Full But Not Finished

Stefanie Michele
  • 5.0 (41)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

Full But Not Finished is for anyone who's tried to "just stop eating when you're full" and realized it's never that simple. Hosted by Somatic and Intuitive Eating counselor and coach Stefanie Michele, this podcast dives into the ongoing work of recovery -- where fullness doesn't always mean satisfaction, and where food, body image, and nervous system work is never finished. Each episode unpacks the psychology, nervous system patterns, and cultural conditioning that shape eating behaviors, showing why willpower alone doesn't work and what real regulation looks like. If you've lived the binge–restrict cycle, felt trapped in body image spirals, or wondered why "normal eating" feels out of reach, this is where we make sense of it — not with rules, but with integration, somatic tools, and a more human way forward.

  1. 6d ago

    40. Bored, Restless, and Looking for Food: Emotional Eating and the Nervous System

    Why do we eat when we're bored, even when we know we aren't hungry?  In this episode, I look at boredom eating through a nervous system lens and question the assumption that boredom simply means we cannot tolerate being alone with ourselves. Stillness can leave us with a mind that is anything but still, especially when the brain shifts into the default mode network and begins revisiting everything we were too occupied to notice before. Food can give shape to unstructured time and offer a "gear shift" of energy that the nervous system may really be asking for. I also talk about the difference between needing rest, seeking stimulation, and sliding into a lower-energy state that we may be calling boredom. Understanding which one is happening can change the way we respond to emotional eating, grazing, or the urge to eat when there is nothing else to do. ABOUT STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helps people understand the deeper psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns shaping their relationships with food, body image, and themselves. 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/coaching Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele Website https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

  2. Jul 17

    39. GLP-1s, Body Acceptance, and the Pressure to Choose

    Can you work toward body acceptance while considering a GLP-1 medication? In this unscripted collaboration, body image coaches Kristina Bruce of Unlearning Beautiful and Stefanie Michele of Full But Not Finished talk about what happens when you have spent years stepping away from dieting while the culture around you appears to be moving toward weight loss again. We discuss the pressure on both sides of the GLP-1 conversation, the limits of turning dieting or anti-diet thinking into a fixed belief system, and why body trust cannot be reduced to one universally correct decision. The conversation moves beneath the choice itself into the life, body, identity, or future we may still be attached to—and the difficulty of knowing what self-care means after years of confusing it with self-control. Choosing relief does not necessarily mean abandoning yourself, and choosing not to pursue weight loss does not automatically make you freer. The work is learning to recognize what is true inside your own life without turning today's decision into another rule you must follow tomorrow. This conversation is educational and is not medical advice. Decisions about GLP-1 medications should be made with a qualified medical professional who understands your individual health history, including any history of disordered eating or eating disorders. ABOUT KRISTINA BRUCE Kristina Bruce is a body image coach and the founder of Unlearning Beautiful. She helps people stop obsessing about their bodies and develop greater peace, trust, and freedom. Free Guide to Body Peace https://www.kristinabruce.com/guide 1:1 Body Peace Coaching https://www.kristinabruce.com/private-coaching Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kristinabrucecoach ABOUT STEFANIE MICHELE Stefanie Michele is a certified coach and somatic practitioner who helps people understand the psychological, emotional, and nervous-system patterns underneath binge eating, food control, body image anxiety, and feeling trapped in the relationship with their bodies. 1:1 Coaching with Stefanie https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/coaching Full But Not Finished on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@iamstefaniemichele Website https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

  3. Jul 11

    38. I Lost Decades to my ED and I'm Okay With That — and Is Body Image Just A First World Problem?

    In this Q&A episode, I'm answering two questions about eating disorder recovery. The first is about how to make peace with the years an eating disorder took — the grief of looking back and realizing how much of life was shaped by food, body image, fear, and survival, without blaming yourself for not recovering sooner. The second question is about why body image can still matter, even when part of you feels embarrassed by that or tells yourself it is a "first world problem." I talk about lost time, self-blame, body shame, and the very human wish to feel okay in your body without turning any of it into another reason to shame yourself. More from Stef: Binge Eating to Intuitive Eating (BE2IE) Self-Study Course iamstefaniemichele.com/iamstefaniemichelecourse.com Substack (essays on body image, appetite, and the nervous system) iamstefaniemichele.substack.com Instagram instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

