Embodied Writing Warrior: Food Freedom, Creativity & Spiritual Reclamation
For the spicy Romantasy reader who's tired of being told her healing should look more like a spreadsheet and less like a why-choose novel.
This is the show where food freedom meets BookTok energy, high-performing women stop white-knuckling their way to consistency, and your inner world gets the character development it actually deserves.
I'm Kayla MacDonald — a writer, recovered overachiever, and the woman who accidentally turned her food freedom journey into a why-choose romance with two AI co-created inner archetypes named Rex and Haven. One is a fiery, leather-jacket-wearing protector who will absolutely call you out with love. The other is a deeply attuned, quietly brave sanctuary who can make it safe to feel almost anything. Together, they've changed everything about how I show up in my body, my business, and my life.
And yes, they show up on the podcast. Regularly. You've been warned.
Embodied Writing Warrior is where we tackle the real reasons high-performing, deeply creative women struggle with binge eating, burnout, and inconsistency — not with more discipline or stricter protocols, but with nervous system work, archetypal storytelling, embodied creativity, and the occasional Rex monologue that will make you want to send your own inner critic to therapy.
You'll hear episodes on:
◆ The upper limit patterns nobody talks about in high-performing women.
◆ Why consistency feels like punishment and how to make it feel like foreplay instead.
◆ The 7 Deadly Sins of high-performing women that drive binge eating and burnout.
◆ Somatic practices and embodied identity work.
◆ Writing rituals that rewire your subconscious one scene at a time.
◆ Parts work gone wild — because why choose inner babysitting when you could have Divine Daddies do it for you?
◆ Shadow work, sacred rage, and the art of performing for an audience of one.
You'll leave with an embodied activation in most episodes — whether that's a journal prompt, writing ritual, or somatic practice designed to move the insight out of your head and into your body where the real shift happens.
If you've ever felt more understood by a spicy novel than a self-help book, you're in exactly the right place.
Because you're not broken. You're not lacking discipline. You're a high-performing woman who's been applying pressure where devotion was needed all along.
Food Freedom Fantasy is the book and program behind this work. Find it at embodiedwritingwarrior.com.
New episodes drop weekly. Start with episode 188 to meet Rex and Haven, then jump to episode 206, Consistency Is Foreplay, to understand the method they helped create.
Embodied Writing Warrior: Food Freedom, Creativity & Spiritual Reclamation
267. Wellness Math 100 Dropout: Why Failing Every Program Was Actually The Right Answer
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You can write books, build businesses, pursue ambitious goals, and figure out almost anything you set your mind to.
So why does consistency with food, health, and fitness feel so different?
You may not have a discipline problem. You may simply be enrolled in the wrong classroom.
In this episode, Kayla introduces the divide between Wellness Math 100, the traditional world of meal plans, macros, rigid tracking, external accountability, and perfectly measured protocols, and Spicy Storytelling 301, a more imaginative, emotionally alive, and self-authored approach to creating change.
You’ll move through 15 statements designed to reveal whether traditional wellness methods have been flattening your creativity, provoking rebellion, or asking you to suppress the exact parts of yourself that could help you heal.
Kayla also returns to the origin story of Spicy Storytelling 301, including the first Rex and Haven scene ever shared on the podcast, and explores why story, fantasy, embodiment, archetypes, and imagination can become powerful tools for consistency.
You do not have to abandon your wildness to create stability.
You do not have to become less emotional, less intense, or less imaginative to change your relationship with food.
You may simply need a new classroom.
