184. You're Not Going Backwards | The Truth About Setbacks & Food Freedom

You’re not going backwards. You’re recalibrating.

In this episode, I’m breaking down one of the most frustrating, emotional moments on the food freedom journey: when it feels like you're slipping back into old habits.

I’m sharing the mindset shift that cost me five figures (and was worth every penny), plus the 4 metaphors that will change how you understand progress — ocean waves, islands, valleys, and hill sprints.

If you’ve ever spiraled into shame or self-doubt after a slip, this episode will help you rewrite the script — and remember the heroine you actually are.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast, where food freedom, somatic healing, and sacred storytelling collide. If you've ever felt too emotional, too intense, or just too much. Is your space not to shrink, but to rise. I'm Kayla McDonald, writer archetype, Alchemist and ex health coach gone, broke here to help you break cycles, burn old stories, and embody your boldest self through the power of the written word. Let's dive in. You are not going words. This is an episode. Where I'm breaking down the truth about setbacks, especially on your food freedom journey, and this could be an episode you'll wanna save for those days where it feels like you've lost momentum, like you're back in those habits you've thought you'd conquered. And I know that feeling Group be told, I am in it right now. I wanted this lesson to live here on the podcast because I need it, and if you're listening, I know you do as well. So maybe you've been crutching it for weeks, maybe even months of consistency of follow through. You've been feeling strong, aligned, unstoppable, and then the mindless eating creeps in. You catch yourself checking out and starting to use food for comfort or to regain some sense of control, and you're like, I thought I was done with this and tumbling. It's frustrating. It can feel like you're going backwards, but these moments are not proof that you failed. These moments are defining moments. They're forks in the road, the places where you get to decide what this story means, and that is why this episode exists. This is about burning old scripts and rewriting new stories that move us forward in today's episode. Sharing what setbacks really mean on your food freedom journey, especially for the high performing, high achieving creative, visionary women who have big dreams for their lives. I'm going to share the lesson. I paid five figures. Four, and yes, I would pay that amount again if I had to do it over for this one lesson alone, and I'm not gatekeeping. I'm giving it to you so it can help you as much as it helped me. Then I'm gonna share four key concepts to help you transform your stories about going towards, so you can make that consistent, aligned progress once and for all and feel better doing it. So this comes from my lived experience, not just any lived experience, but my current one. Now I'll sometimes struggle with the pendulum between being too polished and performative and then just being a hot mess where I'm unloading my own mental drama on the interwebs to get attention. I definitely don't wanna do the latter, so I often think I default to the former. Then I'll share something when I'm all the way through it, and I'll come back three months later and I'll be like, I was in the trenches last fall. I was feeling X. Now I'm feeling y, and everything is amazing. I also think there's a middle path, something that, and Garcia calls elegant vulnerability. That is always my intention these days. But also elegant vulnerability with a purpose because I truly believe someone else needs this message. So I'm sharing a little bit of my story to start, and this goes all the way back to mid-April where I messed around and ended up creating this incredible modality for myself. It's a combination of many different things I've studied over the years plus my own unique Kayla Magic, and this modality is fun. It is playful. It works better than anything I've ever tried and dear to my heart because it didn't just heal my relationship with food. It healed a lot of heartbreak, a lot of low self-worth. It helped me love myself more, and this same process that helped me with food is now continuing to help me as I navigate a turbulent transitional phase, both a move and going all in on creating a business. So back in April for the first time, I went over 68 days with no binge eating, even during stressful times, even while crying, sickly every morning in May because I was scared and sad and uncertain, and things were changing. All that, and finally, finally broke through the two hour mark on a half marathon. This is something I had tried to do for 13 years, and then I counted my medals. I failed at that goal at least 13 times, so this was a period of huge momentum, thought I had done it. I thought I was free from emotional eating once and for all until life served me, not just a slice, but an entire humble pie. But I value humility, so I'll eat it Now. The last month, especially the month of August, there's been a lot less aligned eating. That means more mindless eating, more takeout, more restaurants, and now I'm building a business, not building doors all day, which means there's been lower activity. When you combine that with the chronic stress of an impending move, bears big emotions, big uncertainty, and let's be real. That's a lot. We've also had to come to terms with one of my biggest blocks, and I think it's one that gets a lot of women, and I've been reckoning with it, and it's this heart of me that believes I'm only