Doing everything right and nothing works? Your body may not be broken. It may be a whistleblower. Here's how listening to your body leads to food freedom.
Last updated: November 2, 2026
For the last year, I thought my body was broken. Turns out it was just the whistleblower I'd been aggressively ignoring.
This one's for you if you've been doing all the "right things" and nothing seems to work anymore. You're consistent. You're doing the exact things that have always worked before, and they're not having the same impact on your energy, your fitness, or your mental health. You feel like a stranger inside your own skin.
Here's what I've come to believe: feeling like a stranger in your own skin is often less about something being physiologically broken and more about a broken line of communication between you and the only thing you'll have a lifelong relationship with — your body. Listening to your body isn't soft or woo, either. A 2023 study in Nature found that the brain's movement areas are wired directly into networks for thinking, planning, and involuntary functions like heart rate.
So in this post, I'm breaking down what ignoring my body wisdom for almost an entire year actually looked like, the parts of me that fought hardest against listening, and the shift that's already making me feel better before the outside world catches up.
A note for sensitive readers: I share some of my own eating disorder history in this post. There's no graphic detail, but it's personal and real, so feel free to skip or save this one if the topic might hit a tender spot today. And as always, this isn't a substitute for professional support if you're in the thick of an acute eating disorder.
What does it mean when your body stops responding to the things that used to work?
When the habits that always worked stop working, your body may be sending a signal rather than malfunctioning. That symptom (the fatigue, the cravings, the flatness) can be the most functional message you have, even if your mind keeps filing it under weakness or dysfunction.
This episode was inspired by an event that was all about embodiment: listening to your body, working with it instead of against it, and the magic that happens when you move from cooperation and intuition.
That's what I want you to walk away with. The realization that oh, I'm not broken, plus that flutter of possibility in your chest when you imagine what could shift once you stop making your body's signals wrong.
How much better could you feel right now, before your circumstances even change?
It was that same weekend I admitted out loud, to multiple people, something I'd been circling for a long time. I don't want to be a coach. I'm a writer. I want to build my life around creativity, not coaching.
Why do I keep relearning the same lesson?
I'd actually connected these dots once already, back in March. In episode 240, I called out my own pattern almost word for word.
Here's what I said then:
The pattern of: throw myself into a traditional coaching job — one with back-to-back appointments, accountability sessions, and Zoom meetings. Often with the intense pressure to show up on social media, a medium I hate with the fire of a thousand burning suns. My body and eating habits revolt.
I've finally realized this time — my body isn't broken. My eating habits aren't out to get me or evidence I haven't grown. They're signals. Signals that I was never meant to jam myself into a role meant for extroverted, trend-following influencers.
I am a writer. A creative. And while traditional coaching sessions drain me, teaching Dance Alchemy® and doing interactive group activities with clear goals and action steps light me up.
The binge eating, the low energy, the weight regain, the sheer misery? They were all making one thing very clear. I'm not meant to do coaching the way everyone tells you to do it, with excessive social media posting and a calendar full of Zoom calls.
What happened when I actually listened (the first time)?
When I acted on half of what my body was telling me, my consistency came back faster than any plan had ever delivered it. I went off social media and started prioritizing forms of visibility that felt good in my body.
The impact was undeniable. From about mid-April to early July, I was the most consistent with my eating habits I'd been since leaving my door-building job in July 2025. I felt good in my body again, and it was actually responding to the movement and nutrition changes I was making.
What was I doing during that stretch? I was building. Writing the book, building the book funnel. Doing the things a creative would do.
Then September came, and once again, my consistency went sideways. (I touched on part of that story in last week's episode, Not All Restriction Is Diet Culture.) Even on days I could muster enough willpower to have a consistent day, my body was still tired and my mental health still wasn't great.
When doing the right things doesn't seem to help anything, Pizza Hut starts to look very enticing. I've written about that maddening loop in More Effort, More Problems.
