The Self Led Woman Podcast: emotional eating and nervous system healing for self-leadership

Megan Darnell
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The Self-Led Woman is a podcast about emotional eating, the experiences that shape our relationship with food, and the path back to self-leadership.These conversations explore emotional eating beneath behaviour, through trauma, the nervous system, nourishment, and lived experience, with deep respect for the intelligence of the body and what it learned to do to keep you going.This is a space for understanding, relief, and reconnecting with your inner world.Hosted by Megan Darnell, Internal Family Systems therapy practitioner and psychedelic-assisted therapy facilitator.

  1. 6d ago

    Episode 45: Unburdened Eating | Healing Your Relationship With Food and Your Body Through IFS With Dr. Jeanne Catanzaro

    What if the preoccupation with food and your body had nothing to do with food or your body at all? It is genuinely one of the greatest honours of this podcast to welcome today's guest. Dr. Jeanne Catanzaro is a clinical psychologist with more than 30 years of experience working with eating disorders, disordered eating, and trauma. She is the author of Unburdened Eating, vice president and co-owner of the Internal Family Systems Institute, and one of the most respected voices in both the IFS and eating disorder fields in the world. She is also married to IFS founder Dr. Richard Schwartz. I have admired her work for a long time and this conversation did not disappoint. We talk about what people most fundamentally misunderstand about emotional eating and binge eating, why getting curious about a behavior rather than shaming it is a direct line to what actually needs healing, the polarization that happens between parts around food and why it's almost never just two parts but clusters of parts in conflict, why the inner critic is often the part that brings someone into therapy and why that matters, what happens when a woman stops treating her body as a problem to solve, why the restrict and binge cycle makes complete sense when you understand what's driving it, and the IFS principle that slow is fast and why you cannot rush a protective part into trusting you. Jeanne also shares something that I think every woman needs to hear. Your body is supposed to change. It is supposed to want and need different things. And it deserves love and compassion and support exactly as it is. Find Jeanne and her upcoming retreats, workshops and webinars at https://jeannecatanzaro.com/  Unburdened Eating the book The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join before launch receive founding member pricing. Disclaimer: This episode contains discussions around eating disorders, disordered eating, body image, trauma, and emotional eating. Please engage gently. This content is educational in nature and is not a substitute for professional support. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or severe distress around food or your body, please reach out to a qualified healthcare professional or contact an eating disorder support service in your region.

    Episode 45: Unburdened Eating | Healing Your Relationship With Food and Your Body Through IFS With Dr. Jeanne Catanzaro

  2. Sep 27

    Episode 44: What Emotional Eating Is Actually Telling You About the Rest of Your Life

    What if your pattern around food wasn't the problem to solve, but the window into something much deeper? In this episode I take you through each of the layers that sit underneath emotional eating, not to give you more things to fix, but to help you get genuinely curious about what the pattern might be trying to show you about the rest of your life. We get into why overriding a craving is rarely about food and almost always about how you learned to relate to your own needs and desires, where the good girl pattern actually came from and why diet culture didn't create her it just found an efficient vehicle for her, why control around food is a nervous system trying to create order in a world that didn't always feel orderly, what genuine uncomplicated pleasure actually does for your nervous system and why so many women have never experienced food that way, and why the relationship to self trust you have around food is almost always the same relationship you have with yourself everywhere else. Because here is what women tell me after doing this work. They stop saying yes when they mean no. They start asking for what they need without apologizing for needing it. Their relationships change. Not because they changed other people, but because they stopped abandoning themselves to keep the peace. The food was never just about food. It was the window into the whole thing. The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join before launch receive founding member pricing. Disclaimer: This episode contains discussions around emotional eating, body image, disordered eating patterns, and relational trauma. Please engage gently. This content is educational in nature and is not a substitute for professional support. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or distress around food or your body, please reach out to a qualified healthcare professional or contact an eating disorder support service in your region.

