260. Boring Devotion: The Food Freedom Skill High-Performing Women Actually Need
260. Boring Devotion: The Food Freedom Skill High-Performing Women Actually Need
Most high-performing women do not struggle because they lack ambition.
They struggle because they are exhausted from trying to make every transformation dramatic.
They want the breakthrough. The quantum leap. The timeline jump. The emotional catharsis. The big identity-shifting moment where everything suddenly clicks and the old patterns disappear forever.
And sometimes, those moments do happen.
But they are not enough.
At some point, lasting transformation requires something far less glamorous.
It requires boring devotion.
Boring devotion is the ability to keep showing up for the simple, repeated, mundane reps because the end result matters that much to you. It is taking the walk. Preparing the meal. Doing the workout. Writing the page. Keeping the promise. Returning to the habit even when it no longer feels exciting.
It is the spiritual maturity to understand that not everything will feel like fireworks, and that does not mean it is not working.
For high-performing creative women, this can be surprisingly uncomfortable.
Many women who struggle with binge eating, burnout, chaotic self-care, or all-or-nothing consistency are not lacking intelligence or willpower. They are often deeply driven, emotionally intense, and highly capable. But they may have learned to trust transformation only when it feels dramatic, urgent, painful, or euphoric.
This is especially true for women who grew up around chaos or learned that intensity meant aliveness.
Drama can become familiar. Breakthroughs can become addictive. Chaos can feel more real than peace.
But if every goal feels high stakes, life-changing, and emotionally loaded, your nervous system may spend too much time in fight-or-flight. Your body does not always know the difference between being chased by a predator and chasing a goal under immense pressure.
This is where boring devotion becomes medicine.
Why Boring Devotion Helps Your Nervous System Exhale
When your relationship with food, fitness, business, creativity, or personal growth is built on urgency, your body may never get to relax inside the process.
Every meal becomes a test.
Every weigh-in becomes a verdict.
Every missed habit becomes evidence that you are failing.
Every slow season becomes a crisis.
That level of intensity creates stress, and stress often fuels the very cycles you are trying to escape: binge eating, burnout, procrastination, emotional eating, self-sabotage, and inconsistent follow-through.
Boring devotion changes the energy.
Instead of turning your goal into a life-or-death mission, you begin to normalize it.
You become the kind of person who walks.
You become the kind of person who nourishes herself.
You become the kind of person who creates.
You become the kind of person who keeps promises without needing every promise to feel dramatic.
This is not about removing desire or ambition. It is about creating enough safety and stability that your system can sustain the pursuit.
The Deepest Healing Is Often Boring
In a world that glorifies retreats, breakthroughs, medicine journeys, massive identity shifts, and dramatic before-and-after moments, it is easy to believe healing should always feel profound.
But some of the deepest healing is painfully ordinary.
It is eating dinner without turning it into a spiral.
It is going for a walk when you would rather numb out.
It is making the same supportive choice for the fiftieth time, even when nobody claps.
It is returning to your routine without making your humanity a problem.
The real skill is not always “how intensely can I transform?”
Sometimes the real skill is: how much boredom can I withstand while becoming the woman I said I wanted to be?
In today’s dopamine-laced world, where social media, instant gratification, and constant stimulation are always available, boredom is not a weakness. It is a revolutionary capacity.
Why Identity Change Requires Boring Reps
Think about anything that already feels like part of your identity.
Maybe you are a writer. A runner. A musician. A business owner. A lifter. A coach. A creative.
That identity likely did not form from one dramatic moment.
It formed because you put in repeated reps over time.
At first, the habit may have felt exciting. There may have been a rush of novelty, pride, or momentum. But eventually, the thing became normal.
And that is the point.
If you want to change your identity, you have to repeat the behavior long enough for it to stop feeling like a special occasion.
That is where many high-performing women panic.
When the habit stops feeling exciting, they assume something is wrong.
But often, that is the exact moment the identity shift is beginning.
The goal is not to feel fireworks forever.
The goal is to become stable enough in your new identity that you no longer need fireworks to keep going.
The Five Stages of Grief on the Way to Boring Devotion
Moving from breakthrough chaos into boring devotion can bring up grief.
You may have to grieve the fantasy that growth will always feel enchanted, dramatic, fast, or externally validated.
