63: The Real Reason You Struggle With Food (And It’s Not Willpower)

 In this episode, Jody breaks down why food feels so overwhelming for so many women — and why it has nothing to do with willpower. She explains how our brains are wired for scarcity, how the modern world is built on abundance, and how dieting creates a false famine that triggers survival instincts. Jody takes listeners through the biological, environmental, and psychological layers that make weight loss feel harder than it should — and then shows the path forward. Instead of restriction, she teaches the skills that calm appetite, reduce food noise, deactivate scarcity, and finally make consistency sustainable. This episode gives women the relief of understanding they’re not broken — they were just taught to diet in ways that go against human biology. 

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Transcript

Welcome to How to Eat Cake on a Diet, a podcast for women who are tired of starting over, fed up with food rules, and ready to lose weight in a way that actually fits real life.

I’m Jody, and I’ve been there. I’ve lost over 165 pounds, tried the extremes, and learned firsthand that success doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from consistency.

This podcast isn’t about cutting out everything you love. It’s not about chasing the next diet.

It’s about learning how to eat in a way that fits your goals and your life, without guilt, without shame, and without starting over every Monday. <break time="2s" /> 

I want to start today with a little story, and I’m only telling you this because I know at least a couple of you listening is going to think, “Oh my God, I do that too.”

So, for weeks, I kept seeing those Little Debbie Christmas Tree cakes all over social media.

Every grocery store trip, I’d walk past them and think:

There they are again.

Those look good.

Those are special.

And then my brain does what it’s done my entire life. It starts negotiating with itself.

I’ll stand there having this whole mental debate over a 200-calorie snack cake.

“Should I get it?

No, I shouldn’t.

But maybe…

No, I don’t want to spend calories on that…

But I kind of do…”

It’s patterns like this that tell me something about myself that I’ve had to work on for years.

I am extremely sensitive to scarcity.

For reasons rooted in my childhood and my teens, things many of us share and don’t talk about, I have a brain that reacts intensely when something feels limited, special, or only around for a short time.

Even when I’m not hungry.

Even when I don’t actually want the thing.

It’s like it flips this urgency switch.

So one day, after weeks of this ridiculous back-and-forth, I finally said:

“Okay, enough. We’re doing exposure.”

You know how they treat fear of spiders by slowly exposing you to spiders until your brain realizes nothing bad happens?

That’s exposure therapy.

So I grabbed a box of these Christmas Tree cakes, put it in my cart, checked out, walked to my car, and I ate one sitting right there in the parking lot.

And as I’m eating it, I’m literally talking myself down:

“Jody… you can buy these any time.

You could buy 50 boxes if you wanted.

They are not rare.

They are not special.

You are not being restricted.

You’re safe.

Relax.”

And here’s the funny part.

It wasn’t even about the snack cake.

It was about calming the scarcity alarm in my brain, that sense of urgency, that fixation, that “I need it NOW before it’s gone.”

And if you’ve dieted for years, or grown up around restriction, or spent decades with food feeling emotional or unpredictable, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

That was the moment where I caught myself in the middle of a pattern that women have been conditioned into their whole lives.

A pattern that has nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with how our brains interpret food, safety, and scarcity.

And that’s what today’s episode is about. <break time="2s" /> 

Here’s the part that finally clicked for me, not just in that parking lot with a Christmas Tree cake, but in so many moments throughout my life. That urgency I felt, that fixation, that “I need it right now before it’s gone”… none of that was actually about Little Debbie. That was old wiring.

Because the truth is, I didn’t invent this sensitivity. You didn’t either. None of us did. What we’re feeling, this scarcity alarm, this urgency, this obsessive food noise, is something our bodies have been practicing for thousands and thousands of years.

So let me zoom out for a second, because once you understand the world your brain was built for, everything about why losing weight feels so hard suddenly makes sense. <break time="2s" /> 

For 99% of human history, food scarcity wasn’t a psychological trigger. It was a daily reality. People weren’t avoiding carbs. They weren’t debating sugar. They weren’t journaling about cravings. They were trying not to starve.

For almost all of human existence, every calorie had to be earned. Hunter-gatherers lived in constant cycles of plenty during harvest and good hunting seasons, followed by scarcity during winter, droughts, failed crops, or migration. Some days you ate well. Some days you ate almost nothing. And some days you walked miles, burned thousands of calories, and still ended the day hungry.

There was no guarantee of food tomorrow. No pantries. No refrigerators. No Costco. No grabbing a snack. Food was always a question mark. And this is the world our bodies were shaped in.