  3. Sep 20

    Episode 43: Why Emotional Eating Won't Budge No Matter What You Try | Trauma, the Nervous System and the Wellness Merry-Go-Round

    If you have tried everything and you keep finding yourself back at the beginning, starting again, I want you to understand something. This is not an accident. That is by design. In this episode I'm talking about something that doesn't get said nearly enough. Not about what you're eating or your nervous system, although we get there too. What I want to talk about is why you keep going back. I break down the psychology of intermittent reinforcement and why the wellness and diet industry runs on the same mechanism as a poker machine, the neuroscience of why the restrict and binge cycle is so hard to interrupt through willpower alone, why for a body carrying relational trauma restriction doesn't just produce mild discomfort but something that feels like survival level distress, and the swimming lessons analogy that I think explains something no diet plan or wellness protocol ever will. If you are a woman who has been on the wellness merry-go-round for years and you keep ending up back at the beginning, this episode is for you. The problem is not you. The problem is that you have been given bathing suits when what you actually needed was swimming lessons. The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join before launch receive founding member pricing. Book a free consultation here Disclaimer: This episode contains discussions around emotional eating, disordered eating, restriction, trauma, and the binge cycle. Please engage gently. This content is educational in nature and is not a substitute for professional support. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or severe distress around food or your body, please reach out to a qualified healthcare professional or contact an eating disorder support service in your region.

  4. Sep 13

    Episode 42: Why Internal Family Systems Therapy Works for Healing Emotional Eating

    This isn't a surface level overview of IFS. This is the actual clinical and human reality of why this model reaches what other approaches miss. In this episode I'm breaking down why I believe Internal Family Systems therapy is one of the most effective frameworks available for healing a disordered relationship with food. Not because it's the latest trend in the wellness space, but because it goes underneath. Because it's body based. Because it works with the parts driving the pattern, not just the pattern itself. And because it doesn't pathologize, it gets curious. I cover what IFS actually is and why it has nothing to do with family therapy, the difference between exiles and protectors and why emotional eating is almost always a protective part doing a job it learned very early, why complex trauma, the kind that comes from chronic relational experiences rather than single catastrophic events, underlies the vast majority of disordered eating, why you can spend years understanding your patterns and still find yourself in the kitchen at 10pm doing the exact thing you've understood a hundred times, what the research consistently shows about the link between family dysfunction and eating disorders in adolescent girls, and why treatment that targets behavior without addressing what's driving it produces limited results for women with trauma histories. I also share what finally shifted my own relationship with food. Not understanding it intellectually. Actually going in and meeting the parts that had been trying to survive something. And what happened when they finally felt met. Get the book Unburdened Eating by Jeanne Catanzaro here The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join before launch receive founding member pricing. Disclaimer: This episode contains discussions around emotional eating, disordered eating, trauma, and complex relational trauma. Please engage gently. This content is educational in nature and is not a substitute for professional support. If you are struggling with an eating disorder or severe distress around food or your body, please reach out to a qualified healthcare professional or contact an eating disorder support service in your region.

  5. Sep 6

    Episode 41: Food Is Not the Problem. It's the Message - Somatic Eating, Trauma and Nervous System Healing with Stephanie Mara Fox

    What if your food behaviors were never the problem — but the most intelligent thing your body could do in a moment that felt unsafe? In this episode Megan sits down with Stephanie Mara Fox, somatic nutritional counsellor, creator of Somatic Eating, and PhD candidate in somatic psychology. Stephanie has spent nearly two decades supporting women in healing from emotional eating, binge eating, chronic dieting, and body image concerns — and her approach will completely reframe the way you see your relationship with food. They talk about what somatic eating actually is and why starting with the body — rather than the mind — changes everything. Why food so often becomes a substitute for secure attachment, and what it actually means to start mothering yourself. Why you cannot think your way out of a felt experience, and how building capacity to be with sensation is the real work. Why trying to control food behaviors often makes them louder — and what to do instead. And what it looks like to start rebuilding trust with your body, one tiny moment at a time. This conversation is warm, deep, and genuinely unlike anything else in this space. Connect with Stephanie: Free 5-part somatic eating series: https://www.stephaniemara.com/subscribe  Website: https://www.stephaniemara.com  Somatic Eating: https://www.somaticeating.com  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_stephaniemara  Satiated Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/satiated-podcast/id1494607245  Substack: https://stephaniemara.substack.com  Contact: support@stephaniemara.com Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle — Megan's self-paced course — is coming soon. Join the waitlist now and receive founding member pricing. The lowest price it will ever be. https://www.megandarnell.com.au/waitlist