worthy if I'm producing. If I am being useful, and I'm not talking about producing podcast episodes and reels or leading people through coaching calls for people, it has to be providing value that has some kind of a dollar amount attached or else it doesn't count, quote unquote. This is internalized capitalism. And this belief is a bigger trigger for my eating patterns than food ever was. And with all this going on, there's been self-doubt, frustration, and admittedly even some embarrassment about gaining some weight Back when this went on until one morning I had a loving talk with myself and said, Kayla, you are not 21 anymore. You can't act like the world is falling apart because you gained some weight back. It's a gift to not be 21 anymore and have more wisdom and realize at the end of the day, it's not about weight, it's about the story I'm telling about the weight. And honestly, at the end of the day, regardless of the number on the scale, we're just gonna sit. Stand or lie horizontal. As Byron Katie would say, all of this has me thinking deeply about what this setback actually means and how I can navigate it as an author, not a victim, and how to help you do the same as well, because this is all I want for anyone listening to this podcast is for you to remember that you are the author, you are writing the script. So you are the heroine of this story and the fact that you're backsliding after a breakthrough, it's actually not a backslide, it's a recalibration. So I want you to burn the old script. The script of I went backwards. The script of the progress wasn't real. Deep down, you know, better. You felt how different it was. You felt it working, you felt yourself changing, burned down the script of, I'm never gonna figure this out. Nope, we are not going there. Maybe you don't have all the pieces yet, but you've figured out so much. And I promise you these new scripts are here to remind you of exactly this. I have four of them talking about ocean waves, islands, valleys, and hill sprints. Some of these did not come from me. I'm gonna give credit where credit is due, and then I'm gonna use my own lived experiences and share how these apply to food freedom. But before that, I wanna set you free from one big myth that holds so many people back, and this is the myth of permanent arrival. The myth of linear progress. Progress is not linear and it's our expectations that it has to be that create unnecessary suffering. I want you to think of the super market. I know not the super romantic metaphor, but it works because the stock market has its downtime. You know, like the pandemic or when overgrown man, children make policies that tank the world economy. Stock market always comes back, and if you keep investing, keep going. Not withdrawing everything out of fear and panic, you'll see gains over the long term. Okay? Number one, we're talking about oceans. We're gonna get tiny bit scientific here, talking about the way waves work. Waves are created by energy moving through water, and usually this comes from wind. As waves approach the shore, they're gonna slow down an increase in height due to friction with the shallow seabed. Then what happens is they draw water back. It's this invisible pulling motion, like the wave is going backwards, but it's this drawback that allows the wave to rise and gather energy and crash forward with full force. So if there's no drawback, there's not gonna be a crash. The receding is not regression, it's actually where momentum is gathered. It might look like the water is going backwards, but it's actually preparing for impact. The next time you're struggling. Think of it like this. The temporary recession is necessary for gathering more momentum. You're not going backwards. You're learning from the recession so you can prepare for a bigger impact, for more momentum. Think of yourself as a big, powerful ocean wave. All your emotion, your energy, your life force. When it recedes, it's never forever when an ocean wave doesn't panic or spiral when it recedes. The ocean wave knows it's gonna gather energy and then crash forwards in full force. If you can keep this imagery in mind during these periods of recession, you'll generate the energy which is going to create even more forward momentum when the recession ends, because it always ends. The ocean metaphor also connects beautifully to our second one, which is about islands. This was inspired by a quote I once heard from someone inside my inner coach community and she said, when you have your health, you can have many goals, but if you don't have your health, you have, but what, when I think about this, you think about food freedom, health, consistent energy. That's the first goal. That's the first dream island. It's only dream island when you don't have it, because if you're in that struggle, you know how consuming it is to not have food freedom, to not have consistent energy when you're fixated on what you're going to eat, how many workouts you can squeeze in to undo last night's overeating, or how you're gonna stop yourself from eating pizza again tonight. That can be all consuming. It can easily become an obsession. It takes so much energy and processing power, and then you don't have the capacity for other big dreams, at least not enough to make consistent, steady progress towards them. So you work on this whole food freedom thing first. You cultivate the practices and habits and identity shifts that make emotional eating unnecessary. I felt this myself during the 68 day streak of consistency. By about day four, I didn't even want to. In overindulge, I felt so clear and alive and excited