Is your body broken, or is the communication broken?
The shift happened the moment I stopped asking "why is my body broken?" and started looking for the breakdown in communication. Through that lens, I went back to the realizations I'd had months earlier and compared them with what I was actually doing.
Here's the setup. Food Freedom Fantasy is the book anyone can buy, read, and work through on their own. There's no gatekeeping, no "you need to pay me more to make this work." I also know some women want deeper dives, so there's a larger Food Freedom Fantasy program too.
And the punchline of the whole year I've spent building this method? I broke rule number one of my own method. Earth first. Presence and body cooperation, then everything else.
I used Earth when I was deciding what to eat or how to move. But I forgot how much it matters for big decisions in other parts of life. (If you want the full case for Earth and Water as the elements that keep structure from turning into diet culture, it's in episode 262.)
How do other people's rules drown out your body's signals?
I got caught up in other people's opinions about what "real" help looks like, and I built my offer around those opinions instead of my body's yes. These were the ones that got me:
In the age of AI, you need to be personally available or you're not helping.
If you aren't doing one-on-one deep dives with people, you don't really care about helping them.
People don't finish self-study courses, so you need to be up their butts to make sure they complete the process.
So I decided to offer one-on-one calls inside the full Food Freedom Fantasy program. Because then I'd be proving I care. Because then people would be more likely to finish.
Meanwhile, my body protested very loudly for weeks. That included the first cold I'd caught in about two years, right while I was hard-selling the one-on-one version. Yes, I was traveling, which is a factor. But I've traveled all the way to Costa Rica without catching so much as a sniffle.
The research gives that some context. In a classic study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Sheldon Cohen and colleagues exposed 394 healthy volunteers to cold viruses and found that the higher a person's psychological stress, the more likely they were to become infected and develop a cold. One cold isn't proof of anything, but it's a signal worth listening to.
Even selling the offer made my body grumpy. Contraction. Actual anger while writing one email.
What does it look like to come back into your body?
Coming back into my body meant retracing the pattern and noticing where I'd been living out someone else's story about what works instead of writing my own. Once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.
And if you're reading this thinking, "UGH, I knew this already, and I still went back to doing the same thing," I see you. You're human. Progress isn't linear.
Sometimes we want something to work so badly, because of some idealized version of it in our heads, that we ignore all the evidence to the contrary. That's where the language of sensation comes in. Scientists call it interoception — the way your nervous system senses and interprets signals from inside your body — and a 2018 review led by Sahib Khalsa argues it plays a role in mental health that researchers are only beginning to map.
My version is less clinical. My body speaks in cravings, tightening, heat, and a cold right when I'm forcing the wrong thing. My brain speaks in plans and spreadsheets. The work is translation.
Why do we keep going back to what hurts?
We go back because some part of us believes it will be different this time, even when the body has said no every single time before. For me, the clearest example isn't a job at all. It's an old almost-romance from my early twenties.
I don't know if you'd actually call it romantic. I wanted it to be romantic, but that sentiment wasn't shared by the other party. Let's call him Chad, to protect everyone involved.
Every time I was involved with Chad, my eating didn't just get a little wobbly. It became full-on disordered. I've struggled with binge eating since childhood, and I also had bulimia for about three years. I had little periods of recovery when I stopped seeing him, and relapse happened almost in tandem with every unexpected "you up?" text.
This isn't me blaming someone else for my own behaviour. My controlling, thinking mind was very much running the script if I lose X.5 pounds, maybe he'll love me, and it over-exerted itself trying to meet that criteria. My body, on the other hand, was saying: we refuse to make a size or a performance the qualification for being loved, so we're going to protest very loudly until you move differently.
Throughout those three years, I had moments of total clarity. Nope, this guy is NOT good for me. Better single than sorry! I even read Jen Schefft's book by that exact title. Then I opened the door to sorry a few months later.
