Diet culture had a tight grip on Ali Shapiro by age 11, when she first walked into Weight Watchers. Now a holistic nutritionist, podcast host, and cancer survivor, Ali’s journey through diet culture, illness, and healing led her to create Truce with Food, a program that empowers others to heal their relationship with food. Catch her inspiring conversation on the Art of Badassery podcast, where she shares how her battle with food shaped her into the rebel with a cause she is today.

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Breaking Free From Diet Culture: Ali Shapiro’s Journey Of Healing, Resilience, And Empowerment

I have such a special guest Ali Shapiro. Ali, how are you?

Great, Jen. How are you?

Feeling awesome. For those of you out there who don’t know Ali, Ali Shapiro is a holistic nutritionist, integrative health coach and rebel with a serious cause. She’s the host of the top ranked show Insatiable, which I’ve had the honor of being a guest on and her flagship program Truce with Food grew out of her two decade-long battle with food and healing as a teenage cancer survivor. Welcome, Ali, to the show. There are so many stories wrapped up in this short little bio of yours that I can’t wait to dive into. First, Ali, do you mind walking us through your background? How did you get to be this awesome holistic nutritionist, integrative health coach, and rebel with a serious cause?

Early Exposure To Diet Culture And Its Effects

The best place to start is probably when I was about eleven years old and I walked into a WeightWatchers. I wanted to lose weight and that became my foray into diet culture.

Quick question, you’re eleven. Obviously, someone had to take you to a WeightWatchers. Was it your parent’s idea or your idea?

It’s my parent’s. Going to see CCD and WeightWatchers was my idea. There are a lot of ideas that I had as a kid that I was pretty persuasive. Again, my parents never talked to me about my weight having to change but this was something that I wanted for myself. You have a clinical nutrition background. I have more food as medicine background. What I didn’t know at the time was I thought I was just eating too much but about 5 or 6 years prior I had been exposed to pesticides.

I was doing gymnastics on a friend’s yard after their yard had been sprayed with ChemLawn, which we know as roundup and I developed a horrible rash for two weeks. My parents took me to the doctors. Environmental toxicity was not on the radar in the ‘80s. When I look at pictures, that’s when I started to gain weight. It was an inflammatory issue, but I thought it was a caloric willpower discipline issue.

At eleven years old.

That’s how much it’s in the culture, I think. You and I grew up in the ‘80s. The ‘80s and early ‘90s, it went from models being somewhat feminine to like heroin chic looking like little boys.

“Clothes hangers,” my mother always would say. That was what the fashion industry was showing us. It was a skeleton with clothes on them and this is what we should be aspiring to as little girls. Weird.

It’s so weird and my parents didn’t even let us watch Disney movies. I didn’t know that we weren’t allowed to watch Disney movies. Disney wasn’t in our house because my parents were like all the Disney roles, the woman had to get saved.

Ahead of the curve there in the Shapiro household.

They even were like hippies and didn’t get their yard sprayed. They were public school teachers. I came from a loving wonderful family and this stuff still infiltrates. My dad also was heavy as a kid. He would run 5 or 6 miles and he’d be like, “I’m running from the fat man.” Even though it wasn’t about me. As kids, we pick up stuff implicitly.

When I was in third grade, I remember the kids name was Ryan. I’m not going to out him his last name. He called me fat on the bus. I still remember the shame being like, “That’s bad.” Even though no one in my family cared about it or anything. It was this thing. I went to WeightWatchers. I probably had some success. I can still remember the cards they used to give you. You would fold it and they would write your starting weight. Every week, you’d go up and get on the scale. They would write and you get stars.

I’m sorry, I just have to say how did they even allow eleven year olds in the program with adults? None of that is okay.

Hashtag capitalism. Money. I still remember eating the bars that they gave you that were like two points. It’s chocolate with crips, but I probably wouldn’t even be able to stomach them but at the time I said, “I’m going to be a good girl. I’m good at school. I can master this.” It turns out your body is not like a school project or getting good grades. I struggled with that and then at the age of thirteen, I was trying to lose weight for the middle school dance.

Ali’s Battle With Cancer And Its Impact On Her Relationship With Food

My dad had a Nordic track and I was trying to take my pulse in my neck. This is how much I knew about the body and I found a lump. My dad was a health and phys Ed teacher. He read a lot about this stuff. He’s like, “I’ve read that this could be Hodgkin’s disease in young people.” He took me to the doctor and the doctor said, “Come back in six months.” My dad was like, “No.” My dad advocated for me. He said, “No, this needs to be taken seriously.”