This survival pattern created the exact biological wiring we still carry today. We store body fat easily because fat was insurance. We slow metabolism when calories drop because conservation meant survival. Hunger becomes primal and loud when food feels scarce because urgency kept us alive. And the brain becomes hyper-focused on food because fixation meant action. Every part of your body was designed with one purpose in mind: to keep you alive in a world without enough food.

But then, almost overnight on an evolutionary timeline, everything changed.

Turning Point #1: The Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and 1800s.

This was the first moment humans began producing food at scale. Suddenly we had milling, canning, refrigeration, railroads, and mechanized farming. Crops increased. Spoilage decreased. Sugar and flour became cheap for the first time. People still weren’t overeating, but food became more predictable. It was the beginning of stability, not abundance, but the idea that food might actually be there tomorrow. <break time="2s" /> 

Turning Point #2: The Post–World War II Food Boom of the 1950s.

This is where true, consistent abundance began, especially in the United States. After WWII, industrial agriculture exploded. Home refrigeration became standard. Packaged and processed foods filled stores. Frozen dinners appeared. Shelf-stable snacks became common. Calories became cheap, convenient, and available everywhere. And for the first time in human history, obesity rates started rising. The world was changing faster than human biology could adapt.

Turning Point #3: The Ultra-Processed Food Era of the 1970s through the early 2000s.

This era changed everything. High-fructose corn syrup entered the food supply. Fast food appeared on every corner. Drive-thrus became normal. Microwaves entered homes. Vending machines popped up everywhere. Packages grew bigger. Food companies engineered combinations of sugar, fat, and salt that lit up the brain’s reward center like a Christmas tree.

Portion sizes skyrocketed. What used to be large became medium. What used to be medium became small. Restaurant meals doubled and sometimes tripled. By the 1990s and 2000s, we reached levels of abundance no human body was designed to handle: food delivery to your home, endless snack aisles, between 3,500 and 3,800 calories produced per person per day, and eating framed as entertainment rather than survival. Constant access. Constant stimulation. Constant choice.

You might not be eating 3,800 calories a day, but it only takes a small, steady surplus in today’s food environment to gain weight.

And here’s the core point. Your biology still thinks it’s 10,000 BC, but your environment behaves like a 24-hour buffet. Your hunger, your cravings, your overeating, none of these are character problems. They are biological responses to an environment you were never built to navigate without skills. And once you understand that, everything you’ve struggled with finally starts to make sense. <break time="2s" /> 

Now, here’s where things get really frustrating for women trying to lose weight in this modern world.

Your body is still operating with prehistoric wiring, but the internet is yelling at you from every direction, and none of it agrees.

On one side, you get the old-school messages telling you to just make better choices, stop eating sugar, eat clean, try harder, control yourself. As if you haven’t been trying. As if you haven’t spent years caring, fighting, restarting, and holding yourself accountable harder than anyone realizes.

Then you get the new trend of explanations, the ones that make it sound like weight loss is impossible unless you completely rebuild your biology. They tell you it’s your hormones, menopause, inflammation, mitochondria, cortisol, toxins, liver, gut. And listen, these things influence appetite and eating patterns. They matter. But here’s the truth almost no one says clearly. They do not override the fact that you live in an environment your biology was never built for.

Every day, you’re navigating constant food cues, hyper-palatable foods engineered for reward, restaurant portions twice the calories you need, snacks in every office, candy bowls on every counter, food delivery at your fingertips, emotional eating habits built over decades, and a brain wired for survival, not self-control.

Hormones didn’t create that.

Menopause didn’t create that.

Toxins didn’t create that.

The environment created that.

And yet, social media makes you feel like you’re failing because you aren’t fixing your hormones or taking the right supplement or eliminating the right ingredient. It’s maddening. Because the real issue is not that your thyroid is broken. The issue is that you’re a human being living in a world with more calories, more convenience, more stimulation, and more choice than any nervous system was designed to handle.

And this matters for one huge reason. If you believe your struggle is caused by one magical thing, one hormone, one ingredient, one toxin, you’ll keep searching for magical solutions that don’t exist. Meanwhile, the real issue, the mismatch between scarcity wiring and abundance reality, goes unaddressed.

When you finally see the mismatch, everything shifts. You stop blaming yourself. You stop thinking you lack willpower. You stop believing you’re broken. You stop falling for every new trend. You stop spinning in shame. And you start saying, “Oh. My body is doing exactly what it was built to do. It’s my environment that changed, not my biology.”

This is the moment most women feel relief for the first time. Because it pulls the shame right out of the experience.

You’re not weak.

You’re not dramatic.

You’re not struggling because you’re bad at dieting.

You’re struggling because you’re a human being trying to navigate abundance with a brain wired for scarcity, and no one ever taught you how.

