Bad body image day?

I'm sharing five things I use in real time to interrupt the spiral, work with nervous system dysregulation, and get through a trigger without letting it take over the whole day. We talk about body neutrality, somatic tools, movement, distraction, and what to do when you're too flooded to think clearly.

(This episode idea came to me as I was talking to a client on Whatsapp and walked by a full length mirror -- and worked through it in real time.)

In this episode:• how I work with a body image trigger in real time
• why distraction can actually help
• how movement helps when body image feels urgent
• one simple somatic tool for dysregulation
• what I do when I'm too flooded for any of the above

What happens when two body image coaches start talking "off the record"?

(also: Join The Body Image Workshop this May for more of this type of conversation)

In this special joint episode, Stefanie Michele - a Binge Eating Recovery Coach and Kristina Bruce, a Body Peace Coach share a raw, unedited conversation that was originally happening offline. We realized the "good stuff" coming up was too important not to share, so we hit record.

We're diving deep into the high cost of perfectionism in how we've viewed and treated our bodies for decades. We're pulling back the curtain on what it actually looks like to unlearn the shame and find authentic body peace.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The "Dangling Carrot" of Thinness: Why reaching your "goal weight" never actually feels like arriving.

• Soul Disconnection: How the pursuit of beauty standards forces us to disconnect from our intuition and life force.

• Subtle Trauma: How offhand comments from family and friends shape our body image from a young age.

• The Path to "Enoughness": Why recovery isn't about fixing your body, but removing the negativity that blocks your inherent worth.

• Stefanie's Turning Point: Making the decision to stop fighting her body after decades of binge eating.

• Kristina's 40-Day Experiment: A radical approach to letting go of negative self-talk and sitting in the truth of who you are.

This is a different kind of episode—no scripts, no filters, just two women who have been through the fire talking about what it really takes to heal your relationship with your body.

CONNECT WITH US:

Stefanie Michele

www.iamstefaniemichele.com
https://www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

Kristina Bruce

www.kristinabruce.com
https://www.instagram.com/kristinabrucecoach/
Download for free The Guide to Body Peace: www.kristinabruce.com/guide

More from Stef:

Body Image Workshop

https://www.iamstefaniemichele.com/body-image-workshop

Substack (essays on body image, eating, and the nervous system)
iamstefaniemichele.substack.com

Instagram (daily thoughts + short-form content)
instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele

If you feel like you think about food more than other people, or your appetite just seems… bigger — this episode is going to matter.

This episode is about appetite and mental hunger, and why both are so often misunderstood in binge eating recovery.

A lot of people assume that thinking about food a lot means something is wrong. Or that if a "normal" meal doesn't satisfy them, they're doing something wrong. Or that needing more food than expected means they can't be trusted.

But those conclusions are often based on standards that were never built for everyone in the first place.

In this episode, I break down the difference between:

• appetite vs mental hunger (and why mental hunger can be real hunger)
• habit eating vs compulsive eating
• eating to appetite vs eating in response to guilt
• why you can feel full and still feel driven to eat
• how cumulative hunger builds and shows up as "bottomless" hunger
• the role of psychological pressure, perfectionism, and agency in eating patterns

We also get into how appetite varies more than we've been taught to believe — and how using a fixed idea of what "enough" looks like can quietly create the very patterns you're trying to stop.

This is for anyone who has felt like:

• "I eat more than I should."
• "I can't trust myself around food."
• "Why am I still thinking about food after I've eaten?"

There's more going on here than willpower.

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