Within two weeks, biopsy and cancer diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Disease which is lymphatic cancer, inability to detox. Again, I think the pesticide exposure contributed. It wasn’t the only thing but it’s probably why I got cancer so young. When I was going through cancer and chemo, I became the thinnest I had ever been in my life as a teenager. Except for the my face was puffy from steroids. Once that puffiness went down, it’s like I could fit into all the clothes. had great friends and they were all thin. Do you remember contempo casuals?

Jordache jeans.

I love Jordache jeans. All of those things fit well and I got attention. People were like, “You look great.” I didn’t have language for this at the time, but it was this confusing thing that I would have eventually had to decouple that growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s and probably still now. Although, it’s changing. You think the value of health is defined by thinness. I was at the thinnest I ever was because I almost died and now I’m getting all of this attention, which is great.

I feel this pressure to maintain thinness because that means I’m going to stay healthy. I see it being so polarized about weight like, “Weight loss is bad. It’s good.” For me, my weight was inflammatory driven. I didn’t need WeightWatchers. I needed to figure out why I couldn’t detox. That was a different situation. In high school, my friends and I would joke, “Diet starts tomorrow,” and I would run just like my dad did every morning.

I could outrun my ice cream men whenever we would like eat a lot. I was able to maintain that weight loss and be relatively thin. I went to college in undergrad. Transitions can be a time where people start to eat a lot and turn to food to ground them. I couldn’t wait to get out of my town. I was so excited. This was not something that I was nervous about but just the uncertainty. I went to Penn State undergrad. There’s 40,000 people here. I’m on my own. I have to find new friends. I had a great wonderful group of friends in high school.

My emotional eating started to turn into more frequent. I became more obsessed with my weight because I was gaining back the weight that I had lost. I couldn’t out exercise it. On top of this, I felt depressed. I had bad acne. I had tried antibiotics and Accutane. None of that worked. As I graduated, I got a job and my first manager and I did not get along. It was the first time in an area where I felt confident, which was school and work that I was struggling. I got diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome.

They did ask me because of my cancer history. It was a cute doctor and I was like, “No, this is not happening to me,” but it happened. You will survive everyone if you get a colonoscopy doctor, but they didn’t find anything. Fast forward to being 26 years old and I’m just struggling with more diagnosis. I found the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Did you go there, too?

I did, in 2005.

Transition To Holistic Nutrition And Integrative Health

I went into 2006, so right before you. You know that period was so different. I just say that because I found functional medicine there but it wasn’t what it is now. Even in finding that, I felt alone in it because I was telling my doctor’s. I was like, “I basically connected all of this stuff to gut health that was related to my chemotherapy.” I was dismissed by a lot of doctors. I finally found a great integrated doctor where she’s like, “You teach me so much.” I said, “I’m learning from you.”

Basically, through understanding that these symptoms weren’t diagnosed with me. Everyone’s different but they were symptoms. I was able to reverse them by getting off processed foods at the time and gluten. I didn’t have to take a ton of supplements. There was no testing. Back then it was bare bones. Again, I didn’t have language but my relationship with food started to get better because, all of a sudden, rather than looking at Food only as about calories. I was like, “Food can be medicine, too.” I want to feel good. I want to feel some agency in my health.

I thought like I had found the fountain of youth but then, what I would find is during stressful periods, I would start binging or eating again. For example, in the cancer world, we call it scans anxiety season because I had radiation as well. They’re not worried about me getting Hodgkins anymore, but they’re worried about breast and thyroid cancer. Our medical system is not designed with the user experience in mind, from the time you schedule your scans to the time you get them to the time you meet with your oncologist could be six weeks. I would be binging on sugar the entire time. I now know what sugar and cancer, the relationship and how it accelerates too much. Why am I doing all of this?

Say that again like sugar feeds cancer and you’re waiting for your scans to make sure your cancer free and you’re binging on cancer food.

Yes, and I felt even more frustrated because I know now. Before, I was like, “I’m at the mercy of just the cancer Gods.” Now, it’s like, “I know that there’s some things I can do to reduce my risk.” I’m not one of those people that think a diet can prevent cancer completely. There’s so many factors to it.