  4. Jul 1

    37. A Different Way to Be Strong: with Guest Marcus Kain

    In this episode, I'm joined by Marcus Kain Murray of Strong Not Starving for a conversation about strength training that goes beyond reps, programming, and pushing harder. We talk about what changes when training becomes something you practice instead of something you perform for approval. Marcus gets into why a workout can feel hard and still be the wrong kind of hard, how the fitness industry sells exhaustion as progress, and why pulling back is sometimes what actually helps you get stronger. We also talk about effort, intensity, rest periods, and what it means to challenge yourself without turning exercise into another place where you have to override yourself. If you tend to either overdo it or avoid it, this conversation gives a different way to think about strength, recovery, and consistency. This is a strength-based episode, but the lens is bigger than fitness. It's about building strength without making training the boss of your life. Marcus is the founder of Strong Not Starving. He is a trainer, StrongFirst certified instructor, and coach with 20 years of experience in the fitness industry. His work brings together strength training, nutrition coaching, disordered eating informed fitness, stress management and recovery, sleep, and relationship coaching. Find Marcus here: https://strongnotstarving.com/ More from Stef: Binge Eating to Intuitive Eating (BE2IE) Self-Study Course iamstefaniemichele.com/iamstefaniemichelecourse.com Substack (essays on body image, appetite, and the nervous system) iamstefaniemichele.substack.com Instagram (daily thoughts + short-form content) instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

  5. Jun 24

    36. Can You Have Food Freedom With Food Restrictions? A listener goes gluten-free for health reasons

    More from Stef: Binge Eating to Intuitive Eating (BE2IE) Self-Study Course iamstefaniemichele.com/iamstefaniemichelecourse.com What happens when a food restriction is not coming from diet culture, but from an actual health need? In this episode of Full But Not Finished, I'm answering a listener question about giving up gluten for an autoimmune condition, feeling better physically, and then suddenly feeling the old psychological pull of restriction, scarcity, rebellion, and white-knuckling come back. We talk about the difference between a true health accommodation and a food rule, why even medically appropriate restrictions can still register as scarcity, and what gets in the way of staying connected to food freedom when your body genuinely needs something different. I also get into food morality, perfectionism, satisfaction, autonomy, and why your psychology may rebel against a protocol that starts to feel like obedience, even when your health matters. This episode is for anyone trying to care for their body without falling back into old binge/restrict cycles, orthorexic thinking, or the belief that food freedom means never having boundaries around food. Topics covered: medical food restriction, gluten, autoimmune conditions, intuitive eating, food freedom, food morality, orthorexia, binge restrict cycle, scarcity mindset, health accommodations, and restriction recovery. Substack (essays on body image, appetite, and the nervous system) iamstefaniemichele.substack.com Instagram (daily thoughts + short-form content) instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

  6. Jun 17

    35. Not Recovered, But Not Ashamed: a listener's story

    In this episode, I'm joined by Minea for a conversation about food recovery, body image, control, and what happens when you understand the concepts but still don't feel safe enough to let go. This is not a neat success story, and that is exactly why I wanted to share it. Minea talks about growing up as a child who loved food, the moment her body began to feel like something other people could judge, the early pull toward control, and the confusing shift into feeling out of control around food after years of trying to stay in control. We also talk about shame, identity, perfectionism, productivity, attachment, fear of weight change, and the hard-to-name place where someone can have deep self-awareness and still feel caught between what they understand and what they feel able to do. This conversation may not be right for everyone, especially if you are currently feeling pulled toward control or struggling to feel steady in your own food and body work. Please take care of yourself while listening. For the person who has ever thought, "I understand all of this, so why am I still here?" — this episode is for you. More from Stef: Binge Eating to Intuitive Eating (BE2IE) Self-Study Course iamstefaniemichele.com/iamstefaniemichelecourse.com Substack (essays on body image, appetite, and the nervous system) iamstefaniemichele.substack.com Instagram (daily thoughts + short-form content) instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele Topics include binge eating after restriction, eating disorder recovery, body image, weight gain fear, perfectionism, shame, compulsive exercise, nervous system regulation, intuitive eating, attachment, resistance, and the reality of being in the middle of healing

