Last year’s version of me thought it would all be a distant memory by now. Just a part of my past. She thought this year I’d be…

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And I want to tell you about it. Because my nervous system has been stuck in freeze for over a year and the hunger signals I teach you to notice have gone offline in my own body.

The thing I got stuck on before I made that decision was the credibility argument. I am a registered nutritionist. A personal trainer. Train…

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I share my honest story of battling disordered eating from age 10, how I finally stopped trying to solve a psychological problem with nutrition solutions, and what actually changed.

In this episode:

1. Why I cried in Tesco over broccoli (and what it really meant)

2. The rest…

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Not in a poetic spiritual “I’ve transcended” way. It’s more like I realise I haven’t eaten because it didn’t occur to me that I needed to. Or I haven’t washed my hair in days because that means showering, which means getting undressed, and it feels like too much, so I don’t. Or shaving my legs or putting on body lotion feels like something that happens to other people. People who are connected to the thing they live inside

I learned to do this. It was a survival skill.

Last year I had an extended hospital stay. Multiple surgeries. Needles, infections, heavy bleeding, pain I couldn’t describe and wouldn’t want to. More here if you’re curious.

After one procedure, I was half awake, being brought back to the ward by three staff members. Two had left, and one person was still in the room when I managed to say out loud, “My back is wet.” He turned around, his face dropped, and he ran at me. It took over an hour to stop the bleeding.

During that time, I looked calm. I think I smiled as my boyfriend came into the room and told him “Oh, it’s not as bad as it looks!” (obvs high AF!) I didn’t say much else other than to reassure everyone it was all going to be fine. But inside, I was terrified. If yu didn’t have to fast before surgery I’m pretty sure I’d have shat myself. I was certain this was how I was going to die.

That was the moment I left my body. I checked out, because staying in it was unbearable. And dissociation, that quiet departure from yourself, is what got me through. Through that night. Through the next surgery. Through the next month. Through my last admission, where I could feel the edges of something enormous threatening to crack open and I held it shut with everything I had.

And then I went home. And my body was still there. But I wasn’t really in it anymore.

I’m sharing this because it’s Valentine’s Day, and every other thing you’ll read today will be about loving your body or feeling sexy or “treating yourself.”

And I think there’s a different conversation to have. One about what happens when you’re not in your body at all. When the disconnection runs so deep that intimacy with food, with your partner, with yourself, becomes something you do from the outside looking in.

This isn’t just my story. I hear versions of it every single week.

Maybe Yours Looks Like This

It doesn’t always look dramatic. It doesn’t require a hospital stay or a trauma history.

Sometimes it looks like this:

A woman who’s just got engaged. She wants to try for a baby. She wants her partner. But she can’t let him see her. She avoids intimacy not because she doesn’t want it but because she cannot believe she’s desirable. She can’t allow another person to look at her body and want it. The engagement ring is on her finger and she still can’t accept that he chose her, all of her, as she is.

Or this: a woman who monitors every angle during sex. Not her pleasure her appearance. How her stomach looks. What her partner might be thinking. Whether they’re enjoying it. She’s running a performance review in her head while her body is supposed to be feeling something.

She’s not feeling anything. Because she’s not in her body. She’s above it, watching, assessing, managing.

Or this: a woman getting dressed for a night out. Forty minutes in front of the mirror. Not choosing an outfit but making a mental note of what’s wrong. That top shows too much arm. Those trousers make her look wide. The dress she actually likes requires “the right underwear” and “not having eaten bread that day.” She cancels. Or she goes, and spends the whole evening tugging at fabric and comparing herself to every other woman in the room.

Your story might look different, but I bet it feels so similar.

You Haven't Lost The Ability To Feel. You've Been Practising Not Feeling.

This is the thing that changes everything when it finally clicks.

Ignoring your hunger is a body disconnection skill.

Not recognising when you’re full is a body disconnection skill.

Avoiding mirrors, or obsessing over them, is a body disconnection skill.

And not being able to feel pleasure during sex? Same skill. Same disconnection.

When you spend years ignoring your body’s signals about food, overriding hunger because you’re “being good,” pushing past fullness because you’ve already “ruined the day,” eating without tasting because you’re numbing something you don’t want to feel, you’re training yourself to live in your head, not your body.

