's deep. Okay. So this is more of a diagnostic tool to know where you are in resolving your food battle or said in more everyday terms, where do I start? What's the first step, right? You need to know where you are, what stage of change are you in before you know what work to do. 

And again, so many people are often surprised by their results. And I think, again, this is because not many people have taken this fighting food battle seriously. So most of my clients think they're at the end of the road with solutions, when really they're only in a stage two of four. And it's really important to know that we all go through all four stages and there is no judgment here. Okay. I've gone through all four. I've haven't yet to see anyone who struggled with food not go through all four, but there's also, cause it's a change process, right? So there is also no skipping steps. Okay. None of us are terminally unique that these don't apply to you. Okay. Each stage has its challenges and triumphs. And look, as I'm walking you through these stages, you might already be nodding along thinking, Oh, I know exactly why I am. And you might be right. But here's what I found after hundreds of people have taken this assessment. Most people are surprised by their results, not because they're behind or doing something wrong. But because when you've been in your own story for so long, it's really hard to see clearly. Okay. That's actually why I built this as a diagnostic and not just a description. When you take it, you'll also get a series of emails that go deeper into these stages. And that's what I was talking about at the beginning of the show, how I've been like emailing back and forth with people, as they like really respond and really engage with their learning, in the diagnostic and the email series that support it. So even if you think you know, go confirm it. You might learn something that shifts everything. 

So here's the four stages. Stage one, we are at the gathering evidence stage, okay? And we all start here. This is where you're still looking for the perfect plan out there, right? Keto for menopause, intermittent fasting, or the perfect meal plan, the perfect way to like cook all your food on Sunday. Here, we kind of think like a teenager, right? Someone out there has it all figured out. Except instead of a parent, the popular girl or sassy magazine, if you know, you know, we think it's an integrative doctor or popular nutritionist on Instagram. We want to be told what to do until we want to rebel. Here we don't have a lot of those tree roots yet to listen to our body, because we're so focused on trying to be good or cool, which these days in midlife is about being thinner and working hard, as hard as possible at not aging, that we don't really know what feels good. Here, we're seeking nutrition information that's mostly focused on weight loss as intellectually, we probably sense health and weight loss are more than calories in, calories out, yet we don't really feel like understanding it more deeply, right? And again, this makes sense in the cultural norms we're all swimming in. And when you've struggled with food in your body for years, like why would you have any self-trust or develop roots? I know I didn't. Right. Okay. 

The second stage is breakthrough ready. This is a stage that takes real work to get here. Okay. You've left diet culture mostly behind, or maybe you've stabilized an eating disorder and have usually several years of this under your belt, or you have a better idea of what nourishes your body. Maybe you're sober from alcohol, right? Like 40 to 50% of my clients are sober or like have severely limited their drinking and done the work to be able to do that. Or I have clients who've tried intuitive eating, tried body positivity, or have tried therapy. And they've made so much progress. They've done a lot of spiritual work. All this stuff is so important and so, so helpful. Or lately I've had clients who have come so far from eating disorders, but the GLP-1 noise is causing old weight stuff to creep back, or they still find themselves eating in these trances, right? They're not as bad as their eating disorder days and they know they would never go back there, but they still have this uncomfortable eating, right? They're not in eating disorder territory, yet deeply uncomfortable. And despite all of the work that it takes to get here, like the therapy, the journaling, the meditation, the self-compassion work, food still feels really hard. And it's confusing. Especially as you do so much here, you're working so hard and yet you still don't feel as good as you should from the emotional effort you're putting in.

Or like my clients, you've done so much work to develop healthy tree roots. There's some roots in there. And now in midlife, you have some health and weight concerns, where we have to build some more roots. And this is where we're in a different kind of all or nothing, right, then your diet or eating disorder days. You're not doing that, but you're thinking food will always be my thing. So you vacillate between feeling inferior, but then also superior. And after all the work I've done, I know it all, okay? And yet, because now that you have those roots, those tree roots that you developed in stage one, you suspect something's deeper going on, but you can't put your finger on it, okay? And you can hear that voice and honor it. So while you think you're at the end of the road intellectually, you're actually in the middle or muddle as I like to call it, as it can be really confusing and disorienting. And again, this is exactly what the Food Stage Finder is designed to show you, not just what stage you're in, but why you're there and what that means for your next move. It takes a few minutes and it's totally free. Again, the link is in the show notes or trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage. 

Okay, so then we have phase three, which is practicing freedom. Freedom! All right, here you get that 80% of the time, food isn't about food, okay? So you've leapt, you've developed more roots to understand that your eating is a reflection of your relationship to yourself. You can clearly identify your eating triggers, your unmet needs and protective patterns to get those needs met. Even if it's sometimes after the fact, depending on how big the trigger. Here, you can't unsee your battle with food as an internal battle of needs. Said another way, you're working on the real problem, which has nothing to do with food, not the symptom, which is your food. And here's where those roots you develop now out of stage one and stage two help root you, especially as you stop turning to food. And there's also lots of emotions, because you're feeling things instead of using food, right? Especially around having needs like asking for help or having to slow down. Or as one of my Truce with Food consistency clients just posted about asking for help with one of her triggers, I'd rather eat glass. 