In a food freedom or body transformation journey, this can look like five emotional stages.
1. Denial
Denial says, “I’m probably just one breakthrough away.”
You may believe you need the perfect mindset shift, the perfect somatic practice, the perfect plan, or the perfect moment when everything finally becomes easy.
You may avoid looking honestly at what is happening because part of you hopes the issue will resolve itself.
2. Anger
Anger may rise when you realize the process is not moving as quickly as you wanted.
You may feel angry at your body, angry at yourself, angry at the people who told you not to care, or angry at the cultural messages that made your desires feel wrong.
Anger can create drama, but it can also reveal where you have been suppressing your truth.
3. Bargaining
Bargaining often sounds spiritual or self-aware on the surface.
It can look like trying to regulate your nervous system so your body will finally change. Or doing somatic practices not because they feel nourishing, but because you hope they will become the magic key that unlocks rapid results.
But when regulation becomes another form of control, it often creates more pressure.
4. Depression
This stage can feel like despair.
Nothing is working. You are stuck. Your body will never change. Your habits will never stabilize. You will always be this way.
But this may not be truth.
It may be the system’s final attempt to hold onto the chaos before acceptance arrives.
5. Acceptance
Acceptance is where boring devotion begins.
You accept that the transformation may take longer than your ego prefers.
You accept that you may need more repetitive identity-building reps.
You accept that the dramatic path may not be the healthiest or most sustainable path.
And you become willing to be stubbornly bored long enough to create something that actually lasts.
How to Build the Skill of Boring Devotion
Boring devotion is not about becoming dull, lifeless, or robotic.
It is about learning how to sustain your growth without needing chaos to fuel it.
Here are four ways to practice.
1. Stop Shaming Your Inner Drama Queen
If part of you craves drama, do not shove her into the basement of your subconscious.
Let her speak.
Journal from her perspective. Ask what she is afraid will happen if life becomes steady. Ask what she thinks the chaos is protecting you from.
Often, the inner drama queen, inner teenager, or younger part believes intensity is necessary for survival. She does not need shame. She needs safe adult leadership.
You can lovingly show her that boring devotion will take you somewhere better.
2. Define Your Boring Devotion Reps
Choose two to four simple practices that you know will support the life you desire.
These might include:
Daily walks
Meal prep
Meditation
Strength training
Mindful eating
Writing
Sleep routines
Emotional processing
Gentle somatic movement
These are not flashy. That is the point.
They are the reps that build trust, stability, and identity over time.
3. Practice Boredom on Purpose
Start small.
Sit without stimulation for five minutes.
Go for a walk without music or a podcast.
Drive in silence once in a while.
Let your brain breathe.
You may discover that what you once called boredom is actually peace.
4. Pour the Intensity Into the Vision, Not the Daily Discipline
This is the sweet spot for high-performing women.
Your vision can be bold, wild, erotic, creative, meaningful, and deeply alive.
But your daily discipline can be simple.
The reps do not need to be dramatic for the vision to be powerful.
You can let the big dream stay electric while your daily habits become steady, grounded, and repeatable.
As the mantra goes:
My discipline can be boring, so my vision can be wild.
Bringing Magic Back Into the Reps
If part of you still wants enchantment, romance, story, and spice, that desire does not need to be rejected.
That is exactly where a framework like Food Freedom Fantasy comes in.
Food Freedom Fantasy turns your wellness journey into a playground. It allows you to practice boring devotion while bringing in storytelling, archetypes, imagination, and pleasure.
The discipline may be repetitive.
But the meaning you create around the discipline can be alive.
This is how consistency becomes sustainable.
Not through shame. Not through punishment. Not through waiting for one more breakthrough.
Through devotion.
Steady, boring, sacred devotion.
Links Mentioned
Transcript
Welcome back, embodied writing warrior. Today, we're gonna start the episode with a quote from Geneen Roth. If you hear this and it lands as deeply for you as it did for me the first time I read it back in 2013, this episode will most likely be deep medicine. This quote comes from her book When Food Is Love.
She writes, "I knew that having a relationship with him would not be easy, but I wasn't looking for easy. I invent drama where there is none. I feel most at home with chaos. I thrive on intensity. I get frantic, never concerned. I get ecstatic, never glad. I get miserable, never unhappy, and I have refined the art of suffering."