    Episode 41: Food Is Not the Problem. It's the Message - Somatic Eating, Trauma and Nervous System Healing with Stephanie Mara Fox

  6. Aug 30

    Episode 40: Comparison, Belonging and Coming Home to Yourself | Part 2

    If you haven't listened to episode 39 yet, start there. This one picks up where that one left off. Last week I talked about comparison as a nervous system response and belonging as a biological need. This week I want to talk about what's actually on the other side of all of that. What it looks like when you stop trying to become someone else and start coming home to yourself. And I'm going to get into some things that might surprise you. Like why getting dressed in the morning is a nervous system practice. Why wearing clothes that don't fit your actual body puts you in a low grade state of tension all day. How colour analysis and a ChatGPT styling thread completely changed the way I shop and get dressed. And what a memory of being ten years old in my grandma's bathroom putting on makeup for the first time has to do with all of it. But underneath all of that is something more important. The difference between dressing, eating, moving, and showing up from a place of shame and urgency versus doing all of those things from a place of clarity and alignment. What it actually feels like to make self-led decisions. And why coming home to yourself isn't about discipline or optimisation or becoming a better version of you. It's just about remembering what was always yours to begin with. The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join before launch receive founding member pricing.

  7. Aug 23

    Episode 39: Comparison, Belonging and Coming Home to Yourself | Part 1

    Comparison isn't about vanity. It never was. It's about belonging. It's about safety. It's about what your nervous system learned was acceptable, what got praised, what got rejected, and what got mirrored back to you when you were too young to question any of it. In part one of this two part episode, I'm talking about why the drive to fit in, to measure yourself against other women, to shrink or perform or become someone you were never meant to be, is not a character flaw. It's biology. And it goes deeper than most conversations about comparison ever go. I talk about what estrogen actually does to teenage girls and why dressing exactly like your friends was never shallow, the nervous system reason belonging feels like survival because it genuinely was, what happens when that adaptation never gets questioned and follows you into adulthood, why two women can eat the exact same thing and have completely different experiences in their bodies, and what oestrogen decline in later life is actually revealing about the anger that was always there. I also share one of the most profound experiences of my life. A therapeutic MDMA journey in 2022 that took me back through every wound I'd ever carried around my body, my mother, and other women. And what happened the Monday morning after that changed something in me that I don't think will ever go back. Part two comes next week. The waitlist for Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is now open. Women who join before launch receive founding member pricing.

  8. Aug 16

    Episode 38: Why Ignoring Your Cravings Makes Emotional Eating Worse, Not Better

    You wanted the chocolate. You chose the rice cake instead. And an hour later you were still thinking about the chocolate and probably ate more than you would have if you'd just had it in the first place. This episode is about why that keeps happening. Not because you lack discipline, but because of how your brain's seeking system actually works, and what it means when a woman learns, early in life, that her desires aren't something she's allowed to trust. Megan breaks down the neuroscience of cravings and the dopamine seeking system, why food substitutes keep you stuck in the cycle rather than breaking it, how the "good girl" pattern shows up in the way you relate to food and your own desires, and what it actually looks like to reach a place where food just doesn't have that grip anymore. This isn't about eating whatever you want all the time. It's about understanding what's actually underneath the craving and why that changes everything. Ready to do the deeper work? Book a free consultation with Megan here: https://megandarnell.as.me/?appointmentType=69722155 Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle — Megan's self-paced course — is coming soon. Join the waitlist now and receive founding member pricing. The lowest price it will ever be. https://www.megandarnell.com.au/waitlist

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The Self-Led Woman is a podcast about emotional eating, the experiences that shape our relationship with food, and the path back to self-leadership.These conversations explore emotional eating beneath behaviour, through trauma, the nervous system, nourishment, and lived experience, with deep respect for the intelligence of the body and what it learned to do to keep you going.This is a space for understanding, relief, and reconnecting with your inner world.Hosted by Megan Darnell, Internal Family Systems therapy practitioner and psychedelic-assisted therapy facilitator.

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