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

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