And then you wonder why you can’t be present during sex. Why you can’t orgasm? Why you’re thinking about your stomach instead of feeling your partner’s hands?

You haven’t lost the ability to feel. You’ve been practising not feeling. For years. Maybe decades.

The food stuff and the sex stuff and the body image stuff aren’t three separate problems. They’re one disconnection showing up in every room of your life.

This is what we work on in Weight Loss Without Chaos Accelerator. Not just the food, but the disconnection underneath it. The pattern of living in your head instead of your body. Because until you come back to your body, no meal plan or workout programme is going to make you feel at home in it. 6 modules. Self-paced. £297. Join the waitlist.

You might not have a hospital story. But you do have a story.

Maybe you watched your mother get dressed for a night out, pulling at fabric, sighing at the mirror, asking, “Does this make me look fat?” Maybe your grandmother refused to be photographed. Sat out of swimming on holiday. Made herself small whenever bodies were on display.

Maybe no one ever told you directly that your body wasn’t good enough. But you watched the women around you reject theirs. And you absorbed it without anyone meaning to pass it on. More on inherited body image here.

Or maybe it was more direct than that. A comment. A look. A weigh-in at school. A boyfriend’s throwaway remark that landed in your chest and never left.

However it happened, at some point you learned that your body was something to manage, not something to live in. And you’ve been managing ever since.

It’s not just me, or just you, it’s most of us!

I don’t usually throw statistics around. But I want you to see this isn’t just you.

Nearly 70% of adult women report withdrawing from activities because of how they feel about their body. Seventy percent. That’s the pool party you didn’t go to. The holiday photo you opted out of. The sex you avoided because you couldn’t bear being seen.

In one study of over a thousand women aged 30 to 74, despite 73% falling in the normal weight range, more than 70% wanted to be thinner. And this held for women over 65 too. It doesn’t go away with age. If anything, it deepens because now your body is changing in ways you can’t control, and the strategies you used to manage it are starting to fail.

Around 50% of adult women report body dissatisfaction. Not “I wish my stomach was flatter.” Clinically measured dissatisfaction. Half of us are walking around actively unhappy with the thing we live inside.

And here’s the one that kills me: a poor body image is the single strongest predictor of developing an eating disorder. Not trauma. Not genetics. Not Instagram. Body image.

You’re not vain for caring about this. It’s not superficial. It’s driving everything.

You don’t have to love your body. But you also don’t have to live in opposition to her.

I’m not going to tell you to feel sexy. I’m not going to ask you to stand naked in front of a mirror and say affirmations. That stuff makes me want to throw things, and I suspect it does the same for you.

But I am going to tell you what I’m doing. Because I’m in this too. This isn’t something I’ve solved and I’m teaching you from the other side. I’m in it, doing the work, day by day.

I’m getting lymphatic massages at the mo. Not because it’s trendy, but because someone else’s hands on my body in a safe, therapeutic way is teaching me that my body is something to be cared for, not just survived in.

I’m taking long baths. Putting on body lotion afterwards. Slowly. Not rushing through it to get to the next task.

I’m doing home pedicures. Flossing. Washing my hair when it needs washing instead of when I can’t sotp scratching at my scalp.

These sound tiny. They are tiny. But every single one of them is an act of re-entry. A moment where I notice that I have a body, and I treat it like it matters.

Day by day, I’m coming back.

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HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE GETTING TODAY

I’m going to walk you through:

The Framework: Self-objectification, the actual mechanism driving your body image, your food stuff, and your sex life. The “oh shit, that’s what I’ve been doing” stuff. Why you became your own surveillance camera and how to switch it off.

The Midlife Layer: What happens when perimenopause and menopause land on top of decades of body disconnection. Why this feels harder, not easier.

Real Life: Three women, three different patterns, three different versions of living outside their body. You’ll find yourself in their stories.

The Path Back: How to actually come home to your body. WTAF mindfulness is and how to use it. The practices I use with VIP coaching clients. The mistakes to avoid. And what becomes possible when you stop watching yourself and start feeling your life.

No affirmations. No body positivity mantras. No, “just love yourself.”