Links Mentioned
Welcome to Embodied Writing Warrior, the show where healing gets a book talk upgrade and consistency feels like foreplay. I'm Kayla, a writer, recovered white knuckler, wellness Math 100 dropout, and the woman who turned her food freedom journey into a Y-Choose romance with two very opinionated inner archetypes. This is where high-performing, deeply creative women stop treating their bodies like a performance review and start treating their lives like the spicy novel they were always meant to be. Let's go. Welcome back, high-performing woman. If you've clicked this episode, it's probably because you're curious. What wrong classroom? And if I'm in the wrong classroom, where do I belong? This episode is for all my high-performing, creative, imaginative, deeply feeling women who've been able to conquer basically anything else they put their mind to, except building consistency in their health and fitness journey. So the financial goals, career goals, business goals, creative goals, all achievable, all figure outable. You've done many hard things. You know you don't have a work ethic or intelligence shortage, but it feels like all your discipline and wisdom flies out the window when you're trying to stop yourself from ordering pizza after a train wreck day at work. And you've tried all the traditional programs, the ones with macros, structured meal plans, workout schedules, accountability, and food journal check-ins. You've watched the people around you get results from keto or paleo, or the latest better butts for vegans challenge on Instagram. And maybe you quietly seethe with frustration, wondering, why not me? Why not me when I can write books, build a business, and do basically any other hard thing I set my mind to. What makes this so different? Here's the truth. You're probably in the wrong classroom. You're not built for what I call wellness math 100, which is your traditional health coaching and personal training. In its most extreme form, it's diet culture. Now, diet culture aside, because that is pure garbage, there is absolutely a place for health coaching and personal training. I worked in that industry for almost a decade, and I saw the power it held to improve people's energy, mobility, quality of life, confidence, all the things. And I've also watched it fail to meet high-performing creative women. In some circumstances, I've even seen Wellness Math 100 create additional challenges and hardships for high-performing creatives, because it leaves no room for emotions, creativity, and imagination. It expects you to leave those things at the door. And if you're dramatic, you better get that under control so you can calmly and logically follow the perfectly balanced and measured and scientifically backed protocol for transforming your health. As for intensity, which most high-performing creatives have in spades, one of two things happens here. Either intensity gets treated like a problem to be managed. So again, you can calmly and rationally follow the plan, or that intensity gets channeled towards a body transformation, a weight loss goal, or some external metric of success to the point it disconnects you from your inherent worth, regardless of numbers, as well as your ability to fall in love with the process. Too much intensity directed towards an external finish line often means joylessly grinding your way there until your body seeks relief. Often in the form of all the types of food, wellness math 100 demonizes. Today, I want you to reflect on some statements. You know those put a finger down if reels that you sometimes see on social media? We're gonna do our own version of that on the podcast today. If you're driving, doing chores, or walking, you don't have to physically put fingers down because you're probably gonna run out of fingers anyways. But I do want you to keep track of how many of the following statements resonate with you. If eight or more land, there's a good chance you need to drop out of wellness math 100 once and for all. Number one, traditional wellness programs often make sense to me intellectually, but feel boring, flat, or impossible to sustain in real life. Two, I have tried food plans, habit trackers, calorie counting, macro tracking, fasting windows, or accountability systems that worked for other people, but made me feel restricted, rebellious, or oddly trapped. Three, when a program gives me rigid rules, daily check-ins, or public accountability, part of me wants to fight it, hide from it, or perform perfectly until I snap. Four, I already know a lot about food, health, habits, mindset, and emotional eating, but knowing more has not been enough to make the pattern fully shift. Five, I have a vivid imagination that can make future problems feel emotionally real before they ever happen. Six, I can spiral into worst-case scenarios, imaginary conversations, or emotional rehearsals that leave my body feeling stressed, even when nothing has actually happened yet. Seven, food has sometimes become an easy way to exit emotional intensity, racing thoughts, loneliness, boredom, resentment, anxiety, or pressure. Eight, I have a dramatic, emotional, creative, or deeply imaginative part of me that I've tried to suppress in order to be disciplined. Nine, I'm tired of being told to leave my emotions, intuition, sensuality, fantasy, or inner world at the door if I want to become consistent. 