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

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 rare...

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 goin...

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 b...

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, chroni...

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'...

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 ot...

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, ear...

What if the thing keeping you stuck in your relationship with food, your body, and other people isn't a lack of willpower, but a nervous system response that's been running since childhood? In this episode I sit down with Kallie Klug, certified somatic practitioner, yoga teacher, and author of Tired of Being Good, a nervous system map for reclaiming your body after a lifetime of fawning....

What if the urge to reach for food when you're not physically hungry isn't just about today? What if it's older than that — much older? In this episode Megan explores one of the most fascinating and undertalked pieces of the emotional eating conversation. The intelligence your body is carrying that has nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with thousands of years of huma...

This episode is for every woman who has been trying harder than anyone around her knows — and still can't make it stick. Who has reset more times than she can count, spent years on the merry-go-round of starting over, and quietly wondered what is actually wrong with her. Nothing is wrong with you. In this episode Megan shares her own 30-year story — what kept her on the merry-go-round, what s...

There's a conversation happening right now about weight loss medications. And almost everyone is either for them or against them. But that's not the conversation I'm interested in. What I'm curious about is what's actually happening in the brain and the nervous system when people take these medications. Because when you start looking at the research, what you find isn&apos...

What if the body you've been at war with has actually been trying to protect you this whole time? In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Ann Saffi Biasetti, transpersonal psychologist, somatic psychotherapist, and author of Your Body Never Meant You Any Harm, releasing July 21st 2026. Ann has been working in the space of eating disorders and trauma recovery for over 35 years, and this conver...

In this episode, I share a deeply personal story about emotional eating, bingeing, loneliness, shame, and the nervous system patterns underneath it all. I take you back to my late 20s, living alone in Melbourne during a cold winter while working in a high stress banking environment that left me emotionally exhausted and completely dysregulated by the end of the day. What looked like “food issues”...

There's a question I come back to again and again in sessions with clients. Is this actually your belief, or is it something you inherited? So much of what women carry around food, their bodies, visibility, and taking up space was never consciously chosen. It was absorbed. Passed down through generations of women adapting to environments where being smaller, quieter, more agreeable, and less...

How long have you known that your relationship with food or your body is something you want to change? Not how long you’ve been trying. How long you’ve known. In this episode, I’m talking about the hidden cost of tolerating emotional eating, body obsession, self criticism, and the constant mental noise around food. Because for many women, the issue isn’t a lack of awareness. It’s that the pattern...

In this episode, I’m joined by Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist Ivana Legnerova for a deeply compassionate conversation about emotional eating, control, and healing your relationship with food. Ivana specialises in working with eating disorders, including emotional eating, under-eating, perfectionism, and self-sabotage. Together, we explore how these patterns are not failures, but protectiv...

A woman said something to me recently that I hear all the time. “I already know where this comes from. I know it’s my childhood. I know it’s because of trauma.” And then she paused and said something incredibly honest. “But I’m still doing it.” She still finds herself standing in the kitchen late at night, opening the cupboard and eating something even though part of her is thinking: Why am I doin...

For years I believed my emotional eating was a discipline problem. So I tried everything to fix it. I tried hypnotherapy.  Acupuncture.  Kinesiology.  Past life regression.  Affirmations on my walls.  Personal trainers.  High protein diets.  Low carb diets.  Intuitive eating.  Juice cleanses.  The lemon detox diet.  Running a marathon.  Blood sugar supplements from a naturopath.  Even taping my mo...

When people talk about emotional eating, the conversation usually focuses on food. Cravings. Discipline. Willpower. But when I work with women around emotional eating, the pattern rarely begins with food at all. It often begins in a moment where something didn’t sit right. A comment that hurt. A boundary that was crossed. A moment where you felt dismissed, unseen, or taken for granted. And instead...

In this episode, I’m joined by depth psychologist and eating disorder specialist Dr Anita Johnston, author of Eating in the Light of the Moon , for a powerful conversation that will completely shift the way you understand emotional eating and your relationship with food. We explore why struggles with food and body image are rarely about food itself, and what these patterns are actually trying to c...

In this episode, I talk about something that might surprise people who are new to my work. Even though I work with women who struggle with emotional eating, food, and their bodies, weight loss is never the goal of this work . And there are important reasons for that. We already live in a culture that constantly tells women their bodies need to be smaller, better, or fixed in some way. Diet culture...

In this episode, I share something deeply personal about my own journey with mental health. At 35, I was diagnosed with bipolar type 2. At the time, it felt like a life sentence. I was told I would likely need medication for the rest of my life and that mood instability would always be something I had to manage. For years before that diagnosis, I had experienced cycles of depression alongside peri...

In this episode, I introduce a concept that can completely change the way you understand your appetite. It’s called developmental hunger . Many women believe their hunger means something is wrong with them. They tell themselves they have no discipline, that they’re always hungry, or that they can never feel satisfied around food. But what if the hunger isn’t actually about food at all? In this epi...

In this episode, I’m joined by Accredited Practising Dietitian and Credentialled Eating Disorder Clinician Kiah Paetz for a deeply compassionate conversation about healing your relationship with food. Kiah specialises in supporting people experiencing eating disorders, disordered eating, food anxiety, and neurodivergence through a non diet, weight neutral approach. In this conversation, she shares...

In this episode, I’m talking about what I believe is the missing piece in emotional eating recovery and it’s not more discipline, willpower, or another plan. It’s support. So many women are trying to heal emotional eating, binge eating, food noise, restriction, body checking, and constant bargaining with food all on their own. On the outside, they look like they have it together. But underneath, t...