Diet alone can’t completely prevent cancer. There are many factors involved.

I’ve shared this on the show in little bits, but my father was the healthiest eater, the meditator, the martial artist, and the fitness like very healthy and also got cancer. I no longer believe you can prevent everything through lifestyle and diet and all of those things, but you can mitigate.

Yes, we’ve talked about holding the end. If you go into cancer treatments healthier, you might tolerate them more. There’s a lot of value. It’s still being healthy, even if you can’t control.

Stronger to get through chemo. Good point.

The Role Of Food As Medicine And Overcoming Food-Related Challenges

They’ve done fascinating studies that people who have better gut health respond to chemo better. They found gut health being better about having a variety of foods. They compared it to a probiotic versus doing that. That’s a whole other episode. I took and at the same time, I was seeing clients on the side. Again, because it was a different era. I was just doing grocery store tours. I was getting people off. This was before anyone could pronounce quinoa. It was a different era.

It’s because we didn’t have social media and all this media around body positivity. We didn’t even have the words diet culture yet. I thought I was the only one with this crazy relationship to food. As I started working with clients and tandem, after about the fourth session, we’d stop talking about food. There were these shifts that were happening and I didn’t know what was working and what wasn’t working.

I took this same, we could call it a functional medicine or holistic systems in academia. I was like, “Falling off track or not being able to keep up feeling good. I no longer believe this is a willpower and discipline problem. What if this is the symptom just like my IBS in depression and acne was? What if there’s other root causes?”

That’s when I went back to grad school and realized that we turn to food when we feel unsafe. By unsafe I mean physically unsafe if you’re not getting the physical nutrients that you need. Not necessarily your type of physical safety that you’re so brilliant at helping people with. As adults, safety is about belonging. Do I feel like I belong?

The Psychological Impact Of Food Choices And Sense Of Belonging

That’s more academic wisdom term, but how it shows up for clients and everyday people was, when do I feel separate? When do I feel like, why isn’t this happening for me?” Whether our businesses or a relationship or finances. It’s like, “Something’s wrong with me.” We may not think something’s wrong with me but we may feel just like, “Ugh.” It comes out as our food choices. I have some clients and they go out. It’s like, “I don’t want to be the high maintenance one being like, ‘I’m ordering this or I don’t like this vegetable.’”

My husband still makes fun of me every time I order fish at a restaurant. I have to ask like, “Is it wild caught?” I just don’t eat farm-raised seafood sidebar. That’s my own thing, but he’s always like, “Do you have to ask the name of the fish and all of these things?”

Who are his parents? Did it have a good life?

Exactly. I don’t care about being high maintenance. That’s the difference.

In part of the work, it’s like, is that high maintenance or you’re discerning? There’s a reason why you don’t want to eat farm fish. Are you being a burden or is it the fact that you have needs? Everyone has needs. The work is changing the meaning of what it feels.

Everyone has needs. The real work is changing the meaning of what it feels like to advocate for yourself.

Advocate for yourself.

I found that we have these stories. We can call them beliefs for purposes that people understand. We have these beliefs that make us feel isolated and separate. We don’t bring certain parts of ourselves to the conversation. We don’t bring certain parts of ourselves to our work and to the thing we’re struggling with. We need those parts to succeed. When we’re stressed, feeling isolated or separate, we then turn to food because food stimulates attachment chemicals.

Maybe oxytocin.

Yes. It won’t give us, and this is Dr. Deborah MacNamara’s work in her book Nourished, who she’s a child developmental psychologist. She talks about food will stimulate attachment chemicals, but it won’t give us the deeper belonging, the sense that like, “Someone’s here to help me. Someone’s got my back.” That’s a bigger risk that we have to take. That’s what we want most deeply, but food almost does the job. Dr. MacNamara’s mentor, Dr. Gordon Neufeld has this quote that I love. He says, “There’s nothing quite as addicting as something that almost works.” It’s like, “Food almost works.”

Almost.

If you look at in hindsight with my scans anxiety season, what eventually got me to stop binging was not a bigger plan to not have sugar in the house. Not more rules and regulations. It was, what do I need? Sometimes, I still get emotional. My cancer being such a burden to my family and to just everyone around me. When I would be preparing for these scans, my parents would call me like, “How are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m fine.” I always felt like I needed to protect them. I had to start saying, “I’m scared. These are hard.” They were like, “We wish we could be there with you.” I could cry. My parents are wonderful. Sharing that was like, “I have the support I need right here.”