And that leads into the next part.

So now that we’ve talked about biological scarcity, the wiring you were born with, and environmental abundance, the world you’re trying to live in, it’s time to talk about the third layer in this whole mess: self-imposed scarcity. In other words, dieting.

And I want you to hear this part carefully, because this is where most women finally understand why they feel so out of control around food. Even though we live in a world overflowing with food, your brain can still believe food is scarce. Not because it actually is, but because of the way you’ve been taught to interact with it. Dieting does this every single time.

Your brain doesn’t speak the language of carbs are bad, or no sugar, or no eating after six, or be good, or stick to the rules, or start again on Monday. Your brain only speaks one language: is food available or not?

And when you restrict in any form, your ancient survival wiring hears one message: danger, famine, scarcity. Store energy. Slow down. Make hunger louder. Make cravings stronger. Focus on food so she doesn’t starve.

This is why dieting makes food feel so powerful instead of less powerful. This is why you can go all day being good and then lose control at night. This is why the moment you say, “I’m not eating sugar,” every cell in your body starts screaming for sugar. This is why trying to cut out bread makes bread the only thing you can think about. This is why you can go weeks in a calorie deficit and then the urge to binge hits like a tidal wave out of nowhere.

It’s not addiction.

It’s not a lack of discipline.

It’s not sabotage.

It’s not weakness.

It’s biology reacting to perceived famine.

Restricting food, even mentally, triggers the same survival alarm as actual starvation. Your body cannot tell the difference between a real famine and “my diet says I can’t have that.” And that is exactly how self-imposed scarcity begins.

You’re surrounded by abundance, but your brain is receiving signals that food is forbidden, limited, special, off-limits, or something you have to tightly control. So it responds as if it’s protecting you.

It slows your metabolism.

It increases your hunger.

It ramps up cravings.

It heightens food thoughts.

It makes certain foods feel urgent.

It stores more fat.

And it pushes you toward overeating when food becomes available.

Dieting doesn’t override scarcity. Dieting activates scarcity. And the longer you diet, especially if you’ve spent 10, 20, 30, 40 years on and off diets, the louder those scarcity alarms become.

This is why so many women say things like, “I eat one cookie and immediately want more.” “I feel panicky around carbs.” “I can’t trust myself with certain foods.” “I lose weight but I can’t keep it off.” “I rebound every time.”

Of course you do. You’re not failing the diet. Your biology is rejecting the famine.

And here’s the kicker.

Self-imposed scarcity plus biological scarcity plus environmental abundance equals overeating.

It’s the perfect storm. It is the reason dieting leads to the exact behaviors you’re trying so hard to avoid: overeating, binging, nighttime snacking, emotional eating, rebound weight gain, and food obsession. Not because you lack willpower, but because restriction in any form tells your body, “Food is scarce. Get as much as you can while you can.”

And this is the moment where everything finally starts to make sense for women. You’re not broken. You’re not weak. You’re not addicted to sugar. You’re not failing over and over again. You are doing exactly what your biology was built to do. You are surviving scarcity the moment your brain perceives it.

But here’s the good news, and this is where the whole episode turns. If dieting creates scarcity, then there is an entirely different way to lose weight that doesn’t trigger the survival alarms at all. <break time="2s" /> 

By now, you can see the dilemma clearly. Your biology is wired for scarcity. Your environment is built on abundance. And dieting creates a kind of fake scarcity that your brain interprets as danger. So the question becomes: what actually works? How do you lose weight when your entire system is set up to resist it?

Here’s the answer, and it’s not flashy, but it’s incredibly powerful. You learn how to live in abundance without triggering your scarcity wiring. Not through restriction. Not through rules. Not through perfection. Not by cutting out entire food groups or starting over every Monday. You learn the skills that allow your brain to feel safe, even while you’re eating in a calorie deficit.

Because here’s the part no diet ever teaches you. Your body only allows weight loss to happen when it believes you are safe. Safety is what turns off the alarm. Safety quiets the cravings. Safety lowers the urgency. Safety neutralizes the food obsession. Safety is what lets you stay consistent long enough to see results. Safety, not restriction, is the key.

So what does that actually look like in a modern environment?

Consistent eating. Your body thrives on predictability. When you eat at roughly the same times each day, your nervous system relaxes. It stops scanning for danger. It stops obsessing about food. You stop feeling the “I might never get this again” urgency. Consistency creates safety.

Protein to calm appetite. Protein isn’t magic. It just works with your biology. It stabilizes hunger, reduces cravings, lowers impulsive eating, and keeps your brain fed. Protein sends the message “We’re not starving. You’re safe.”