Just the stuff that actually works.

This is what we work on in Food Freedom Foundation. Not just the food room. All five. Because the pattern that makes you hide biscuit wrappers is the same pattern that makes you unreachable during sex. One disconnection. Five rooms. Same surveillance camera. We learn to turn it off. 6 modules. £297.

I'm Ready

If you want to understand the full picture first, keep reading.

What follows is for paid subscribers.

The framework. The tools. The midlife layer. The mindfulness practices. Three case studies with the actual methodology. The mistakes to avoid. What becomes possible when you stop living from the outside in.

If you’ve read this far, you’re ready.

Get The Full Framework

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It’s easier to teach the frameworks, you know? Easier to share client wins than admit I once cried in Tesco because they didn’t have broccoli.

Not my finest moment. A staff member eventually took pity on me and went out back to find some.

Same week, I cried over a plate of salmon and asparagus, genuinely my two least favourite foods on earth, and then ordered pizza anyway.

I thought I was losing my mind.

You’ve thought that too, right?

Where It Started

I developed a disordered relationship with food when I was 10. Not a typo. Ten.

By my early teens, it had become a full-blown eating disorder. And by my twenties, my entire life revolved around food and fitness, literally. I worked 12-hour shifts in gyms. I counted, tracked, planned, and negotiated with myself constantly.

The mental load was relentless.

I’d plan Monday’s meals on Friday. Change my mind six times by Sunday. Lie in bed running calculations, if I have three fewer grapes and only one spoon of rice, I can have a cookie during my break.

This is what my brain did. All day. Every day.

And the shame of it.

I’d hide wrappers so it “wouldn’t count.” I ate standing up at the kitchen counter because somehow that didn’t count either.

Terrified of food. Lusting after it non-stop.

Sound familiar?

What I Tried

Everything. I tried everything.

I hired bikini competitors to train me into shape and give me meal plans. You know the type: chicken, broccoli, rice, repeat. That’s where the dreaded salmon and asparagus came from. They’d tell me to be stricter, push harder, want it more.

I couldn’t have wanted “it” any more. “It” was everything.

I’d be stricter. It would work for a bit. Then it wouldn’t. And I’d blame myself.

I tried gentler approaches too. But they didn’t feel hard enough to make a difference. If I wasn’t suffering, was I even trying?

I tracked obsessively. MyFitnessPal was my frenemy, the anxiety reliever and anxiety source in one app. Opened more times than Tinder at a wedding. I’d bargain with myself: three fewer grapes, 15g rice instead of 20g, then I’ve “earned” something nice.

I tried “just eating normally.” But I couldn’t remember what normal was supposed to look like. Normal had been gone so long I wasn’t sure it ever existed.

The pattern was always the same:

New approach. Initial hope. Some progress. Then a slip. Then a spiral. Then starting over on Monday.

Every single time, I blamed myself. I was the problem. I was weak. I had no willpower. Everyone else could do this. Why couldn’t I?

This is the kind of thing I wish someone had explained to me years ago. If it’s useful, pass it on.

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So what changed?

I watched other people just eat and move on.

Not special people. Not people with superhuman discipline. Just friends eating lunch and then thinking about something else.

I thought to myself if they can do it, it has to be possible. I can’t be so broken that my basic humanity is gone. Surely?

I was miserable. Genuinely, deeply miserable.

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life like this. Meal to meal. Snack to snack. Terrified of food one minute, obsessed with it the next.

I wanted my life back. My headspace. The ability to concentrate on my job, my studies, even hobbies. My actual life. Not just what I was going to eat next and how I was going to compensate for it.

I had this image of myself at 80, still logging food into MyFitnessPal in the nursing home. Still negotiating with myself about sugar-free jelly pots.

That couldn’t be it. That couldn’t be the rest of my life.

Have you thought the same?

What changed wasn’t the food.

So I know that sounds like something you’d read on a wellness Instagram post and roll your eyes at. But stay with me.

I’d spent years trying to solve a psychological problem with nutrition solutions. More rules. Better plans. Stricter tracking. Perfect macros. I might as well have been trying to save a sinking ship by putting up umbrellas.

None of it worked because none of it addressed WHY I was doing what I was doing.