Yellow belt level in the Art of Badassery talks about bouncing back and different options on how to do it. One of those is rolling with the punches and in order to have the people show up in your life and support you, you have to ask for it. Ask for it by sharing and being vulnerable. This is why I choose guests to come on the show because of your vulnerability and your sharing. That’s so important because when we hold everything in and when we don’t talk about our problems at all, how can we expect for the right solutions to show up? The right people, right ideas, right camaraderie, and feeling of belonging. Your story gave it a whole other meaning for me so thank you.

That’s the thing. As adults, when we’re young, we are attuned to our attachment figures, our peers, and our teachers because we’re learning what’s good and bad. What do I do that gets me acceptance and what doesn’t? That’s not a bad thing. That’s just part of development. You want to come into an adult hood with some moral code. You don’t want to be like nothing matters.

As adults, the maturity and the evolution that has to happen is we have to say, “Let me belong to myself first.” I call it having your own back like, “What do I need so then I can ask for it?” Instead of expecting other people to know. If I tell my parents I’m fine or my now husband or boyfriend or my sister who lived in Philadelphia at the time like, “Will you come to the appointments with me?” We have a sit-in with the oncologist because I get so nervous before he comes in.

I can’t remember what I want to ask and what I want to say. They were like, “We would love to.” This is hard. I had my own judgments of like, “I should be over this by now.” I wasn’t over it because, “The body keeps the score,” as Vandercook says. It’s like until I processed all of that. I was still going to be reenacting certain patterns out. That’s what Truce with Food is about. It’s ending the battle but it’s not about with food. It’s the inner battle of our beliefs that make us feel separate and that we can’t have the belonging we need.

Truce with Food is about ending the battle, but not with food. It’s the inner battle of our beliefs that makes us feel separate and prevents us from having the belonging we need.

There’s so many questions and many thoughts. In case you’re reading and you don’t know my background, I am a clinical nutritionist and health coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. For a few years, I have done my best to not do health coaching and clinical nutritionist work. There’s many reasons. I’m probably going to do a whole episode on that like why I quit being a nutritionist. It’s because I got pegged into this weight loss expert thing and people kept coming to me.

When they come to me for weight loss, it’s like they just want a plan. They want someone to tell them what to eat, how to exercise, and what to do. I would provide that because it’s like, “Sure. Here you go.” Nowadays, you could just ask ChatGPT, go online and on YouTube. There’s so much information out there. When they didn’t get the results because they weren’t doing the work. I would start to blame myself and say like, “I must not be very good at this.”

Anyway, that went on until I realized there’s so much more to food and our relationships with food. I, fortunately, have a pretty good relationship with food. Was I taught that? I don’t think I was consciously taught that. I just was modeled that watching my parents. My mom not so much. She had the candy hidden away. To be honest, my dad was so strict and disciplined with food in the house. Nothing’s perfect, but I grew up with a love of food.

I love food. I love healthy foods. I don’t enjoy ultra-processed foods. They don’t taste good to me. I feel very fortunate in that. I wasn’t able to counsel people in the way that I can now with the mindset work and the other modalities that I’ve brought into my coaching. Long story for that, but essentially, I also got sick of this diet culture thing, toxic diet culture conversation. Can we talk a little bit about that? I love in a post you had on Instagram how we can adopt this thought process. I call it living in life. I can do this and I can do that. I can feel this while I still can do this. For you, let’s break it down.

Do you want me to use weight loss as an example?

Yes, talk about this.

Challenges Of Diet Culture And Socialized Mindset

This is more like a practitioner lens maybe. When we all, I say come off the conveyor belt in our 20s when we’re ready to enter adulthood. We’re all in what’s called the socialized mind. The socialized mind I accumulated all these experiences the first twenty years of what makes me good and bad. Now, I’m going to try to make my way out in the world. We think those ideas of good and bad are absolute. Fitness is the best. Fatness is the worst.

What ends up happening is you get in the all-or-nothing Black or White mindset when you’re in the socialized mind. With weight loss, for so long, we only had diet culture which is very toxic. In diet culture, everyone defines it differently, but the way that the two beliefs that most people can agree on is that diet culture is about thin at any cost. It doesn’t matter how you lose weight. It’s just thin at any cost.