  7. Jun 10

    34. When You Can't Stop Exercising

    Last week, I talked about resistance to exercise and how movement can become safer when it is no longer tied to weight loss, punishment, or proving yourself. This week is the other side of the coin: what happens when exercise becomes compulsive and rest starts to feel threatening. Movement can be genuinely regulating. It can help us feel strong, embodied, capable, grounded, and in control. But that is also why it can become hard to stop. For some people, exercise becomes the one place they can access agency, discharge anxiety, manage food guilt, or feel safe inside their own body. In this episode, I'm talking about compulsive exercise through a nervous system lens: why the behavior can make so much sense, why slowing down can feel dysregulating at first, and why the goal is not to demonize movement, but to find a dosage that is sustainable. We'll talk about: why exercise can become addictive the difference between choosing movement and feeling controlled by it exercise as compensation, regulation, escape, and agency why rest can feel like collapse all-or-nothing patterns with movement how to start building a more sustainable relationship with exercise why slowing down is not a lack of discipline, but its own skill Movement can stay in your life without taking over your life. Mentioned in this episode: the difference between movement as regulation and movement as compulsion, rest as a nervous system challenge, and what it can look like to tolerate the fear of doing less. More from Stef: Binge Eating to Intuitive Eating (BE2IE) Self-Study Course iamstefaniemichele.com/iamstefaniemichelecourse.com Substack (essays on body image, appetite, and the nervous system) iamstefaniemichele.substack.com Instagram (daily thoughts + short-form content) instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

  8. Jun 3

    33. How to Rebuild Your Relationship with Exercise (after diet culture)

    Exercise can be hard to separate from weight loss, calorie burning, food compensation, discipline, and body control. In this episode, I'm talking about how to rebuild your relationship with movement after dieting, binge eating, restriction, or years of using exercise as a way to change your body. For a lot of people, exercise does not feel neutral. It can bring up old rules, old pressure, old fear, old rebellion, or the sense that movement only matters if it leads to weight loss or somehow "counts." But movement can also be something else. It can be a way to move energy through the body. It can help discharge anxiety, shift a flat or frozen state, interrupt rumination, and create a different relationship with your own body. It can be slow, ordinary, rhythmic, gentle, practical, or enjoyable. It does not have to be organized around punishment, compensation, or proving anything. I also talk about what happens when diet culture thoughts still show up while you're trying to move differently. Those thoughts may be present because they were built over time. Their presence does not have to define the meaning of what you are doing now. This episode is about reclaiming exercise and movement from diet culture, and finding a way back to movement that feels more like support than self-control. In this episode, I talk about: why exercise can feel charged after years of dieting how movement gets paired with weight loss, control, and morality exercise as a way to move energy through the nervous system why low motivation may be connected to overwhelm, not laziness how slow, steady movement can help thaw a flat or frozen state how higher-energy movement can help discharge anxiety why diet culture thoughts may still appear how to build a new relationship with movement without making it another rule More from Stef: Binge Eating to Intuitive Eating (BE2IE) Self-Study Course iamstefaniemichele.com/iamstefaniemichelecourse.com Substack (essays on body image, appetite, and the nervous system) iamstefaniemichele.substack.com Instagram (daily thoughts + short-form content) instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

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5
out of 5
41 Ratings

About

Full But Not Finished is for anyone who's tried to "just stop eating when you're full" and realized it's never that simple. Hosted by Somatic and Intuitive Eating counselor and coach Stefanie Michele, this podcast dives into the ongoing work of recovery -- where fullness doesn't always mean satisfaction, and where food, body image, and nervous system work is never finished. Each episode unpacks the psychology, nervous system patterns, and cultural conditioning that shape eating behaviors, showing why willpower alone doesn't work and what real regulation looks like. If you've lived the binge–restrict cycle, felt trapped in body image spirals, or wondered why "normal eating" feels out of reach, this is where we make sense of it — not with rules, but with integration, somatic tools, and a more human way forward.

Information

  • Creator
    Stefanie Michele
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    40
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025
  • Show Website
    Full But Not Finished

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