Now, this episode is not just about dramatic, romantic relationships. It's also about dramatic fitness journeys, dramatic creative or business journeys, dramatic growth journeys in general. Let's just say I know a little bit about all of the above, and one thing I've realized in the past few months especially is that high-performing creatives are often missing a critical skill that makes consistency achievable, sustainability possible, and the identity shift you're looking for inevitable.
That skill is boring devotion. In this episode, I'm gonna cover four ways that boring devotion changes the game. I'm gonna talk about the five stages of grief a high-performing woman must go through before they reach boring devotion. I'm gonna give you four ways to build the skill of boring devotion, plus one more bonus tip you will not hear anywhere else.
And then we're gonna close with a powerful mantra you can take with you. It has easily become one of my favorites. Let's get started. Boring devotion is developing your capacity to withstand the mundane because the end result matters that much to you. It's having the spiritual maturity to understand that not everything is gonna feel like fireworks.
And even when there's no fireworks, you're still gonna do the thing anyways. It's those simple daily disciplines compounded over time without giving your power away to the glamour of a flawless streak or a need for perfectionism. It's also continuing to do those daily disciplines even when it feels like they're not doing anything, where you're not seeing results from the external world, but you're so devoted to who you're becoming that you keep going anyways.
It's continuing to move from trust and faith without gripping to a timeline or needing rapid results. This is often a precarious balance, especially for high performing creatives who resonated with the quote we started with. Many high performing women only trust transformation when it feels intense, has a lot of breakthrough energy, or is highly emotional.
And if this is you, you're not wrong or broken. We live in a world that glorifies the massive breakthroughs, the intensity, and the dramatic medicine journeys where one ayahuasca trip solves every one of your problems, and suddenly you're a spiritually woke millionaire. And also, your intensity in the correct doses aimed powerfully is pure magic.
But not every transformation has to be intense. When everything has to be intense and activating, it's going to demand a ton of energy. And this is exactly what causes a lot of the boom bust cycles, where you're doing all the things, you're having the big breakthroughs, and then you're burned out and struggle to get out of bed The solution here is to start practicing boring devotion, and here's why.
First, from a nervous system perspective, your body most likely needs the exhale of normalizing the thing you're pursuing. If everything that you're going after feels high stakes and life-changing and fraught with drama, you're gonna spend a lot more time in fight or flight. Your body doesn't always know the difference between a goal you're putting immense pressure on yourself for and between being chased by a predator.
And spending enough time in fight or flight without recovery is one of those things that creates those cycles of binge eating and burnout. Boring devotion still allows you to work towards the thing, but you're able to let your system linger in rest and digest more often, so your nervous system can finally exhale.
Second, let's be honest. Some of the deepest healing is actually so boring. You don't always need a retreat or to pay $1,111 for that wildly sought-after energy worker or to have some drastic life-changing moment. Those things can be beautifully supplemental at times. But the real work of healing often comes from boring, consistent reps over time, the things you're doing on a day-to-day basis to create a new identity and build the life you desire.
So the real skill is not how fast can I go or how intensely can I do something, but actually how much boredom can I withstand? This is also one of the most powerful skills anyone can build in today's dopamine-laced world with the dysregulation casino that is social media and all the opportunities for instant gratification everywhere.
Being able to step back from noise and speed and chaos is honestly kind of revolutionary, and it has so much power to improve your life. Third, boredom is required for an identity upgrade I want you to think about anything you do right now that you attach your identity to. Could be writing, playing a sport, an instrument, or running.
Those things are likely part of your identity because you've put in a lot of boring reps over a prolonged period of time. If you wanna change your identity, you have to put in enough reps until that thing you're doing becomes normalized.
And yes, then you don't get the exhilarating rush that you do when something is new of, "Hot damn, I just played my guitar every day for 30 days straight." But you get something better. You get the stability of something you desire becoming part of who you are. And fourth, if you're listening, you likely have a deep mission and purpose for your life.
It's going to be very hard to achieve that purpose if your relationship with food and self-care and movement continues to be chaotic. We're gonna use food freedom and your fitness journey as our main example here because, obviously, food freedom, huge topic on this show. And when I walk you through the five stages of grief, I will use a food freedom example, but this applies to everything A dramatic love life will also distract you from your purpose.