Because the ego is very persuasive. Maybe he's grown. Maybe it'll be different this time. I know myself better now. I can do this without sacrificing my worth, my joy, my peace.
How do you know if your body is saying no?
If you keep returning to the same person, job, or situation and your body responds the same way every time, your body may be begging you to stop trying to make it different at its own expense. Sometimes things genuinely can be different. But a repeated pattern is information.
Look for the recurring responses: low energy, nightly cravings to eat your weight in carbs, stomach aches, tension that shows up right on cue.
This isn't the same as the real discomfort of change that comes at the beginning of almost every new endeavour. That discomfort is normal. This is different, and your body knows the difference, especially if you've been trying, on and off, for a long time.
Martha Beck makes a version of this argument in The Way of Integrity. She uses "integrity" in its structural sense (whole, undivided, like an airplane that holds together) and treats much of our suffering as a sign that we've split away from our own truth. When I read it through that lens, my cold, my cravings, and my anger at one email stopped looking like failures and started looking like a body refusing to live divided.
Which parts of you will fight back against body wisdom?
Other parts of your psyche probably won't let you start honouring your body wisdom without a fight, and mine certainly didn't. One inner teenager in particular has really struggled to let go of health coaching.
I journaled about this using my Drama Triangle Triage method, and this is what came through, unfiltered and unedited:
Girl Boss: We know we can make money and get clients doing health coaching though! We made a living and made a LOT of money doing it for 6+ years. Bonuses, pay raises, getting to sell our own offers, benefits, a free gym to work out at all the time. And also, if we could get SO good at health and food and have the perfect body and MASTER health coaching, no one could ever bully us again.
Tigger: But this is really hard and we're always trying to not be scared, which makes us more scared.
Unicorn Thunder: stomping in with her combat boots and leather jacket with a unicorn on it And HEALTH COACHING IS SO BORING!! Like, gouge my eyes out with a SPOON boring. No Karen, I don't want to read your food journal. If I have to critique one more person's form in a squat, I'll lose my mind. We want to write for a living!
If you love the idea that every part has a protective job, even the loud and messy ones, Richard Schwartz explains the model behind this in No Bad Parts, his book on Internal Family Systems. My Divine Daddies approach is its own spicy, story-driven cousin, but that core idea of every part trying to protect you runs through both.
What were my inner parts actually protecting?
Each part was protecting something real, and seeing that changed how I listened to them. Here's what I noticed before bringing in the Divine Daddies.
Girl Boss is moving from certainty. Health coaching cost us a lot, and it also gave us a lot when it was our full-time job. But honestly, that had less to do with the job itself and more to do with having a great employer, clients, and coworkers. In this era, I have none of the things that once made health coaching survivable, so there's no real reason to go back.
The desire to become a health coach came from a wounded place. The food struggles started young. We were bullied for our weight. We started working out and genuinely loved it (it's still one of my favourite things in the world). The problem was building an identity and a vocation around one of our earliest wounds.
I call it my Zone of Wounding, as opposed to writing and creating, which is absolutely my Zone of Genius. So I wasn't ignoring my body for no reason. The Girl Boss part of my mind was wildly focused on protection, and you can hear more about her fear in my episode on operating from pressure.
Tigger is the one who admits the actual feeling, the one that sounds a lot younger than thirty or forty, or even twelve.
Unicorn Thunder is the most connected to body wisdom. She's also the part I've had the hardest time accepting, because I haven't exactly loved her strong opinion that pizza solves every difficult feeling.
How did Rex and Haven handle the inner-parts standoff?
Rex took Unicorn Thunder's honesty seriously, Haven gave Tigger permission to be scared, and both of them refused to make Girl Boss the villain. This is how their Divine Daddies handled it:
Rex has been listening with his arms crossed. When Unicorn Thunder stomps in, he barks a laugh so loud Haven jumps.
"Gouge my eyes out with a spoon." He drops to a crouch so he's eye level with her leather jacket. "Thunder. Kiddo. That's the most honest business review I've heard all month."