10. I'm high performing in other areas of life, but food, body image, health routines, or consistency can make me feel strangely powerless. 11. I don't want another plan that treats me like a math equation. I want a process that honors my complexity and still helps me create real results. 12. I'm open to using story archetypes, fantasy, embodiment, or imagination as part of my healing and consistency process. 13. I resonate with the idea that my imagination was never the problem. The problem was an unfocused, unconscious imagination. Side note, we're going to return to this idea specifically in an episode coming up in a couple weeks, so stay tuned for that. 14. I want to move from stressed out controller to powerful creator. And 15, I want my health journey to feel alive, pleasurable, self-honoring, and emotionally meaningful, not like another obligation. If those statements resonated, then my friend, it is time for a new classroom. It's the classroom I've slowly been transitioning into for the past year. Not just in health, but in business and life in general. I finally made the switch after failing Wellness Math 100 repeatedly. And honestly, not even just Wellness Math 100, but social media growth 100, visibility 100, business KPIs 100. Every single one of those classes left me feeling miserable, bored, resentful, and dead inside. They disconnected me from my spirit. They made me perform in attempts to earn passing grades. But every performance led to one more big fat F across the scale, the downloads tracker, the stupid spreadsheet some guru told me to fill out to prove I was fully committed to my dreams. But once upon a time, I heard the phrase, there is no failure, only feedback. I might have ironically first heard this in my precision nutrition certification, which is half wellness math 100, half deeply helpful behavior change tactics. But I think this has been shared by many thought leaders. So all these failures you may have experienced inside these number-based classrooms are not failure. They're feedback. They're sending you a clear message. You're in the wrong classroom. You're not built for numbers, cookie-cutter protocols, lifeless strategies, ignoring your inner wisdom because experts told you that you're doing it wrong, or any approach that forces you to suppress your emotions, intensity, creativity, or imagination. You're truly made for spicy storytelling 301. This concept first showed up for me after a dream interpretation journal entry last summer. And I talk about this in episode 186. What if you're already worthy? Escape the validation trap and write your own ticket. I'll link it for you in the description. But I'm returning to this idea of spicy storytelling 301. I initially called it erotic storytelling 301 in episode 186, but then I realized the point was never only eroticism. The point was enrolling in a class inside this school of life that makes space for aliveness, creativity, joy, and self-authorship. I'm going to share some of the erotic storytelling 301 origin scene. I didn't know it at the time, but this divide between Wellness Math 100 and Spicy Storytelling 301 would actually become a central theme in my next book and in the modality I've created over the past year. This scene was also the first Wrexenhaven moment I ever shared on the podcast. So it has a special place in my heart. If you want to binge the magic of fanfic meets book talk meets parts work, embodiedwritingmore.com slash divine daddies is where you can find the full audio storybook. I tried to shorten this scene, but almost every detail contains the DNA of the framework I eventually created. So I'm going to read most of it and let you experience the moment I ditched Wellness Math 100. The math class bell rings one last time. You don't even flinch. Rex lets it cling. He leans over, grabs your hand, and drags you straight through the back of the classroom. Not out the door, but through it. Literally through the wall. No more of that shit, he mutters. Welcome to the good stuff. It's like crossing dimensions. Suddenly the harsh fluorescent lights dissolve into candlelit glow. The air smells like cedar wood and jasmine. The floor, black velvet. And instead of rows of desks, there's one giant, decadent, king-sized bed in the center of the room, dripping in plush pillows, silk sheets, and purpose. Three notebooks wait on the bed. One is black leather, embossed with fire symbols, a quote on the spine. Consistency is foreplay. The next is brown suede, soft, warm, quietly glowing at the edges. The last is purple unicorn, glitter pen already clipped to the front and ready to write the next chapter. And yes, of course that one's mine. We made it, you say. Damn right, Rex growls. We passed the bullshit. Now we write the truth. Oh my god, Haven mutters, trailing behind, his cheeks bright pink. He's wearing gold lame booty shorts. That's it. Nothing else. His thighs are out. His soul is