about who I was becoming. That binge eating and overeating wasn't even tempting. I got to the Food Freedom Dream Island. But then here is what happened for me and what happens for many people when they achieve food freedom and try to go bigger. Because nobody wants food freedom or consistency with their eating habits. Just for the sake of food freedom. They want to get to that island because they know that that island connects them to other islands. Maybe that's the dream business they've always wanted, or the family where they get to raise their little girls with healthy, loving, empowered relationships around food and body image. Maybe it's a creative endeavor or the ability to finally climb the ladder in their career. Suddenly everything you didn't have the energy or capacity for is now possible and you set out for the next island, let's call it Dream Island 2.0, whatever that island is for you. But here's problem with that island It. The waters are choppier and maybe there's a giant sea monster in between you and that island. You realize, okay, so this watercraft got me to this stream island, but I am not quite ready for this next adventure. When you decide to go farther out to sea and claim these bigger goals, you're gonna have different challenges, and these are gonna demand your expansion and your growth. This doesn't mean you didn't make progress on your food freedom journey. It means you learned how to do food freedom within the confines of that smaller, safer life. And it is possible to create the same sense of food freedom once you move towards Dream Island 2.0. But it's going to be uncomfortable for a while. You might have to take your boat back to the first island and make some upgrades so you can handle the rougher waters. Instead of looking at it like you've gone backwards, look at it like, okay, now I see the conditions where I'm not sustaining my aligned, mindful eating habits. Now I can go in and start strengthening these habits so they're more durable. Even in these more challenging times when I'm pursuing these bigger goals. As long as you don't give up and keep making the adjustments along the way, your nervous system will learn how to hold these bigger goals without turning to food. But the key here, this is so important, you need to keep moving towards that bigger dream steadily and gently until you can pick up the pace. Instead of deciding, oh, I started trying for this big goal, and now I'm back to binge eating, so I must stop working on this goal and go back to my food stuff and fixing that again. Absolutely not my most. This is the worst possible thing you can do, and it will not help you because you already know how to do food freedom in your safe, familiar life. The most important thing to do now is to train yourself to have food freedom inside that bigger, expanded life. That is our second metaphor. We talked about oceans. We talked about islands. Now we're gonna talk about the valley. This is the part of the journey where most people quit. And honestly, it's the part I did quit at the first time around, and this is the lesson I paid High figure score, would pay it again. I will never forget it. Back in 2022, I was signed up for this business program called Peaceful Profits. It is one of the only programs I've ever ghosted and not finished. It also happened to be the most expensive program I've ever purchased, so this has haunted me ever since. Good news is this program has lifetime access, so I'm back in it and going through the process, and now I more clearly see the air of my waves. This is something that is common for many people. You're probably gonna see yourself in this explanation, and I'm sharing this so you can avoid making this mistake ever again hopefully. So in this program, they talk about this thing called the emotional cycle of change. And in this cycle you start at uninformed optimism. This is before you make the change and you're thinking to yourself, this is gonna be so good, so easy, I've got this. Then you start to take action going after that bigger goal, and then you realize all your stuff is coming up. It is harder than you thought it was gonna be. From here, you descend into informed pessimism. Now you're informed about how hard this actually is, and then you keep going down until you get to the valley of despair. This is the rock bottom. Everything feels like it's impossible. It's hard. You're emotional, you're stressed. It's not working. Here's the problem. Most people get to this place and it's so uncomfortable that they quit. They switch to a new goal, or they abandon that goal for a little while and then come back to it. The problem is, if you abandon that goal, that dream, while you were in the valley of despair, you're gonna have to start back at uninformed optimism. We'll do it all again. And you might think this time is gonna be different, and then you start doing the thing again, chasing the goal. When you go back to experiencing that informed pessimism, when you realize, oh, this is still uncomfortable, this still hurts, this is still challenging me in the same ways, then you have to go through the valley of despair again. I recognize this in how I showed up last time, back in 2023 and 2022. I hit the valet of despair when I quit because I hated how stressed I was. I hated how my eating habits when haywire. I hated how hard everything felt. So I went back to my comfortable door building job full-time. Then in 2024 when I tried to rebrand my podcast and my downloads dropped. It was another valley of despair and I quit the podcast. I couldn't handle how painful it was to face those numbers because of