Why the "Inner Work" Feels Like it Isn’t Working

For twenty years, I sat in the therapist's chair as a specialist in eating disorders, operating under the belief that if a woman could just untangle her childhood wounds, her body would finally find its peace. I viewed the mind as the master and the body as a student waiting for instructions.

I was wrong.

By focusing solely on the psyche, I was inadvertently making the "work" heavier. I was treating every physical symptom as an emotional one, overlooking the reality that the mind cannot settle in a body that feels unsafe at a cellular level. I watched as the "gold standard" models I was trained in failed to provide the relief they promised, often leaving women more hyper-vigilant than when they started.

This realization changed how I practice. It moved me away from a "mind-only" model toward a more integrated approach.

If you feel like you’ve been doing "the work" for years but the mental project of food still consumes your day, it’s likely because we are trying to solve nutritional problems with psychological tools. Here are three reasons why the traditional mindset-only path often hits a ceiling.

1. The Mislabeling of Nutritional SOS

When you find yourself standing in front of the pantry at 3:00 PM or unable to stop eating after dinner, the immediate reflex is to label it "emotional eating." We’ve been conditioned to believe that these moments are always a search for a "void" to be filled or a way to soothe an unmet need.

While it is true that your body can whisper through physical symptoms when you aren't giving yourself permission to feel your emotions, there is a complex overlap here that we often ignore. If you are nutritionally depleted, if your protein is low or your minerals are tapped out, your nervous system essentially gaslights you. It produces a physical urgency that feels like an emotional crisis. You end up spending years trying to find a "breakthrough" on the therapy couch for a problem that is actually a biological SOS. You cannot solve a nutritional famine with a psychological insight.

2. The Intuition Trap

The health industry tells us to "just listen to your body," as if intuition is an unwavering, crystal-clear compass. I spent more than a decade teaching “Intuitive Eating” as the only ethical path to freedom. But I eventually had to face a difficult truth: Intuition is a luxury of a regulated nervous system. When you are under-fueled or in a metabolic crisis, your internal signals aren't providing "wisdom," they are delivering survival prompts. It is nearly impossible to "listen" for subtle cues of hunger or fullness when your body is shouting in the distorted language of metabolic urgency. In those seasons, what we call intuition is often just a high-cortisol drive for quick energy. Expecting yourself to eat "intuitively" during a physiological storm isn't food freedom; it’s a setup for failure. Sometimes, the most self-compassionate thing you can do is stop guessing and use data to provide the baseline safety your cells need before they can speak clearly again.

3. The Illusion of Freedom in Chaos

I used to believe that any form of structure, like tracking macros or looking at physiological data, was just a step backward into the cage of diet culture. I thought that "freedom" was defined by a total surrender to spontaneity.

But what I found, both personally and with my clients, is that a lack of structure is often what keeps food as a 24/7 mental project. When you don't have a map, your brain never actually "clocks out." It stays in a state of hyper-vigilance, constantly scanning, second-guessing, and wondering if you’ve "done it right."

Taking care of your body in this way isn't about the metric-driven prison we’ve been taught to fear; it’s about providing the physiological certainty your system needs to finally stop being on high alert. True freedom isn't the absence of a plan; it’s the mental space that opens up when you stop wondering "if" you’ve provided enough and start knowing you’ve met your body's requirements. When the body feels fueled and certain, the mental project finally ends, and the soul has the space to actually live.

The Middle Path

Healing is not a choice between the spirit and the scale. If you only address the mindset, you’re often ignoring the very real nutritional gaps that drive anxiety and fatigue. If you only address the physical, you’re ignoring the grief of what it means to be human, that no amount of protein can soothe.

Today, my work lives in the middle. It’s a space where we stop treating the body like a patient to be analyzed and start honoring it as the incredibly complex, dynamic, and interwoven system that it is; one that deserves our respect and tangible care. My goal in bringing structure and nutrition isn't to move us further from an emotional connection with our body; it’s to provide the foundation we need to deepen into a totally integrated, whole person.