205. But The Worse I Feel About My Body, the More I Want to Eat. (Make it make sense!)
Release Date: 07/23/2025
Full But Not Finished...
Life After Diets
In this (for real for real) final episode of Life After Diets, host Stefanie Michele explains how recovery taught her how to understand the call for change. She shares why letting go of the familiar—even when it’s scary—is essential for growth, and how that insight is leading her to close this chapter and launch her new show, Full But Not Finished. The Life After Diets archive will remain here as a resource and you can now find Stefanie Michele on her new show: Full But Not Finished. Subscribe now to listen to the pilot episode! Youtube:
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Travel Triggers: Fear of Flying, Eating Around Others, and Transitioning Home
Life After Diets
Travel isn’t just about the logistics of getting from one place to another — it’s the nervous system spikes, the old body image stories that flare when you’re around people from your past, and the challenge of feeding yourself in a group. In this episode, I talk about a recent trip with college friends and the layers that came with it: Flight anxiety and how I work with my body in real time when panic hits mid-air The anticipatory dread before seeing old friends (and why it often feels worse than the reality) Navigating group meals without abandoning your own needs The strange...
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A Somatic Practice for Feeling Full But Not Finished; Q&A: Body Image Overstimulation while traveling
Life After Diets
In this episode of Life After Diets, host Stefanie Michele explores the strange tension of being “full but not finished.”Many people know the feeling: the body signals fullness, yet something inside still wants more. What does that reveal about the way we relate to food, our emotions, and ourselves? Rather than reducing the issue to hunger and fullness cues alone, this conversation looks at the cultural “shoulds” that hover over eating, the rebellion that comes from restriction, and the nervous system’s role in making food feel safe or unsafe. Stefanie unpacks why stopping at the...
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Was All-In Recovery As Easy As It Looked? with Stefanie Michele
Life After Diets
In this episode, Stefanie revisits the early days of her “all-in” recovery from binge eating and restriction. She shares raw excerpts from personal emails she wrote at the time, capturing the fear, doubt, and body image struggles of letting go of food rules on her 40th birthday. Stefanie reflects on why this attempt at recovery succeeded when so many earlier ones hadn’t, and what it really means to be ready for change. She also answers a listener question about the most sensible advice clients resist, explaining why nervous system safety and readiness matter more than logic when it comes...
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209. Navigating Loss of Identity (not like a Mean Girl); Q&A: How to cope with diet culture talk in the break room
Life After Diets
In this solo episode of Life After Diets, Stefanie Michele takes a deeply personal look at identity — how it forms, how it gets tangled up with food and body image, and how it shifts in the process of recovery. With her co-host Sarah leaving the podcast, Stefanie reflects on what it means to carry the podcast forward on her own and how that mirrors the ways we all renegotiate who we are when familiar roles change. She shares vulnerable stories from her teenage years, including moments when dieting and comparison became tied to her sense of belonging, and how those early identities carried...
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208. Life After Life After Diets
Life After Diets
A very special announcement to say that Life After Diets is closing a chapter to open some new ones. As Sarah makes room in her life for new endeavors (if you're in the UK area, be sure to subscribe to her mailing list for future in-person events), Stef will still be a voice in your ear under the Life After Diets name...for now. To stay in touch with Stef and Sarah, you can use the following links: Connect with Stefanie Michele, Binge Eating & Body Image Coach; Somatic Therapist Website – Instagram – Substack - Connect with Sarah Dosanjh, Author & Psychotherapist...
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207. I'm Not Bingeing But I'm Not Healed, Either
Life After Diets
Recovery from disordered eating doesn’t end the moment bingeing stops — that’s often where an entirely new phase begins. In this episode, Stef and Sarah unpack the often-overlooked “middle ground” of recovery — the stage where the chaos of bingeing has quieted, but true peace with food still feels out of reach. Stef describes this phase as a kind of emotional limbo: the urgency is gone, but now there’s loneliness, uncertainty, and a disorienting sense of now what?. Sarah shares how she moved from bingeing to occasional overeating, and how easy it was to slip into black-and-white...
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206. What If Food Freedom Looks Different for Different Brains? Guest Marcus Kain is back!
Life After Diets
Marcus returns as the only guest we’ve ever invited back to the podcast, and in this conversation, he opens up about his evolving understanding of neurodivergence — particularly through the lens of autism — and how that realization has reshaped his recovery from an eating disorder, his relationships, and his sense of self. With honesty, nuance, and hard-won clarity, Marcus shares what it’s been like to recognize autistic traits later in life, to untangle years of masking, and to reframe behaviors that once felt like personal failings as natural responses to a world not built for his...
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205. But The Worse I Feel About My Body, the More I Want to Eat. (Make it make sense!)
Life After Diets
You’d think feeling bad about your body would make you eat less. But often, it does the opposite — and no, you’re not broken for that. In this episode, we talk about the counterintuitive link between body image spirals and the urge to binge eat. We share our own experiences of how fear, shame, and catastrophizing can kick off the cycle — sometimes even before any actual restriction happens. From the mental scarcity that shows up just at the idea of cutting back, to the sensory panic of tight jeans, we explore what’s really going on beneath the surface. We also talk about: Why...
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204. But If I'm Not Obsessed With Food, What Will I Obsess About?
Life After Diets
What takes up space in your mind when food no longer does? In this live episode with the Life After Diets community, we explore what happens when food obsession fades. Do we land in a new identity with different thoughts and interests? Or do we find new mental fixations waiting in the wings? From identity shifts and social anxiety to ego, neurodivergence, and the need for stimulation, we dig into what it really means to reclaim your mental real estate. A candid, insightful conversation about what comes next in life after diets. 01:08 Personal Experiences...
info_outlineYou’d think feeling bad about your body would make you eat less. But often, it does the opposite — and no, you’re not broken for that.
In this episode, we talk about the counterintuitive link between body image spirals and the urge to binge eat. We share our own experiences of how fear, shame, and catastrophizing can kick off the cycle — sometimes even before any actual restriction happens. From the mental scarcity that shows up just at the idea of cutting back, to the sensory panic of tight jeans, we explore what’s really going on beneath the surface.
We also talk about:
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Why planning to restrict often triggers the binge
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The role of black-and-white thinking and emotional escape
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How body discomfort creates urgency to numb out
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Practical strategies for de-escalating the moment (including algorithm cleanup and body neutrality)
Plus, we share some food updates, lighter moments, and how this overlaps with topics from our other podcast, Feelings and Other Inconveniences.
If you’ve ever felt confused or ashamed about bingeing after a “bad body day,” this episode will help you understand why — and what to do about it.
Join our support community. This community is for you if you want a safe space to work through your daily struggles with food and body image. Community membership includes livestream episode recordings (online), monthly Zoom support meetings, a private Facebook group and member-only Q&A episodes. For more information go to: https://www.patreon.com/lifeafterdiets
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lifeafterdietspodcast
Email – hello@lifeafterdietspod.com
Connect with Stefanie Michele, Binge Eating Coach & Somatic Therapist IT
Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com
Instagram – www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele
Connect with Sarah Dosanjh, Author & Psychotherapist
Website – www.thebingeeatingtherapist.com
Instagram – www.instagram.com/the_binge_eating_therapist
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBingeEatingTherapist
Sarah’s book I Can’t Stop Eating is available on Amazon