Life After Diets – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome back to another episode, everyone! In today's chat, we are explaining Stef's concept of "anchor meals", their psychological and physiological impacts, and how they fit into our daily routines. We start off with entertaining personal stories—from recording mishaps to culinary adventures in Spain—that segue into a discussion on why knowing when your next meal is coming is important for our mental and physical well-being.

We explore how sticking to regular meal times can sync up with our body’s internal hunger cues, providing a sense of security and balance—especially for those recovering from disordered eating patterns. Stef shares insights from her binge recovery course, highlighting the importance of scheduled anchor meals, while Sarah adds personal anecdotes about how meal planning differs for someone living alone versus a family setting.

Whether you're someone who likes to plan every bite or prefer a more flexible approach, this episode covers how anchor meals can be adapted to fit various lifestyles—including tips and experiments to see what works best for you. 

Don't miss this one if you're curious about reshaping your eating patterns, want to understand the principles behind "anchor meals" better, or are just looking for relatable, actionable advice on creating a more balanced relationship with food.

Learn more about Stef's 3-month Binge Recovery Program (from anywhere in the world!) beginning the 9th of September, 2024. Use discount code: LADLISTENS for $100 off!

Join our growing 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, ED Recovery Coach, Somatic Therapist IT

Work with Stefanie - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

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

If you find this episode helpful, you can subscribe to the Life After Diets podcast, leave us a review, and share your thoughts with us on Instagram and YouTube (@lifeafterdietspodcast). Your feedback helps us create content that matters to you.

In this episode, we're talking about the challenging and often unspoken topic of hopelessness and despair in relation to recovery from eating disorders. We offer personal experiences of the complex emotions intertwined with despair, such as fear, sadness, and anger. We also discuss what mindfulness, connection, and individuality might have to do with navigating despair. We discuss the power of belief, personal barriers, and the potential for unexpected breakthroughs.   00:00 Introduction to Hopelessness and Despair 00:25 Personal Experiences with Despair 01:13 Understanding Despair: Emotions and Stories 02:43 Different Perspectives on Despair 05:59 Despair in Eating Disorder Recovery 14:27 Finding Hope and Personal Pathways 20:40 The Role of Belief and Mindfulness 35:09 Conclusion and Final Thoughts  

Learn more about Stef's 3-month Binge Recovery Program (from anywhere in the world!) beginning the 9th of September, 2024. Use discount code: LADLISTENS for $100 off!

Join our growing 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, ED Recovery Coach, Somatic Therapist IT

Work with Stefanie - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

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

If you find this episode helpful, you can subscribe to the Life After Diets podcast, leave us a review, and share your thoughts with us on Instagram and YouTube (@lifeafterdietspodcast). Your feedback helps us create content that matters to you.

How do other people make decisions about what to eat? Have you ever been interested in understanding what makes a person choose the breakfast or lunch or snack that they choose? Sarah and Stef offer their personal decision making processes of the meals they ate the day of recording this podcast. From there, the conversation branches off into topics like practical hunger, interoception (a principle of Intuitive Eating), cravings, habits, and preferences.

We also ask ourselves the question: what do you do when nothing sounds good?

Finally, we talk about what strategies you might use to make decisions about food if you're still in the middle of disordered thoughts and behaviors around food.

Join our growing 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, Food & Body Image Coach, Somatic Therapist IT

Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Instagram – www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Work with Stefanie - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

Stef’s body image workshop – https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/bodyimageworkshop2024

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

To weigh or not to weigh? This question can interrupt many an intuitive eater's journey, so we dedicated a whole episode to the topic. We cover questions like:

• Do Stef & Sarah know their weights?
• Can weight just be data?
• What stories do we attach to numbers
• What about getting weighed at the doctors office?
• How to decline being weighed at the doctor
• Why do we need to know our weight?
• Hard evidence over self-trust
• Does weight tell you how to feel?

https://more-love.org/free-dont-weigh-me-cards/

Join the LAD Membership

Connect with the show!

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lifeafterdietspodcast/

Email – lifeafterdietspodcast@gmail.com

Website – www.lifeafterdietspodcast.com

Connect with Sarah Dosanjh

Website – www.thebingeeatingtherapist.com

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBingeEatingTherapist 

Sarah’s book I Can’t Stop Eating is available on Amazon

Connect with Stefanie Michele

Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Work With Stef - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

Sarah and Stef share the lessons they learned through their recovery from disordered eating.