It could be pills and extreme. All the things that we see, these crazy diets, all that stuff.

Cabbage soup. You name it. I’ve tried it. All of these things. Your weight determines your worth. People are hardworking and successful. When you’re in the socialized mind, you’re going to go to the other extreme. You’re going to say, “Diet culture is bad.” Your weight should not be about your worth and we should not be fitted at any cost. I agree with that and the problem is, you’re against diet culture. What are you for?

I’m anti-diet culture but what are we for? If we look at this, I think also the belief that ties both of these together is that weight loss damages your relationship with yourself because of what you have to put your body through. If your worth is tied up in your weight, that is very damaging. I know, I’ve lived it for years. It is not a healthy place to be. That belief or story is what connects that binary all-or-nothing mind.

What also connects those are our values. How it comes out is I value health. You’ve been socialized to believe health is only about fitness. That’s what I was taught. I only look at food as about calories. I don’t I don’t understand what else it might be. Part of holding the and is saying, “What else could health be? Could health be sleeping well? Could help be amazing relationships? Could health be food as medicine? Could it be movement or energy that helps me sleep?”

I’m sorry, I’m menopausal so sleep is like everything. Does it come back to sleep? Holding them and saying, “Okay.” This value of health has always been only about weight loss and thinness. What else is it about? In Truce with Food, it’s about how some of my clients want to lose weight and some don’t, but the belief system is how can weight loss improve your relationship with yourself? Sometimes, people are metabolically unhealthy. They are exhausted. They didn’t gain weight because of lack of discipline. They gain weight because they’re inflamed and they’re going down a cycle that is not going to be great. Caring for them is not denying that sugar is not their best friend.

Sugar is inflammatory.

Again emotionally, that does not mean anything about you. If you’re turning to sugar, it probably makes a lot of sense in the Truce with Food model because you’re probably feeling stressed and it’s so natural. It makes so much sense to turn to that. Can we separate the biological reality of how the body works? Which I didn’t make up the rules. I used to love sugar. I get how addictive it can be. Holding the hand is starting to expand the value in this case of health and saying, “If I want to repair my relationship with myself, whether I want to lose weight or not. What else do I need to learn? How else can I view food and movement?” As you said, energy.

I had a client in my Truce with Food class who was like, “I keep saying I want to move.” I’m like, “The belief system that you’re operating under, if you only have been taught that health is about weight loss. You think it doesn’t count to go for a walk after lunch.” We all hear like, “Do exercise snacks.” Why isn’t anyone doing them?

In their mind, the meaning of the Matrix is it doesn’t count and it doesn’t count because we’re counting it as weight loss. For my clients who are ambitious, I’m like, “Let’s connect your movement. Do you feel more creative? Do you feel restored so that this rest is an important part of productivity?” It’s like, “I want to do that because I want to be a badass in my career.”

The work is to decouple food and exercise and all these health habits from weight loss and connect them to how they benefit you immediately. Now if they benefit you immediately, you’re going to be consistent. It’s a snowball rolling down the hill because this idea of restriction is what we think is good and you have to learn and live that, “I don’t have to restrict right to be healthy. I have to feel satisfied and satiated physically, emotionally and spiritually.”

Decoupling Health Habits From Weight Loss

This is so good. Now with my burnout to badass program and keynote, I see it in people’s faces. I could see it in real-time when I’m sharing almost one of the exact sentences you’ve said. I don’t use the word uncouple but when we think of food and nutrition, it’s always been about weight loss and calories. I’ve always known that’s garbage, but now it’s like, what if we just looked at it as our energy and our fuel and made choices based on our energy levels. If you go further, then it’s about leptin and ghrelin levels, balancing your hormones, blood sugar levels, and going for those walks after big meals to help move and all of it. Thank you for sharing that in a different way.

I do want to say one thing though that you said, because I think where people sometimes are like, “Yes.” Calories do matter if you want to lose weight. The way that I think the best way to describe it is, if you want to lose weight, they do matter but they’re like 10% of the equation. What you have to look at is in expanding your health value, it will show you the how. Most people don’t even realize they should not be in such a great calorie deficit that they’re. They’re already stressed and not giving themselves the right nutrition but this is where we sometimes lose people in the body positivity and spaces.

If you want to lose weight, calories do matter, but they’re 10% of the equation.

