The Original Self Podcast

Episode 20 turns to one of the most misunderstood stages of a woman's life: menopause and the very real metabolic and neurological shifts that come with it. Evet DeCota walks through why the strategies that worked in your twenties and thirties stop working the same way at midlife, and why that has nothing to do with discipline or effort. Key takeaways: ● Estrogen decline during perimenopause and m...

When most people think about their relationship with food, they point to their first diet, a painful comment about their body, or years of struggling with emotional eating. But what if the story began much earlier? In this episode of The Original Self Podcast, we explore the science behind how our relationship with food begins long before conscious choice. From prenatal flavor exposure and epigene...

Have you ever reached for food and only realized what you were doing after the fact — as if the decision had already been made without you? You're not imagining it. In this episode of The Original Self Podcast, psychology-informed life coach Evet DeCota explains why that experience is neurologically real, and why willpower is often the wrong explanation for what's happening. Drawing on her graduat...

You've probably heard the term food noise showing up in conversations about GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy. But food noise isn't new — millions of people have been living with it for years without a name for it. Food noise is the constant mental chatter around food that exists whether you're hungry or not. It's thinking about lunch while you're still eating breakfast. It's the negotiati...

Have you ever told yourself you would stop after a few chips, one cookie, or one episode — and then couldn't? Have you spent years believing the problem was your willpower, your discipline, or your relationship with food? You are not broken. You were never supposed to easily resist what the food industry spent decades and billions of dollars engineering you to crave. In Episode 16 of The Original...

Welcome to Before the Rules, a special series from The Original Self Podcast. In this opening episode, Evet DeCota introduces the central question that will guide the entire series: "Who were you before all of this told you who to be around food?" This conversation is not about dieting, weight loss, meal plans, macros, supplements, or the latest nutrition trend. It is about identity. Together, we...

Are you always busy but never truly fulfilled? Do you schedule every hour, stay constantly productive, and still go to bed feeling like something is missing? You are not alone — and you are not broken. In Episode 13 of The Original Self Podcast, psychology-informed life coach Evet DeCota explores the real reason so many high-achieving people feel empty despite doing everything right. This episode...

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, start there. This episode will hit differently if you do. In Part 1, we explored the psychology behind our true crime obsession — the science, the costs, and the ethical questions the genre rarely asks. In Part 2, we go somewhere the research can’t take us. Into the room. My guest, Rhonda Gaines, didn’t watch the Lori Vallow Daybell sentencing on a screen. Sh...

You told yourself you were going to bed early. And yet here you are. In Part 1 of this two-part series, psychology-informed life coach Evet DeCota breaks down the real science behind our true crime obsession — and why it says more about us than we think. This isn't about morbid fascination. It's about evolution, threat intelligence, justice, community, and the complicated cost of consuming other p...

Most of us learned to say “I’m fine” long before we understood what it was costing us. In Episode 11 of The Original Self Podcast, Evet DeCota shares how a childhood bone disease, the loss of her best friend, and a love she was too armored to fight for all shaped her into someone who buried her feelings so deeply she eventually stopped feeling them altogether. Then she’s joined by Jackson — her 17...

Episode 10: They Couldn't Do It Without Us — Normalizing Deviance In this episode, Evet DeCota examines one of the most urgent and underexamined forces shaping our culture: the normalization of deviance. Drawing on psychology, sociology, and deeply personal experience, she explores how sexual, economic, and political deviance all share the same roots — and how systems of protection, media consumpt...

Have you ever looked at your life and thought: Everything is fine, so why doesn’t it feel like me? That low, steady sense of disconnection — when nothing is obviously wrong, but something still feels off — is one of the most common and least talked-about experiences there is. And in this episode, we finally name it. In Episode 9, we explore the hidden pattern of performing your life instead of act...

Most of us have been around someone who makes every conversation about themselves, reacts before thinking, and never seems to notice the effect they have on others. And most of us have, at some point, been that person without realizing it. In this episode, I draw a clear line between self-absorption and self-awareness, and I want to be upfront about what this episode is not. It is not about narcis...

Toxic positivity doesn't feel like positivity when you're on the receiving end. It feels like shame. In this episode of The Original Self Podcast, Evet DeCota explores the real difference between toxic positivity and genuine resilience — and why hope without action becomes one of the most seductive traps we fall into. From the phrases we reach for without thinking — look on the bright side, at lea...

In Episode 6, Evet opens with a simple observation from a friend that raises a bigger question: when did kindness become remarkable? From there, the episode moves through the psychology of hyper-individualism and its three measurable costs — loneliness, polarization, and empathy erosion — tracing how each generation is living them out differently. Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X each get an honest a...

The Original Self Podcast Episode 5: The Hidden Pattern Behind Procrastination: How Your Brain Turns Discomfort into Delay If you have ever cleaned your entire kitchen, reorganized a drawer for the third time, or started a four-season show instead of the one task that has been sitting at the top of your list for weeks, this episode is for you. Most of us have been taught that procrastination is a...

Every loss changes the shape of the life around it. Some losses are announced with funerals and flowers. Others happen quietly, without ceremony, and nobody thinks to ask how you are doing. In this episode of The Original Self Podcast, Evet DeCota is joined by her brother Stefan DeCota for an honest and deeply personal conversation about grief, identity, and who we become when someone or something...

You are using AI right now. Maybe to search, to write, to plan, or to process. But here is the question nobody is asking loudly enough: what is it doing to who you actually are? In this episode of The Original Self Podcast, Evet DeCota takes an honest look at one of the most pressing questions of our time. AI is reshaping advertising, music, news, jobs, and human connection — and most of us are pa...

What if the change you have been waiting to make doesn't require a dramatic overhaul, a perfect plan, or even the right amount of motivation? What if it only requires one small decision, made quietly, on an ordinary day? In this episode, Evet DeCota explores the psychology behind why big changes so often fail and why the smallest, most consistent actions are actually the most powerful agents of la...

Before the expectations. Before the corrections. Before you learned which parts of yourself were acceptable and which ones needed to be managed, there was a version of you that was simply, completely, yourself. This episode is about that person, and what it means to find your way back. In this first episode of The Original Self Podcast, life coach, creator of DeCota Life Coaching, and psychology-i...