Join our growing support community. This community is for you if you want to improve your relationship with food and become more comfortable in your own skin. Community membership includes invites to live episode recordings (online), support meetings, a private Facebook group and monthly Q&As. For more information go to: https://www.patreon.com/lifeafterdiets

 

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lifeafterdietspodcast

Email – lifeafterdietspodcast@gmail.com

 

Connect with Stefanie Michele binge eating health coach

Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Instagram – www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Work with Stefanie - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

 

Connect with Sarah Dosanjh 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

This episode features a guest -- not an expert -- who is still working through her relationship with food and body image and doesn't have it all figured out. We hope you find it helpful to hear from someone who might be exactly where you are, and can relate to the parts of this process that don't feel like they have answers. We discuss:

• Where food and body issues started for Nicole
• Feeling stuck between “I can’t diet anymore” and “I can’t deal with my weight.”
• Photographs & mirrors as triggers
• Difficulty assessing fullness
• What is intuitive eating? What’s the goal?
• Worth, safety, and weight
• Fearing continued/future weight gain
• Guilt about doing this work and still struggling with body image and obsessive thoughts
• Separating parts of the self

Join the LAD Membership

Connect with the show!

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lifeafterdietspodcast/

Email – lifeafterdietspodcast@gmail.com

Website – www.lifeafterdietspodcast.com

Connect with Sarah Dosanjh

Website – www.thebingeeatingtherapist.com

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBingeEatingTherapist 

Sarah’s book I Can’t Stop Eating is available on Amazon

Connect with Stefanie Michele

Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Work With Stef - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

Having a disordered relationship with food can erode our sense of self-trust. Not only do we learn to trust outside voices over our own hunger, but we also can't seem to keep the promises we make to ourselves about food. In this episode, we cover a range of topics including:

• What is self trust
• How promises to “not binge today” erodes our self-trust
• Shame, authenticity, and values
• What does our ego have to do with it?
• Consistency as a self-trust builder
• Stories of laziness, flakiness, and irresponsibility showing up as a lack of self-trust
• The relationship between self-esteem and self-trust

Join the LAD Membership

Connect with the show!

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lifeafterdietspodcast/

Email – lifeafterdietspodcast@gmail.com

Website – www.lifeafterdietspodcast.com

Connect with Sarah Dosanjh

Website – www.thebingeeatingtherapist.com

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBingeEatingTherapist 

Sarah’s book I Can’t Stop Eating is available on Amazon

Connect with Stefanie Michele

Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Work With Stef - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

Stress is a common trigger for eating, overeating, and binge eating. If you're someone who experiences increased urges to eat when you're stressed or anxious, this episode explores the following topics:

• What does stress look like?
• The stress of transitions
• What if stress is not something we can reduce?
• Challenging beliefs about how stress and coping interact
• Stress, anxiety, and the window of tolerance
• Tips for coping with stress
• Is food something we CAN use when we’re stressed?
• Why don’t we use coping strategies that we know make us feel better?

Join the LAD Membership

Connect with the show!

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lifeafterdietspodcast/

Email – lifeafterdietspodcast@gmail.com

Website – www.lifeafterdietspodcast.com

Connect with Sarah Dosanjh

Website – www.thebingeeatingtherapist.com

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBingeEatingTherapist 

Sarah’s book I Can’t Stop Eating is available on Amazon

Connect with Stefanie Michele

Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Work With Stef - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

Guilt can be a huge barrier to feeling peaceful with food. What do we do with the feelings of guilt that remain around what we eat, how we eat, and how much we eat? In this episode, we discuss:

• Guilt, defined
• Two layers of cognitive belief systems
• Can guilt be useful?
• Reframing guilt as disappointment
• Regulating guilt in the beginning of recovery
• Separating guilt from shame
• Deconstructing guilt relates to self-esteem, sitting with feelings, expectations, etc.
• Somatic experience of guilt
• What does guilt have to do with people pleasing or boundary work?
• Guilt reframed as confusion

Join the LAD Membership

Connect with the show!

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lifeafterdietspodcast/

Email – lifeafterdietspodcast@gmail.com

Website – www.lifeafterdietspodcast.com

Connect with Sarah Dosanjh

Website – www.thebingeeatingtherapist.com

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBingeEatingTherapist 

Sarah’s book I Can’t Stop Eating is available on Amazon

Connect with Stefanie Michele

Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Work With Stef - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application

In this episode we are talking to Brianna Campos of Body Image with Bri about the Body Grief framework. We’ll also talk about:

• How Bri came to focus on grief in her work around body image
• Dealing with: other people’s judgment; discomfort; health concerns
• The difference between body acceptance vs body positivity
• Bri’s framework for body image grief: insight + action + over time + in community
• What if grief feels too messy and painful?
• The stages of grief
• Dismantling the story
• Discomfort vs distress
• What if you believe that being in a larger body is less healthy?

Brianna Campos, Body Image With Bri

@bodyimagewithbri on Instagram

Join the LAD Membership

Connect with the show!

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lifeafterdietspodcast/

Email – lifeafterdietspodcast@gmail.com

Website – www.lifeafterdietspodcast.com

Connect with Sarah Dosanjh

Website – www.thebingeeatingtherapist.com

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBingeEatingTherapist 

Sarah’s book I Can’t Stop Eating is available on Amazon

Connect with Stefanie Michele

Website – www.iamstefaniemichele.com

Instagram - www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Work With Stef - www.iamstefaniemichele.com/application