the stories I was telling, what I was making it mean about me. So now it's almost poetic that I'm back in the same situation, back in the same valley of despair. Once again, I saw my podcast downloads drop, which honestly I expected as I'm moving into a rebrand and doing things that are more unconventional. I know a lot of people have been following me for the Health Coach stuff. And I also know that when I share more vulnerably about certain topics that matter to me, some people aren't going to like it. But here is what I'm remembering after going back to this program and remembering this emotional cycle of change. The worst thing I could do right now is quit during the Valley of despair and start over. This is a little funny too because this time I was still so uninformed with my optimism. I thought three years and lots of inner work and all this really magical stuff I learned would save me from having to go through the valley again. But it hasn't, and this time. I am remembering the lesson on the my emotional cycle of change, but I actually get it this time. I think last time I heard it, I'm like, makes sense. And then I still quit in the valley of despair. So this time I am learning the lesson from a place of deeper commitment to embodying it. And this is what I want for you as well, especially if you're in a valley. I want you to remember that the most important thing you can do is keep going. Make the decision to stay the course, even when it looks like nothing is working. Even when all your worst nightmares are coming true. Even when you're terrified you're gonna stay in the valley forever, you won't. But the only way out is through. Now, this doesn't mean kill yourself and burn yourself to the ground. In the process of getting through the valley, it does look like steady forward momentum every day or every week, and your capacity will change day by day. Maybe some days it's five minutes of progress. Some days it's an hour. And then maybe there's those days, especially as you get closer to the other side of the valley, which is informed optimism where you'll have more energy and enthusiasm and you can capitalize by doing more on those days. And let me be honest with you about something. There was a week or two, not long ago, where I just should have stayed at my door building job until after the move, and then I wouldn't be dealing with a huge life transition. And I'm trying to start a business, but also not fully starting it because I knew I had this move coming in September. Except now I'm happy I left when I did and that I'm going through the Valley of Despair now, even though it's uncomfortable, if I hadn't done it now, I would still have to deal with the Valley of despair after the move. So I would've only delayed the inevitable. I would've prolonged the part where I got to go up the other side of the valley. So if there's a big dream you have for yourself, and maybe you're delaying it because it feels like a bad time, please remember, if you do this, you're only delaying the inevitable. And if you don't like the valley of despair, which I don't think anybody does, I personally think it's way better to move through it sooner than later. This takes us to our final metaphor when we're talking about Hills. Sprints. Now this works well with the Valley of Despair because if you wanna get out the valley, you might need to get there. I learned about this concept from Steven Kotler, who is someone that does a lot of work helping people with things like peak performance and flow. I was listening to a talk he did, and he was sharing an analogy about runners doing hill sprints when they got to a hill, which is harder than running on flat ground. They focused on maintaining the same pace, but they focused way more on technique. They put their attention on their breathing, on how their feet were hitting the ground on their posture. They became more present and mindful so they could maintain their current pace. I think this applies so beautifully. When we have first found that way to create food freedom in our everyday safe, comfortable lives, but it's not fully translating when we try to go bigger. So food freedom in our everyday lives. That's like running on flat ground food freedom when we go to do big, scary things that demand more of us. That is a hill sprint. So the solution is to dial up our presence and our technique. Think about this for yourself. What practices or rituals do you have that keep you from turning to food for comfort or for nervous system regulation? Zero in on the most important ones, and then do these practices with so much intention and focus while you're building the big dream life. And also, if you haven't quite figured out what these practices are for yourself, this is exactly the work I do with women. It is my calling, and if you just wanna chat about this, feel free to book a complimentary call to adventure with me. I will link that in the episode description. And if you do have these practices, this is when you wanna do these practices with more depth on intention. No more just doing them in a way where you're kind of doing them, but it's more like going through the motions a bigger life and achieving bigger goals. Is going to require deeper devotion to the practices and habits that keep you regulated without needing food. Here is what I'm doing in my own season of growing and expanding. The first one is dance alchemy. Every single morning, and I know I've talked about this on the podcast before. This is a beautiful form of somatic dance that takes you through the four elements. So you're getting into your body, your present element of