I know you know calories matter, but we’re like, “Calories don’t matter.” As we develop and have more what they call psychological flexibility, it’s like we can include and transcend. It’s like, calories may matter and there’s 90% of what I don’t know about metabolism, hormones, sleep, or stress that is the how. That’s what we need to learn, how do I get to a caloric deficit that works for me and works for my body that isn’t so challenging? That isn’t full of restriction and deprivation.

I just wanted to add that because I think that’s why sometimes all of us who know that we don’t want people to care about their weight in terms of worthiness. We’re so passionate about that but people have the real life experience but when I cut calories, it does work in the short term. At least if you’re doing it drastically.

I’ve never counted my calories in my life. Never.

Have you ever struggled with your weight?

In the way of, I’m five pounds heavier than I should be. That kind of thing should be where I feel comfortable. I can then look to the past months and be like, “I could see where my lifestyle led to this,” then readjust. I never did it in a way where I was counting or going on diets or off diets. There’s things like that. I was always very active. My martial arts were a huge part of my 20s and 30s. I still am not active in that way. Not even close to how much I used to move per day.

For me, it’s quality versus quantity. If I’m eating all or mostly whole foods that are not processed and don’t come in packages, then I feel like I don’t need to count. I can just be more in touch with my body. Am I feeling satiated? Am I feeling full? Also stopping when I feel full and when I’m stressed is when I don’t stop. I just keep going.

It is the stress thing and getting present and more mindful about, do I need this second trip to the kitchen to get more food or am I stressed and going too fast and not feeling in my body? That’s another thing I like to share. When we’re in touch with our bodies, you’re just more in tune with the choices you’re making of how you fuel yourself, versus if you’re just in your head stressed, on-the-go and you’re eating on the run and doing all these things. You can’t be in touch with your body.

What you’re describing is the ideal how people want to get to. You had a lot of self-trust because you were tying nutrition to, how do I perform martial arts and I care about this.

Nowadays, without martial arts is like my life and my energy.

What happens for those of us who have struggled with our weight and been called out about it, often based on what we think is good and bad and what we’ve been told. Whether it’s being vegetarian and don’t eat carbs. Based on what we’ve learned early in our life, often when we’re in our body we feel ashamed. We don’t feel the trust that you have. I have what you have now. Shame in the nervous system feels like freeze. It feels like numbness and sometimes, we’re eating to regulate the numbness but that’s a whole other episode.

No, but this is so perfect because this is summing up the whole Truce with Food. It’s getting to that trust.

Yes, because that’s ultimately what the process is about. It’s learning to trust ourselves to experiment so that we can come back into our body and it doesn’t feel like guilt and shame.

Also having to check this box or track these calories. I love this so much. A couple of bullet points or could you give us a couple quick takeaways from the Truce with Food or how you move people through it?

The first question for everyone reading, what we spend is this mindset shift of, why does this make sense? The next time you fall off track or you’re stressed. You talk about like, “The last few months at work.” Rather than being like, “Why am I doing this? Why does this make sense?” What that does is it starts to repair your relationship with yourself and this is another big thing in the whole weight loss conversation and why people are so anti-diet, which I get it.

There’s so much shame. When you are in shame, you can’t hear what you need to hear and I’ll give you an example. My husband works with me and he’s an amazing writer and storyteller. When he gives me feedback, it sounds like criticism but I know my pattern now. I’m like, “I will come back to you. This feels like I want to be like no.” The next day I’m like, “He’s right.” When it comes to food stuff, when you’re still coming out of, “The shame should have never been put on me.” I get it but we want to start saying, “Why does this make sense?” That says, “I can trust why I’m doing this. It makes sense at the level of awareness I have.” Why does this make sense?

The second question, you want to say and this is where food noise. Food noises are a popular term. You want to get that food noise. Unless your blood sugars are crashing. If it’s about stress eating, you want to say, “What feels unsettling? What feels at risk? What feels hard?” Those are the same questions to get at, “Where do I feel like I may be separate and what I’m doing is wrong?” If you’re working hard and you’re at your business. You’re like, “I need that second.” It’s like, what feels at risk? Is it going to make me money? Is this person going to say yes? Am I going to be rejected?”

You want to get clear on the story or the belief that you’re afraid is going to happen. What we do when we’re in the socialized mind is we orient way towards risk. We say, “I don’t want that to happen.” I used to define health as like I don’t have cancer. It’s like, “Amazing place to be.” I’m so grateful. I will be forever grateful for the researchers. I must admit it and though, that narrowed my lens of what was possible. I still had IBS depression and acne.