I totally remember being in that place and sometimes I still am, right? I just don't eat anymore. So here you're really experiencing food freedom, feeling better in your body and you're walking that middle path of food being connected, not to just weight loss, or not wanting to gain weight, but really understanding how food and getting your needs met gives you more energy, stable moods, a sense of confidence. Even confidence when you go to your healthcare provider, which then gives you more energy, good moods, etc. The health things that I have seen at this stage are so fun and fascinating. I'm just thinking of one client who had, I forget what the official diagnosis was, but it was something about excessive sweating. And the more that she's done the Truce with Food work in this stage, in tandem with some other support, her sweating is going down. And again, Western medicine had no options for her, except I think there was some sort of injection they recommended she could take. Was it Botox? And she was like… in her thigh or something. I forget. She was like, no. So it's just a fact. This is where you're like, whoa, what's happening? But I believe people's real lived experience and the relief they're getting. So it's so fun. 

But you're definitely still in the thick of change here, okay? And because you realize true change and transformation takes longer than a “do this, don't do that”- formula or a 30 day fix. Said another way here, you're really settling into playing the long game, which is your whole life, your quality of life included, right? And this is a maturation process to accept that which cannot be changed, which is the rate of change. You know, genuine, transformational change takes time, especially with lifelong patterns like food. And you're also okay with that in this space, because of the results you're getting. It's fascinating. It's freeing. It's like, as one of my clients said, I want more of this. So it's not like you're white knuckling your way to the end. You're just kind of like, I'm settled in. This is getting better and better. I'm here for the ride. 

And that takes you to stage four, which is trusting in satisfaction. Okay. Not more discipline. That's where the Truce with Food tagline comes from. So here's where you can land after about a solid year of this developmental work. You understand your food issues are really your soul rattling your cage. Okay. The soul resides in the body, not the brain. And we get into some really rich conversations about making that practical. But you feel fascinated and in awe of how your food is truly always pointing to something deeper, a need or longing that wants to be satiated. And at this stage, you and your body feel a rootedness, a centeredness, rooted in trust and a confidence that comes from melting shame from a sense of brokenness around food that was never your shame to carry. You were never broken. You were doing the best you could with the level of awareness that our culture has. You cannot outrun culture, right? I thought I could being a rebel. Nope, nope, nope. And again, you also don't have to be totally engulfed in it either. 

We need people who can bridge us out of this adolescent stage. My clients are already on that journey and I'm just supporting them to continue that path. You feel more at ease here. You have more vitality. You can actually tolerate more foods than before, as you connect. When you stop white knuckling your emotions and needs, you start living by your values, your digestion, hormones and inflammation all improve. And as I said in my last episode, episode 319 on redefining success in midlife, you aren't just rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic of your stress. You're making choices from a fulfilling place. What feels good right now, not in some distant future, right? That includes how you eat. You're like, Oh, I can trust in not being hungry and not having cravings. That's actually like a good thing. If I satisfy my hunger, you're on a different boat altogether. One that isn't sinking or just trying to stay above water. 

Now, if we're at earlier stages, we may put this Hollywood ending on this. I'm an adolescent culture that, you know, this doesn't mean life is you skipping through the fields without problems, right? I wish I could offer that, but that's just not true. And you have the capacity to lead your life when life is life-ing. So food is a background instead of distraction. And what's super fun here is, this is when clients start eating well, to be able to have the resilience and creativity and to be able to show up the way that they want. So this is where food has gone, you know, it doesn't mean they don't, they aren't losing weight, or they don't want to lose weight anymore or whatever. But what is centered is I need to do this so I can sleep, because I'm taking this on tomorrow. Or I need to eat this way so that I have the capacity to parent the way that I want to parent. And that's when it becomes super fun and empowering. 

Practically, and again, you get empowered as you go. It's not like either or, all or nothing, but super fun at this stage. And then practically, this means you aren't so black and white, all or nothing, or seeing yourself as a perfectionist anymore. You realize many of the rigid labels you had for yourself aren't who you are. They were protection patterns that have been placed for decades. Okay. And what's fun here is practically you really feel like you can trust in yourself, your choices and momentum over perfection, because of the results you're getting from that focus. So this is where the pressure for perfect eating, perfect exercise, it just isn't there anymore. You're like, Oh, I get much more results focusing on momentum.

So that's a high-level overview of the four stages. Again, the assessment goes into so much more depth. And because battling food can warp our sense of ourselves so much, most people are surprised at the results. 

So, here's my invitation to listen to the invitation that your food battle is inviting you into. Take the assessment. Don't just listen to this and nod along, right? Actually go see where you are. Take a new action. Create momentum towards change, because knowing your stage changes what you do next and the emails you'll get after will take you way deeper than I can in a single episode. Okay. 

So again, that link is trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage. And there's a link in the show notes. 

I will see you next time on the Truce with Food podcast.