A lot of chaos with spending or finances or having a turbulent workplace history where you're often getting fired or into conflicts with management, all of those things are going to be distractions. And this episode exists not to shame you or judge you for any places where drama has kept you distracted.
So this is not about being weak or broken. The struggles with drama and chaos are not only cultural and systemic at this point, but for many people they're often a response to growing up in chaotic households. Then you have these younger parts of you that feel like drama is actually needed to stay alive because it's familiar.
And these younger parts aren't broken either. They just might need some safe adult figures to help teach them about boring devotion. Now, you can hear all of this and be like, "Okay, I get it. Boring devotion. Let's do this." And it's probably still going to be an adjustment. You'll likely go through the five stages of grief as you move out of breakthrough and epiphany chaos land.
Because boring devotion asks you to grieve the fantasy that consistency and growth will always feel enchanted, dramatic, exciting, or immediately reflected back to you in your external world. And this is honestly quite painful to grieve when you've had the opposite experience most of your life I'm gonna share the five stages of grief as they apply to a food freedom and body transformation journey.
But again, these could apply anywhere. So you might start with denial. You wanna believe you're still just one breakthrough away from a quantum leap or a timeline jump. This is especially true if you've grown accustomed to big ups and downs in the past. This absolutely happened to me over the last eight months or so.
After getting the leanest I've maybe ever been last June while training for a half-marathon, I proceeded to have the humbling experience of gaining back 20, 25 pounds. And this was a combination of switching to a more sedentary lifestyle, because I'd left a very physically active job, a lot of stress, and admittedly, some of my old eating wobbles returning.
But I figured it was fine. I had tools. I had lost weight before. I would do it again, only to find myself plateauing last September. Denial said, "I don't wanna deal with this part, so I'll just stop weighing myself for a few months and it's gonna take care of itself, right?" As you might guess, it did not.
Then I reached the second phase of anger, and it was anger at both myself, anger at my body, and also certain voices I'd listened to that made me feel bad for caring. Like my drive to return to my previous level of fitness was, like, a trauma response or internalized misogyny. As you can imagine, that anger created a lot of drama The bargaining came after.
And this part is so important, especially if you're someone who's into the manifestation world, understands nervous system regulation, and knows how powerful it is to do somatic work with the physical body. So I knew that a dysregulated nervous system could create more stress in the body, and I'd been in the health coaching field long enough to know that for a number of physiological reasons, stress can make it harder to lose weight.
So I very dramatically tried to bargain my way out of dysregulation. So it looked like more breathwork, more somatic practices. And then the nervous system regulation became less about care and more about maybe this will be the magic thing that makes the stress go away so my body can change again. But if you're doing embodied practices from a disembodied, controlling place where you're trying to get a certain result, that's likely going to create more stress and pressure in the system.
So that's going to continue leading to the opposite of what you want, and it's going to keep you in a place of drama and chaos. Only now it's just inside your own mind as you frantically try to find the perfect regulation protocol to give you the rapid breakthrough. Then eventually, you might move into the stage of depression.
The feeling like nothing is working, the despair, wondering if you're always going to stay stuck. Here's the thing about this stage, though. It's probably not truth. It's probably your system's last attempt to hold on to the chaos before you move on to acceptance. Acceptance is where you make peace with boring devotion.
You accept that something's gonna take longer than your ego might like. You accept that it's gonna take more boring identity-building reps over time. But you also become willing to stay stubbornly bored long enough to get where you desire to go, especially if it's permanent this time Over these past few months, I have done a lot to reduce the drama from my body transformation journey.
I am the most consistent and stable I have ever been with my habits. Even my husband, person who knows me best, has seen me go on many a pizza bender, has said recently, "This time feels different. You're not volatile like you used to be. You're showing up differently now." And since he knows me best, this is very high praise So for me, acceptance was acknowledging a few important things.
First, I was basing the pace of my current progress on inaccurate and potentially unhealthy markers. Because here's the truth, the past month has felt like a slow month for progress. I've called it a plateau a few times, but I'm still down over eight pounds since the beginning of this month. And yes, my husband made fun of me and was like, "I don't think you know what a plateau actually means."
