Smart, Successful, and Still Struggling with Food? Here’s Why

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Read the Episode Transcript:

Smart, Successful, and Still Struggling with Food? Here’s Why

Let me ask you something…

Have you ever thought, “I know what to do… so why can’t I just do it?”

You’ve got the degree, the career, the ability to juggle 73 things at once. But somehow, the moment you’re alone in the kitchen at 9:30 p.m., all that logic disappears… and the chips win.

Again.

If that sounds familiar, you are not broken. You are not weak. And this episode is going to explain exactly why this keeps happening, and what you can do to finally change it.

Because here’s the truth:
If eating better was just about knowing what to eat… we’d all be super healthy eaters and at our ideal body weight.

This isn’t about food.
This is about your habits, your brain, your stress, your autopilot, and most importantly, your support.

And today, I’m going to walk you through how to start fixing this, step-by-step.

So let’s dive in.

Your Eating Habits Aren’t Flaws or Failures

So here’s the thing most women don’t realize:
Your eating habits aren’t a reflection of your character. They’re a reflection of patterns.
And patterns are built over time…. through stress, reward, repetition, and survival.

Let me explain.

At work, your brain is constantly in problem-solving mode. I know for me when I was in healthcare, working as a Physician Assistant, this was especially true.

In problem-solving mode at work, you’re decisive, capable, sharp. You think on your feet. You care for others. You put out fires.

And when you do that all day, your brain learns something very specific:
“She’s always in charge. She pushes through. She gets it done. Even when she’s exhausted.”

But here’s the twist: Your brain is also keeping track of how often you don’t get a break…
How often your stress goes unresolved…
How often you put yourself last.

So what does it do?

It starts looking for easy ways to get relief.
And if food has ever helped you feel better, even for a moment, your brain takes note.

👉 That brownie after a 12-hour shift? It made me feel good for a second.
👉 That bag of pretzels during charting helped me push through.
👉 That glass of wine and crackers at 8:30 at night gave me something just for me.

That’s not weakness.
That’s biology + reinforcement.

Every time you eat to soothe, distract, or decompress, it becomes a little more automatic.

And after a while, it’s not even a conscious decision. It’s just what you do.

Also, at work, your brain gets constant dopamine hits…. solve a problem, meet a goal, get recognition, check the box, feel productive.

But food? Food becomes the fastest, easiest dopamine hit at the end of a long day.

You come home, and your brain is still craving those same rewards. Only now, it doesn’t have a spreadsheet or a patient or a chart to focus on. It’s just… quiet. Or worse, stressful in a totally different way.

So guess what it turns to?
Food.
And not salad food….comfort food. Craving food. Quick relief food.

Now add emotional layers… the frustration of your weight not budging, the guilt after eating, the voice that says, “You should know better.”

So you feel worse, and the cycle continues.

Now, let me say this again because I really want it to land:

This is not a failure. It’s a habit.

And that’s good news, because habits can be changed.

And not by needing stronger willpower. It’s not about that.

I read this analogy recently and love it. Willpower is like trying to drive with the parking brake on. You can push hard, but it’s exhausting, and eventually you’ll stop.

The answer isn’t to try harder.
It’s to understand the why behind the habit… and then weaken that one and build a better one that creates a much more desirable result.

Smart, Successful Women Who Used to Struggle with Food

So let me give you a few examples of mini case studies, if you will, and what this actually looks like in coaching.

One of my clients, let’s call her Rachel, is a registered nurse and mom. Smart, kind, hard-working. But every day after getting home from work, she’d find herself in the kitchen, eating snacks, despite having a weight loss goal.

She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t even thinking. It just happened.

When we unpacked it, we realized it wasn’t about the snacks.
It was about what that moment represented.

Quiet. Relief. A moment to herself.

So instead of throwing away all the snacks in the house, I helped her form a new ritual — one that still met her emotional needs, but without hijacking her goals. When she has that urge to snack, she checks in to see if she actually has hunger signals, and if not, then on nice days, she goes outside to sit for 10 minutes or go for a 10-minute walk. On not so nice weather days, she reads for 10 minutes.

She came up with those specific activities to ensure that they were something she’d enjoy and that would help give her that quiet, relief, and moment to herself. She is really loving this new routine and she hasn’t been snacking when coming home from work.

Another client, we’ll call her Lisa, who has a very demanding career where she travels often and has to put out a lot of work fires, plus she is a mom of 3, would come home and find herself bingeing. Often, it was actually on healthier foods, but she didn’t like feeling out of control and she was pretty sure it was hindering her weight loss efforts.

So we dug deep and noticed that her teenager often has questions for her as soon as she walks in the door and this was creating some overwhelm. Food was the way her brain learned to respond to that overwhelm and it felt urgent, which is why she ate it quickly and a large volume.

We found a thought she could think to herself about her son before walking in the door to help create some calm, and decided on a strategy to set a little boundary, so she could have 5 minutes to herself and then he could ask anything he wanted.

Calming her nervous system in this way helped break that binge pattern.

A takeaway for you here is that finding the root cause and creating a specific strategy to weaken and then break the habit is so key and takes the willpower out of it. Plus, understanding it’s not a problem with you. It’s just learned patterns.

Our brains are supposed to create habits, so it’s really just doing its job. And it’s so easy to think that it’s a willpower problem, character flaw, or a lack of self-control. But you have self-control in many other areas of your life, right?

Why Struggling with Food is About a Lack of Support

Struggling with food is really more about lack of support from yourself and for yourself. Doing everything for everyone, except for yourself. Supporting everyone, except for yourself.

And when you learn to give that to yourself consistently —

• with food that actually satisfies,
• with routines that regulate stress,
• with mindset shifts that silence that inner critic —

That’s when the transformation really begins.

You go from “I can’t stop eating at night” to “I’m not even thinking about food after dinner.”
From “I always give in to cravings” to “I know how to handle urges without feeling deprived.”
From “I hate how I look” to “I feel proud of how I treat my body now.”

And you know what else happens?

You get back mental space.
The food chatter quiets down.
You stop obsessing about what to eat, what not to eat, what you just ate.
And that creates a kind of peace that most women don’t even realize they’re missing… until they finally feel it.

Listen, I’m not saying this change is instant. But I am saying it’s doable. And it doesn’t have to be as hard as you’ve been told.

You already have the discipline. The strength. The drive. You use it every day for everything and everyone else.

Imagine what happens when you start using it — with support — for you.

The Next Step to Support You and Your Goals

Now, if this episode hit home, and you’re thinking:

“Yes. This is me. I’m tired of trying to do this alone. I’m ready to fix my eating habits, lose the weight, and feel like myself again…”

Then I want to personally invite you to work with me with 1:1 coaching. To see if it’s the right fit for you, book a free consultation with me. We will talk about your specific struggles, goals, how exactly I’d help you.

This is your chance to get real clarity on what’s driving your eating habits and what your next best steps are — no pressure, no judgment.

If we’re a good fit to work together, I’ll share how my 1:1 coaching works and how we can finally get you to that place where you’re not constantly thinking about food, feeling frustrated with your body, or battling that all-or-nothing mindset.

Because you don’t need another diet or cookie-cutter programs that aren’t personalized to you.

You need the right strategy, support, and simple-but-powerful shifts that actually last.

So go to the link in the show notes or visit my website to book your free consult. It’s https://katemjohnston.com/consult

You deserve to feel healthy, confident, and so proud of yourself.

And I’d be honored to help you get there.
and actually becoming a different version of you.