The way I thought about food was the problem. The way I felt about food was the problem. What I made food mean about me was the problem. Not food itself.

Think about it, I could recite macronutrient ratios in my sleep. I knew the glycemic index of every carbohydrate. I could meal prep like a professional. I had more nutrition knowledge than most of the trainers I’d hired.

Information was never the issue.

The issue was that I’d attached my entire sense of worth to what I ate. Every “good” day meant I was a good person. Worthy of love, of taking up space. Every “bad” day meant I was failing at life. Food had become the scoreboard for my self-esteem, and I was losing with every deviation from “perfect.”

The issue was that restriction had rewired my brain to see certain foods as forbidden, which made them irresistible, which made me eat them, which made me feel shame, which made me restrict harder. A perfect, vicious loop.

The issue was that I’d never once asked myself WHY I was standing at the fridge 47 times a day. What was I actually hungry for? What feeling was I trying to fix with food?

I didn’t need another meal plan. I needed to understand my own brain.

So I challenged myself:

I ate more than 1500 calories. Consistently.

I didn’t “get fat” like my head had predicted.

I trained harder. Recovered better. Grew some muscle. Changed shape. Slept properly for the first time in years.

The thing I’d been terrified of? It was the thing that actually worked.

Can you see why willpower was never going to fix this?

YOU MIGHT BE THINKING:

Now, if you’re anything like the women I work with, your brain is already generating reasons why this won’t work for you.

“That’s great for you, Georgia, but I’m different.”

I hear this constantly. Let me save you the trouble of convincing yourself you’re the exception.

I worked through this while:

• Working 12-hour shifts in a gym

• On call 24/7 for a fitness industry giant (0/10 do not recommend)

• Running my own business on the side

• Going through a breakup

• Moving across the country

• Having had a disordered eating brain since I was 10

If anyone had an excuse to stay stuck, it was me.

“I don’t have time for this.”

I work with women who run teams, build businesses, make multi-million-pound decisions, and manage families. Women who haven’t had “free time” in years.

This work doesn’t require more time. It requires a different approach to the time you’re already spending thinking about food. Which, if you’re honest, is probably several hours a day. We’re just redirecting that energy somewhere useful.

“I’ve tried everything.”

No. You’ve tried every diet. You’ve tried every food solution to a psychological problem. That’s not everything. That’s the same thing in different packaging.

You haven’t tried actually understanding why you do what you do.

“Maybe I’m just broken.”

You’ve succeeded at harder things than this. You’ve built careers, raised children, navigated relationships, handled crises.

You’re not broken. You’ve just been using the wrong tools. You wouldn’t use a hammer to fix a software bug. You can’t use meal plans to fix thought patterns.

“It’s too late for me.”

I had disordered eating from the age of 10. My entire adult life revolved around food and fitness. Literally, it was my job. If anyone was a lost cause, it was me.

I’ve worked with clients in their 60s who’ve struggled since childhood. It’s never too late.

One of the most beautiful things I’ve learned in my therapy training so far is this: The brain is plastic. It’s capable of change at any age. Midlife is actually the perfect time for this work because you finally have the self-awareness to see your patterns.

You’re not too far gone. You’re exactly ready.

“I just need to try harder.”

This one’s my favourite. Because it’s the lie that’s kept you stuck the longest.

Trying harder at the wrong thing doesn’t work. It just exhausts you faster.

Which of those have you been telling yourself?

WHAT NOBODY TELLS YOU:

There are a few lies you’ve been sold that have kept you stuck.

Myth 1: You need more willpower.

Willpower is a finite resource. It depletes throughout the day, which is why you’re fine at breakfast and falling apart by 4pm. This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a design problem. You’ve been relying on the one resource guaranteed to run out.

Myth 2: You need to eat less and move more.

You probably know exactly what to eat. You could write the meal plan yourself. You’ve read the books, done the research, listened to the podcasts. Information isn’t your issue. If knowing what to do was enough, you’d have solved this years ago.

Myth 3: You need to “heal your relationship with food.”

I see this phrase everywhere and it makes me want to scream. What does it actually mean? Light a candle? Journal about your feelings? Forgive your mother?