But what I was doing was comparing my rate of progress to my door-building era, where yes, I could lose three to four pounds a week sometimes, but also, I got sick multiple times a year. When training for my half-marathon in 2023, 2024, I got the sickest I've ever been. And then training for my half-marathon last June, my period was weeks late.
And that entire time I worked there, I could not prioritize strength training, especially not upper body stuff. My shoulders were like, "Overhead presses? Yeah, you can maybe do five of them with 15-pound weights, and it's gonna hurt." So back around my race last year, one of the guys from my work was like, "Hey, how come you're so skinny all of a sudden?"
Kayla then was like, "Aw, he noticed." Kayla today looks back at pictures of that race day and goes, "Actually, I think he might have been concerned." So losing weight or any kind of transformation that happens dramatically is not always the healthiest or most sustainable. Second, I was also telling a limiting story about my current rate of progress.
So back during my personal training days, I felt like weight came off easier. But looking back, I realize, yeah, it seemed like weight came off easier because I would binge eat multiple times every week or every month, and then I'd have the rapid weight loss afterwards that was basically just water weight.
So I've had to make peace with boring devotion. I've had to decide that the creative projects I have planned and the dreams I have for my life do not have room for the yo-yoing, the rushing, the food turbulence, or the big dramatic transformation It's going to be steady, boring, and it's gonna stick this time because it's becoming who I am.
This brings us to how to actually do this. My first tip is to avoid suppressing or shaming your inner drama queen or inner teenager, because on some level she believes the drama is necessary for survival.
So let her speak. Journal from her perspective. From there, you can start to lovingly share with her, "Hey, actually, this boring devotion thing is gonna be better for us in the long run, and we're still gonna be okay." You want her on your team, not pushed into the basement of your subconscious, where she's just gonna keep creating chaos on a more unconscious level.
Your second embodied activation, and maybe the most important one, is putting in your boring devotion reps. This is where you take the walk, do the task, prep the healthy food when you least want to, when it feels like nothing is happening or not happening fast enough. So it can be super helpful to define some of your own boring devotion reps,
maybe for you that is walks, meditation, meal prep, mindful eating. So maybe you define two to four boring devotion reps you want to practice regularly because deep down you know these things will get you where you want to go. Maybe not at the speed of light, maybe not dramatically, but they will get you there reliably if you do them consistently over a prolonged period of time Your next embodied activation is to practice boredom on purpose.
Maybe you practice just doing nothing for five minutes to start, or maybe you start doing more drives or walks where you don't have a podcast or music playing. Not every single one, but some of them. And start to reframe this boredom as peace, as stillness. You might actually find that you love having less stimulation.
For example, I used to think I could not possibly run without music. That sounded so boring. Then I joined a running group where you don't really wear headphones because you're on trails and there's dogs and bikers and all that stuff around. And you know, I actually love it.
I still run with music a large amount of the time, but I don't have to every time anymore. Next, I really love this tip for all of us high-performing women. Pour the intensity and drama into your vision, but let the discipline be boring. The reps you're putting in might be repetitive and mundane, but where you're going doesn't have to be.
This is that beautiful tension between drive and strive versus soothing and contentment. Fire starter versus sanctuary energy. You still get to be excited about who you're coming. You get to be excited about what doors will unlock when you build the consistency, energy levels, and fitness you desire, so that fire starter energy is gonna keep you going.
And also, lean into the sanctuary energy of, "And we are safe and stable in the pursuit of this big vision because here's what we do on a daily basis with presence and also gratitude," because you get to do these things to create the big vision, even if they feel boring sometimes. That brings us to the mantra I am kind of obsessed with right now.
Feel free to steal it if you love it as much as I do. It's this: "My discipline can be boring, so my vision can be wild." Yes, this got written in my planner immediately. And my final little bonus tip for you If part of you is still like, "Okay, but I still want to romanticize my life and have enchantment," this is exactly why Food Freedom Fantasy exists.
It turns your wellness adventure into a playground. You still practice the boring devotion of repeated reps over time, but now you're infusing magic and storytelling and maybe even a bit of spice into the reps. So the discipline is still boring, but the hot inner archetypes helping you build that discipline are anything but.
You can learn more about Food Freedom Fantasy by clicking the link in the episode description. And beyond that, I just hope this episode has helped you think about progress and momentum a little differently, and I will catch you in a future episode. Take care.