earth. You're creating healthy emotional flow with water. You're debating your power and shaking off what doesn't serve you with fire, and then you're expanding into the emotions and states you want to feel more of. So air. Basically you get everything you need in 15 minutes or less. So that is one thing I do every morning before I do any business related projects. The second thing I do is the rewriting method, and that is the core methodology I've created to turn my food freedom journey and now my business journey into a love story instead of a torture chamber, which both of these things used to feel like. So I do this through parts work, but it's parts work with a spicy fan fiction twist. What I really love about this is that it's a fun, creative way to do inner child work that often needs to be done because when you're going for these bigger goals, adult you wants the thing for sure, then there's probably younger parts of you who don't feel fully safe to create that thing, because if they did feel safe, you'd probably have it by now or at least be well on your way. Stay tuned because I'm doing a few more episodes on this inner child work and how it translates so beautifully into Food Freedom Journey. That'll be a couple weeks from now, I think. So that's another thing I do every single day, this rewriting method. I do it in the morning and evenings, sometimes a little bit throughout the day if I need it. And it is, like I said, thing that has helped me more than anything else. The third thing I'm really honing in on is my level of presence and mindfulness, especially when I'm eating. So am I at a table without distractions? Am I breathing deeply? I had an episode with Michelle of Coffee Fueled Stories. Her episode comes out next Friday. The one thing she encouraged people to do was the Five Senses Method, and she was doing it with her coffee because she's coffee fueled stories, of course. And I have gone back to doing the five sense method with my food and meal times. I'm also being more proactive and intentional about deepening my meditation and my breath work practices because I need those now more than ever. I'm also getting way better at refusing to multitask. So this looks like creating timers and focusing on one key thing at a time, using something called certainty windows, and I'll attach a YouTube video that I found really helpful if anyone wants to. Work on this more from themselves. There's a YouTube video and a PDF didn't create it, Ryan Doris did, but it's so good. I will link it for you in the show notes and episode description. I'm also remembering to set clear boundaries around social media. So not going on there before lunchtime, if at all possible. This helps me keep my energy my own before I go and interact on these public platforms. So those are some of the things I know help me the most, and these are the ways I'm leading myself right now. I wanted to give you this peek behind the curtain so you can see what this looks like for me. Because as I go on this journey, I'm remembering reminding myself that leadership does not require perfection. So yes, there are things that feel hard, but I'm not coming on here to cry about it to you. I'm coming on here to show you that I get it. You're not alone and here is how I'm leading myself, not so that you can copy the exact same protocol as me, but so that you can see. Okay? Here are some of the tools that might help me, or what's my twist on these tools that could help me? So maybe you have a movement practice or a breathwork practice you've let go of and you wanna get back into it. And if you do wanna learn more about the exact process and framework I've used that has made this healing journey more fun, more playful, deeper and more magical, as I said, you can always hop on a call with me to chat about whether or not this is a good, and again, links will be in the episode description. Finally, I'm gonna give you two embodied activations,'cause I can't pick just one. Well, first we just touched on this. Determine what practices or habits keep you present and emotionally balanced. This is gonna be especially powerful if you're going after a big goal, creating some big changes or just going through a transition, like a job change, relationship change, or a move. That's the first activation. The second one, if you know me. You're not gonna believe I'm giving you this because I am not a country music fan at all. In fact, I'm one of those people who dramatically pretend their ears are bleeding if Alan Jackson starts playing. But there is one country song I am obsessed with, and it's perfect if you're going through the Valley of Despair. If you're in that valley, I want you to turn on the song. If you're going through Hell by Rodney Atkins. Turn it on and then do something where you're moving. So dancing, walking, running, and imagine that movie is taking you closer to being out of that valley of despair once and for all. And as we finish, I want to remind you that you're not behind. You're not going backwards. Your progress counts. You're exactly where you're supposed to be, and you will get to wherever you want to go. Thank you so much for joining me, and I'm excited to connect with you again very soon. Once today's episode sparked something in you, I'd be so honored if you left a review or shared this with someone who's ready to write a new story for their life. Your words ripple, your voice is power, and together we're creating a revolution. One embodied untamed woman at a time. Thank you for walking this mythic path with me. Until next time, write bravely dance wildly and never forget. You are the magic.