What if your inability to change isn't a failure of willpower, but your heart's way of protecting you from something you're not ready to face? Ali Shapiro, creator of Truce with Food, shares how her journey from overworking addiction to radical life redesign began with a simple question: "Why does this make sense?"

In this raw conversation, Ali reveals how addressing her relationship with food became the gateway to confronting deeper questions about worth, identity, and what success actually means—and why healing often requires becoming a beginner all over again. From her journey through cancer, infertility, and postpartum menopause to finally redefining wealth as "freedom over my time," Ali demonstrates how the courage to slow down and listen to your body's wisdom can unlock transformations you never imagined possible.

Essential listening for anyone measuring busyness instead of impact, struggling to make changes they know they need, or ready to understand why their body might be wiser than their ambition.

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Covered In This Episode

• Why only 1 in 7 heart attack survivors actually change their diet and lifestyle—even when they know it could save their lives
• The hidden cost of measuring busyness instead of impact and how it perpetuates chronic exhaustion
• What your “compete strategy” is and why it keeps you trapped in a binary between hustle and failure
• The developmental reason we spend the first half of life proving we can exert our will on the world—and what the second half requires
• Why food (and overwork) are “almost addictive”—soothing just enough to quiet the alarm but never enough to meet the actual need
• What “immunity to change” reveals about the knowing-doing gap and why willpower will never be the answer
• How cultural conditioning around productivity and “earning your worth” gets embedded in our nervous systems
• The question that transforms self-judgment into constructive self-compassion
• Why adults won’t do deep change work unless they’re experiencing “optimal conflict”—and what that actually means
• What modern life is missing in terms of cultural rites of passage and initiations into new life stages
• How redefining wealth and success metrics can completely shift what feels possible in your life
• Why being willing to be a beginner (again) is both the most important and most uncomfortable requirement for transformation
• The relationship between emotional safety, digestion, chronic illness, and the body’s wisdom​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Chapters

00:34 Introducing Ali Shapiro
04:49 Redefining Success and Overcoming Overworking
08:12 The Importance of Rest and Replenishment
28:13 The Immunity to Change Process
41:28 The Knowing-Doing Gap and Emotional Immune System
42:11 Food and Emotional Attachment
46:00 The Vulnerability of Change
54:45 Health Beyond Weight Loss
01:03:55 Cultural Conditioning and Personal Agency
01:10:11 Final Thoughts and Guidance

Special Offers

• Free Heart Coherence Masterclass – A complimentary session with Meghan Telpner exploring how to create alignment between your heart and mind, access inner calm, and live from your most authentic self.

• Click here to get 30% off Rise & Shine: A Guided Approach To Heart-led Living and Leadership. (Click here if you reside in Canada)

Links + Resources

 Ali's Platforms

• Ali's Website
• Truce with Food Certification
• Truce with Food Podcast - formerly Insaitable 

Referenced in This Episode

• EP 09 of the Courageous Pivot Podcast: The Resistance Is Your Wisdom: Why Small Changes Can Feel Impossible
• EP 016 of the Courageous Pivot Podcast: What About the Money? The Hard Truth About Financial Security and Life Pivots
• Enneagram - personality types as mentioned by Ali Shapiro
• Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey — published by Harvard Business Review Press
• Rest, Play, Grow by Dr. Deborah MacNamara
• Nourished by Dr. Deborah MacNamara — available through her foundation website
• Laura McKowen — writer on sobriety whose rule "it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility" Ali references
• Dr. Stacy Sims — exercise physiologist, Ali references regarding protein recommendations

More About Ali Shapiro

Ali is the host of the top-ranked podcast Insatiable, a holistic nutritionist, and creator of Truce with Food and the Truce with Food Certification.

She’s academically, practically, and empathetically aware of how the medical system, wellness world, diet culture, and body positivity movements all have their own flavor of crazy. 

Ali developed Truce with Food while in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, where she drew from her years of working with real life clients and her own personal healing journey of battling food and having cancer as a teenager.

Ali’s work and clients’ unique success has been featured in well + Good, mindbodygreen, Prevention, Women’s Health, and Forbes, as well as industry leading podcasts Being Boss, Tell Me Something True, and Food Heaven.