It’s vague. It’s passive. It doesn’t give you anything to actually do.

You don’t need abstract healing. You need specific tools, concrete strategies, and an understanding of what’s driving the behaviour in the first place.

Myth 4: You just need to be kinder to yourself.

Generic self-compassion doesn’t work. Telling yourself “it’s okay, tomorrow’s a new day” while you’re elbow-deep in the biscuit tin isn’t kindness. It’s avoidance.

What you need is fierce self-compassion. The kind that says: “I’m not going to let myself keep suffering like this. I’m going to figure out what’s actually going on. Not because I’m broken, but because I deserve better than this exhausting cycle.”

That’s not soft. That’s the hardest, most loving thing you can do.

I wrote more about this if you want to go deeper.

Starting to see why nothing worked?

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE GETTING TODAY:

I’m going to walk you through:

The Framework: The 3 U’s. The exact process I use with every client. Why it works when diets, tracking, and willpower didn’t. This is the psychology piece nobody teaches.

Real Life Examples: Three women, three different patterns, three different shifts. You can see exactly what this looks like and find yourself in their stories.

The Path Forward: How to actually do this. The mistakes to avoid. What’s possible when food stops taking up all your headspace. And how to work with me if you’re ready.

No meal plans. No macros. No “just try harder.”

Just the stuff that actually works.

If you're already thinking "just tell me how to fix this" - I'm running a free workshop on January 21st. "Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Food." 60 minutes. Live. I'll show you exactly why your brain does what it does, and what to do instead.

I'm in!

If you want to understand the full picture first, keep reading.

HOW I WORK NOW:

After years of figuring this out the hard way, then training as a nutritionist and therapist to understand the science behind it, I’ve landed on something simple.

I call it the 3 U’s. Not because I’m obsessed with alliteration (okay, maybe a little), but because it’s the actual order things need to happen.

Understand. Unlearn. Unlock.

That’s it. Three stages. In that order.

Most approaches skip straight to “Unlock.” Here’s your meal plan, here’s your workout, go.

That’s why they fail you.

You can’t unlock what you want until you’ve understood why you’re stuck and unlearned the patterns keeping you there. It’s like trying to run a marathon with a broken leg. You can want it. You can try harder. But until you fix the leg, you’re not going anywhere.

Here’s what each stage actually does:

UNDERSTAND - We figure out why you do what you do. Not in a therapy-for-years way. In a practical, “oh, THAT’S why I’m standing at the fridge at 9pm” way. There are actual answers to these questions. Real, specific, fixable answers.

UNLEARN - We interrupt the patterns keeping you stuck. The all-or-nothing thinking. The Monday resets. The rules you absorbed from diet culture that are running in the background like malware. Most of what you believe about food isn’t true. It’s just familiar.

UNLOCK - Then, and only then, we work on what you actually want. Fat loss? Great. Food freedom? Absolutely. Both? That’s most of my clients. Those aren’t mutually exclusive. You’ve just been sold methods that made you choose.

But first, let me show you this isn’t just theory.

This is what actually happens:

“When I’m asked how I lost the weight, the answer is that I’m not actually doing anything in particular. This is just the way I eat now.”

“It’s like doing reverse psychology on myself. I’ve given myself unconditional permission to eat and I actually feel good. I always thought giving myself permission would result in me just eating crappy food.”

“I ordered a carbonara for the first time ever – I’ve never ordered that because of the calorie content. For the first time in a very long time I haven’t once thought about restricting earlier to compensate for eating out later.”

“On Wednesday I could feel myself seeking out food for comfort. I used to think this was a ‘binge type of day.’ This time I got curious, why was I seeking food? I had a snack, talked to a friend, had a little cry. And that was all I needed. Instead of hating the urge to eat, I thanked it.”

Real women. Real messages in my inbox.

Not because I gave them a meal plan.

Because they finally understood why they couldn’t stick to the meal plan in the first place.

So, how do we get there? Let me walk you through exactly how this works.

What follows is for paid subscribers.

The framework. The tools. Three client case studies with the actual methodology. The mistakes to avoid. What becomes possible when food stops taking up all your headspace.

If you’ve read this far, you’re ready

Get my exact framework

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