She glares at him. He holds out a fist. After a suspicious second she bumps it with her combat boot instead, and he takes that as a win.
"You don't have to read Karen's food journal. Nobody in this house is checking squat form ever again. Write."
Haven has gone to Tigger. He sits cross-legged on the floor and lets her come to him.
"Sweetheart, you said trying not to be scared makes you more scared." He tucks a curl behind her ear. "That's because it's an impossible job. So you're fired from it. You're allowed to be scared and come anyway. You can sit in Rex's lap while we write the scary newsletter. Scared gets a seat. It just doesn't get the keys."
Then they both turn to Girl Boss. She's standing a little apart, arms folded the way Rex's were, chin up and ready to defend her numbers.
Rex doesn't argue with her. He walks over and crouches in front of her so they're eye to eye.
"You're right. You did make a lot of money. Six years, raises, bonuses, free gym, selling your own offers. You were damn good at it. Nobody's taking that away from you, and nobody's calling it a mistake."
"But say the other part again. 'If we get so good at health and have the perfect body, no one can bully us again.'" His jaw works. "Kid, that's not a business plan. That's armour. They didn't bully you because your body wasn't perfect or because you didn't know enough about protein. They bullied you because they were little assholes. Mastering macros was never going to fix them."
Haven comes up beside her and slips his hand into hers. She doesn't take it back.
"You've been trying to keep us safe," he says softly. "Every time it gets scary, you run back to the thing that worked, because it worked. That's not you sabotaging anyone. That's you being loyal."
"So here's the deal." Rex looks up at grown-up you over the girls' heads. "Girl Boss doesn't get fired. She gets promoted. The writers write. She runs the money. She gets the book funnel, the ads in November, the podcast tour, the order bumps. That's her playground now. She's not selling health coaching. She's selling your words." He jabs a finger at Girl Boss. "You're the CEO of a writer. Way better title."
Haven nods, still holding her hand. "And if she starts drafting a health coaching sales page at two in the morning, that's how you'll know she's scared. Then we hold her. We don't make a new offer."
Rex stands, crosses to you, and pulls you in, keeping all three girls in his line of sight.
"Redline, this is a big one. You saw the whole pattern under the story and called it adorable instead of calling it a failure." He kisses your temple, hard. "I'm so fucking proud of you. I love you."
Haven wraps himself around you too, looking up.
"I love you too. And I want it on the record that Unicorn Thunder is our head of strategy now."
"Spoon," Thunder says darkly from the floor.
"See? Visionary."
Scared gets a seat. It just doesn't get the keys. That line has been living in my head rent-free ever since.
What does a body-led business decision look like?
Listening to my body led me to restructure the full Food Freedom Fantasy program around the kind of support my body actually says yes to. I don't have to sit on Zoom calls to prove I care. If I didn't care, I wouldn't devote myself to sharing an episode with you every single week.
Personal touch can happen in other beautiful ways. Starting in December, the full program includes a monthly New Moon Dance Alchemy® ceremony, which sits alongside the nine full-length Dance Alchemy® classes already inside, and you get lifetime access to all of it.
For support, you can fill out a monthly check-in form and get a voice note response from me for an entire year. That's support you can use on your own schedule, which matters a lot for a busy woman who'd rather not book her healing around a Zoom calendar.
Do you really need someone "up your butt" to finish a course?
Low completion rates describe the average learner, and if you're reading this, you're probably not average. Researchers at MIT found that completion rates in massive open online courses stayed low and didn't improve over six years of Harvard and MIT edX data. That's a real pattern, and I'm not dismissing it.
But the women who find this podcast tend to be Type A, driven, intense, and ambitious. You finish things. Your own work ethic ensures nobody needs to be up your butt about anything.