You want to reorient towards, what do I need to support myself? Take the risk to get your needs met, whether you can do it yourself. For example, often, my clients being exhausted will trigger eating because it gives you the energy through. It gives you dopamine and all these things that you’re depleted on when you’re burnt out. You need more intensity to feel things. You’re reorienting towards, what do I need? I may need to rest. I may need to go out and take a walk and not push harder. That’s what I need and starting small there. Those are like the three questions.

My three things that I go to, my little menu. That’s what I have clients do, come up with a menu of things that you can choose from when you’re in that place. Do I want a cup of tea? Do I want to go for a walk? Do I need to lift weights to feel strong in my body or do I need a nap? Go through those things and choose one of them. Sure enough, on the other side of that I feel better.

One thing I want to say to people because you brought up the sustainability part. Part of why is sustainability. It is known in the health and wellness world that sustainability is this black box. Your trainers know. Talk to any trainer. No one’s consistent. Talk to any nutritionist. Part of what we need to do for sustainability is get to the core need because it offers flexibility. For example, if someone’s tired. Knowing that you need rest, and there’s seven different types of rest. It’s like, what is accessible? Maybe I’m at work.

Take a nap.

I cannot take a nap. I love that you said movement. Movement is amazing. There’s physical rest. It’s one of the seven types of rest. That’s why I always focus on the need. You get a lot more flexibility and what is accessible at the moment. Rather than thinking it has to be following a strict plan.

Get a lot more flexibility with what’s accessible at the moment, rather than thinking about following a strict plan.

Which is why the plans don’t usually work.

That’s why I love that you offered the menu because that’s why you need choices.

Everyone reading, I hope you have some great takeaways from this conversation. I know I do. I learned a lot just listening and reflecting again from both a practitioner and a woman going through this and going through it all with you. Ali, I want to thank you so much. I know we didn’t get to even cover. You’re going to have to come back because we want to talk about hair menopause and menopause. All of the things, but first, I have four rapid fire questions that I like to ask every guest. Are you ready?

I’m ready, but can I be brief? I’ll be brief.

Rapid fire. Ready? The first is what’s your childhood food?

Pizza Hut pizza. We used to go there every other Friday when my parents got paid.

Second question is, if you could have a drink with anyone alive or dead. Who would it be and what would you drink with them?

What comes to mind is Mary Magdalene. She’s like the feminine part of religion that we’re missing. Given that she lived in the Middle East, I hope we would have good water.

Water?

I don’t drink. I’m just never been a drinker. I always see my calories for food that’s why.

Third question, favorite self-help book.

The first thing that comes to mind is Women Who Run with the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Estés. Have you read that?

I have it. I started it. I haven’t finished. Amazing. Last but not least, what’s your favorite hype song?

I love that song. I did it all. I don’t even know who it’s by. It’s like, “I did it all.” I realized the core value I have in life is that I need to know I went for it. Ultimately, the older I get, I want to know I tried and I went for it. That song to me captures like I lived it all.

We’re going to look it up because I love that ending on that note. We’re all doing our best out here. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your beautiful wisdom with everyone. Everyone out there, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them on either Ali’s Instagram or my instagram at @JennCassetta. Ali, tell everyone where we can find you.

I am on Instagram. I’m at @AliMShapiro. I have my Insatiable show. In the fall, I have a program called Why Am I Eating this Now? That works on stress eating. People can go to AliShapiro.com/whyamieatingthisnow group program. If you Google that, it’ll come up and get on the waitlist for that.

I can’t wait to see that. Also, there’s Truce with Food that I know Ali runs throughout the year. Make sure you get on her email list. We’ll have all those links. Thank you, everyone, for reading. Make sure you subscribe, rate and leave a review if this show speaks to you. I love you. Bye.

Important Links

• Ali Shapiro
• Insatiable
• WeightWatchers
• Nourished
• Dr. Gordon Neufeld
• Women Who Run with the Wolves
• @JennCassetta – Instagram
• @AliMShapiro – Instagram
• Why Am I  Eating This Now

About Ali Shapiro

Ali is the host of the top-ranked podcast Insatiable, a holistic nutritionist, integrated health coach, and rebel with a serious cause.