Fiber and volume foods. Your stomach has stretch receptors that send fullness signals to the brain. When those receptors activate, hunger naturally turns down. Fiber plus volume creates fullness without triggering scarcity.

Pre-tracking. Pre-tracking is not restriction. It’s reassurance. It tells your brain, “Here’s what’s happening today. Food is coming. You don’t need to panic.” Most women underestimate how much peace they get simply from reducing uncertainty.

Neutrality. Removing labels like good and bad from food is often the most transformative shift of all. The moment a food becomes forbidden, your brain becomes obsessed with it. Neutrality removes scarcity. Scarcity fuels urgency and overeating, while neutrality has the opposite effect. That’s why moments of exposure can be so powerful. They show the brain that the food is normal, available, and not dangerous.

Permission. Permission doesn’t mean overeating. Permission means your brain no longer believes food will be taken away. Permission turns off the famine switch. And when that switch is off, everything gets easier. Moderate portions. Stopping when satisfied. Eating less overall. Controlling cravings. Staying consistent. Losing weight without obsession. Women fear that permission will make them lose control, but it’s actually restriction that creates the loss of control. Permission quiets the storm.

And finally, an environment that supports your goals. You don’t need more willpower. You need a world around you that aligns with your intentions. High-protein foods available. Fiber and volume already built into meals. Ingredients prepped. Fewer trigger foods staring at you. Predictable eating times. A clear meal structure. You don’t need perfection. You need strategy.

Here’s the real shift. Stop fighting your biology. Start working with it. You cannot discipline your way out of a survival response. You can only create conditions that deactivate it.

Weight loss becomes possible when your brain feels safe, your appetite is regulated, your meals have structure, your environment supports you, nothing feels scarce, food becomes predictable, restriction is removed, and consistency becomes doable.

This is why, once women stop dieting and start building real skills, their entire relationship with food changes. They start saying, “I can finally stop thinking about food. I don’t binge at night anymore. I don’t feel out of control around carbs. I’m eating less without trying. My weight is coming down and I’m not miserable.” Because when you stop triggering scarcity, your body finally lets you lose weight.

And that brings us into the final section, the big emotional exhale. <break time="2s" /> 

So if you’re still with me, I want to leave you with this.

You are not fighting yourself.

You are not fighting your willpower.

You are not fighting your motivation.

You’ve been fighting biology that is thousands of years old in a world that changed in just a few decades. And you’ve been handed tools, extreme diets, food rules, and good and bad lists, that only made that biology panic more.

Now you know better.

You know that your urges, your cravings, your overeating, your “I’ll start again Monday” cycle, all of that isn’t proof that you are broken. They are signs that your body has been trying to protect you from scarcity in an environment that never turns off.

The work from here isn’t to tighten more rules. It’s to build skills that create safety.

Safety in how you feed yourself.

Safety in your routines.

Safety in your environment.

Safety in how you talk to yourself.

Because when your brain feels safe, your body finally lets go.

When your brain feels safe, you can eat less without feeling deprived.

When your brain feels safe, cravings quiet down.

When your brain feels safe, food stops taking up all your mental space.

When your brain feels safe, weight loss becomes something you can actually sustain.

So this week, I want you to practice one thing. Every time you feel that urgency around food, every time you hear the whisper of “I need it now before it’s gone,” or you feel that familiar panic bubbling up, just pause and name it. Say to yourself, “Oh, that’s my scarcity wiring.”

That simple label creates distance between you and the reaction. It pulls the shame out of it. It interrupts the urgency. It reminds your brain, “I’m safe. Food isn’t going anywhere.”

If you want help learning how to actually build these skills in a way that feels doable and realistic, this is exactly what I teach inside my world. Real structure. Real routines. Real-life eating. Protein, fiber, pre-tracking, permission, neutrality, and consistency. Not perfection. Not guilt. Not starting over.

Thank you for listening today, for being open, and for doing this deeper work on yourself. You deserve a relationship with food that feels peaceful and sane. You deserve a body that feels like home. You deserve to walk through your life without the constant noise of fear, urgency, or shame controlling your decisions.

And I want you to hold one last thing close.

You don’t need to earn your worth by shrinking your body.

You don’t need to compensate for yesterday.

You don’t need a clean slate every Monday.

You just need to keep showing up. Not perfectly. Not intensely. Just consistently. Weight loss works when you work with the body you have, not against it. Weight loss works when you remove the scarcity and create safety. Weight loss works when you stop fighting your biology and start partnering with it.

I’m Jody, and this is How to Eat Cake on a Diet. I’ll see you in the next episode.