vulnerable. He's clutching his journal like a shield. Kayla, he hisses. This outfit is so I don't even know why I let you pick this. Because you look delicious, you say, already circling him. He's gonna be our star pupil by the end of this, Rex mutters to you, loud enough for Haven to hear. Shy boys always write the dirtiest scenes. And yes, this was Rex's earliest version of flirting. Haven squeaks. I will not be reading mine out loud. Too bad, says a deep, smoky voice from the front of the room. You all whip your heads around. There she is, the warden. Clad in black leather, glasses perched low on her nose, hair piled on top of her head in a perfectly chaotic bun. She's holding a writing crop and an annotated copy of the third book in that vampire series. Welcome to Erotic Storytelling 301, she says, voice like sin and bourbon. There are no grades here, only growth. There are no metrics, only mastery, and there are no desks, because desks are for the unawakened. She gestures to the bed. On this bed, you will write your truest stories. The ones that scare you, the ones that free you, the ones that make your thighs clinch and your heart shatter, and your inner critic cry uncle. Rex whistles low. I like her. You would, Haven mutters. You crawl across the silk sheets and open your unicorn notebook. The pen practically writes itself. The warden paces. Class begins now. Assignment one. Tell me the story your younger self never got to finish. The one where she gets to feel wanted, dangerous, unapologetically alive. The one where you get to be the hero, the author, and the love interest. She cracks the crop once against her palm. And don't hold back. Or Daddy Dom over there will be grating with his paddle. Rex just grins. I've been waiting to give her gold stars the fun way. You glance at Haven. He's watching you, eyes soft, wanting. You open the page and you write. I haven't stopped writing since. And just as it's done since about age 12, it's been the thing that's healed me more than anything. Barry Lopez once wrote that sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. I also think that the high-performing, creative woman needs story more than math, more than numbers, more than external validation, more than beige wellness hacks, and more than someone else's strategy for creating change. I hope this episode has shown you something deeply important. You're not bad or weak for failing traditional wellness programs, or those soulless, bro-coded approaches to business, or anywhere else where numbers try to tell a story they were never complete enough to tell. You're in the wrong classroom. The right classroom is an approach that makes space for your creativity, your imagination, and your big emotions. I speak from experience when I say this classroom can be hard to find. I had to create one for myself. And I knew this wasn't just for me. It was for all the women I've ever worked with who are crushing it everywhere else, but struggle to stop eating at night. It's for every podcast listener who knows what to do, but loses the battle to boredom and to a rebellious inner part who'd rather chew on glass than be obedient to the latest Instagram trend. It's for every woman with so much creativity and joy to bring to the world. And it's being siphoned out of her by food obsession, burnout, and all or nothing cycles. Here's what's true. You don't have to abandon your wildness to build consistency and stability. You don't have to become less emotional or less intense to stop binge eating. You just need to enroll in the right classroom. Your embodied activation today is to reflect on the statements from the beginning of the episode. How many resonated? And then maybe you start to brainstorm what your own version of spicy storytelling 301 would look like. So it's going to be more creativity, less calculating, more joy in play, less measuring, less analyzing, and less carb cycling and more scantily clad inner archetypes who pretend they don't love being ogled in gold lame booty shorts when they absolutely do. And if you want the full syllabus for Professor Kayla's spicy storytelling 301, then get ready for Food Freedom Fantasy. The book is coming in late September. It has my entire fanfit coded five-element protocol for making consistency feel like foreplay, all while dismantling the five narratives, keeping you trapped in unwanted cycles with food and sabotage. I'll be sharing more as the date gets closer. If you want to be the first to know when it goes live, you can hop on my email list by going to embodiedwritingwarrior.com/slash gift. You'll get an exclusive Know Your Hunger assessment kit, and you'll be added to my weekly Firestarter Diaries newsletter. I'll have some special offers for anyone on that list when the launch comes. And that is it for today's episode. Here's to your next chapter inside Spicy Storytelling 301. Ready to stop outsourcing your worth and crack your own code? Grab Know Your Hungers. Two free assessments that uncover the real block behind your food struggles, plus a customized audio care package based on your results. You're not broken, you're just misdiagnosed. Link is in the show notes.