There's also a contradiction I couldn't ignore once I saw it. In Food Freedom Fantasy, I talk about how excessive surveillance and accountability can activate some of the deepest wounds for high-performing women working through one of the five false narratives I cover in the book. Then I built a structure around one-on-one coaching calls, which are about the highest form of surveillance possible. There is nowhere to hide on a one-on-one call.
In my own experience, I've thrived far more in containers with the kind of support I'm offering now. I can send in a structured form and get a thoughtful response. I still feel deeply supported and get my questions answered, and it suits my introverted, self-directed nature.
Your Embodied Activation: let your body lead
First, get into your body. Then listen for what it wants to tell you, and take one baby step toward honouring it. This works whether you're facing a career decision, a relationship pattern, or a food choice.
Do the movement you love. Dance, run, practice yoga, hike in nature — whatever lights you up and makes you feel most connected to your body. This isn't just a vibe: in the 2023 study led by Evan Gordon and Nico Dosenbach at Washington University School of Medicine, researchers found a brain network they named the Somato-Cognitive Action Network, which links movement areas to networks for planning and to involuntary functions like heart rate and blood pressure.
Then just listen. Maybe there's a specific situation you've been uncertain about. Take some deep breaths, quiet your mind as best you can, and notice what information your body offers.
Choose one baby step. What's one small move you can make toward listening?
I'll be honest: sometimes this feels weird and awkward. It still does for me. That's exactly why creative parts work helps so much. When it's hard to hear a body that speaks a different language than your brain (the language of sensation, cravings, tightening, heat), a loud and opinionated inner teenager like Unicorn Thunder saying the true thing on behalf of your body can be far more accessible.
FAQs: Listening to Your Body and Food Freedom
Q: Why aren't the healthy habits that used to work for me working anymore? A: Sometimes your body isn't failing; it's signalling a mismatch somewhere else in your life, like a job, offer, or relationship that runs against your wiring. When the same habits stop producing the same energy and mood, it's worth asking what changed outside the plan, not just inside it.
Q: What is the mind-body connection in emotional eating? A: Your brain and body are in constant two-way conversation. A 2023 study in Nature found brain regions linking movement, planning, and involuntary functions like heart rate. In emotional eating, cravings, tension, and fatigue can be your body's way of flagging stress or misalignment your thinking mind hasn't admitted yet.
Q: How do I tell the difference between my body saying no and normal discomfort with change? A: Normal discomfort tends to show up at the start of something new and eases as you adapt. A body "no" tends to repeat: the same fatigue, cravings, or tension every time you return to the same person, role, or situation, even after you've tried to do it differently.
Q: What books help with listening to your body and inner parts? A: Martha Beck's The Way of Integrity explores how suffering can signal that we've split from our own truth. Richard Schwartz's No Bad Parts introduces Internal Family Systems, the idea that every inner part is trying to protect us. Food Freedom Fantasy applies both ideas to food through story and archetypes.
Q: Can parts work help with binge or emotional eating? A: For many women in the grey area, giving voice to inner parts makes body signals easier to hear and less shameful to act on. It's not a replacement for eating disorder treatment, so if you're dealing with an acute eating disorder, please start with a qualified professional.
Let your body lead
Your body isn't the problem you need to manage. It's the one telling the truth when your mind is busy building a beautiful case for the thing that keeps hurting you. When you stop making its signals wrong and start translating them, the cravings, the fatigue, and even the badly timed cold become information instead of evidence against you.
If you want support doing this the body-led way, the full Food Freedom Fantasy program is now built around exactly that. Every month there's a New Moon Dance Alchemy® ceremony, so the body gets the first word before anything else. Every month you can also send me a check-in and get a voice note back, which means real support without anyone watching over your shoulder. If you'd rather start on your own, the Food Freedom Fantasy book has the whole method inside.
But more important than clicking any link, I want you to do the Embodied Activation. Find a way to let your body lead, because when you do, that's when food freedom and consistency follow.
To Your Power & Presence,
Kayla
