In this episode, Michelle takes a deep and compassionate look at self-betrayal—a word that often carries shame, but deserves far more nuance.

Rather than framing self-betrayal as weakness, lack of integrity, or poor follow-through, this conversation explores how self-betrayal often develops as a protective response—a way the nervous system learns to prioritize safety, connection, and acceptance over authenticity.

You’ll hear how self-betrayal shows up in everyday life, especially in our relationships with food, rest, boundaries, and decision-making, and how diet culture in particular trains us to distrust our bodies and override our internal signals. Michelle weaves together personal stories, intuitive eating insights, and accessible neuroscience to explain why “just listening to your body” can feel impossible—or even unsafe—when safety hasn’t yet been established.

This episode also explores the grief that can surface as we begin repairing self-betrayal, and why that grief is not a setback, but a sign of integration and growth. Instead of striving for perfection or resolution, Michelle emphasizes the power of repair—small, compassionate moments of listening, pausing, and responding with kindness.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in patterns you judge as self-sabotage, or wondered why trusting yourself feels so hard, this episode offers a reframing that is both relieving and deeply human.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why self-betrayal is often about safety, not failure
• How the nervous system learns to override internal signals
• The role diet culture plays in training self-distrust
• The difference between self-abandonment and self-betrayal
• Why awareness doesn’t mean you’re ready to change—and why that’s okay
• How grief fits into healing and integration
• What repair actually looks like in rebuilding body trust

A reflection to take with you:
The next time you notice the urge to override yourself, ask: “What would help my body feel just a little safer right now?”

If this episode resonated with you, Michelle would love to hear your story. You can reach out at michelle@wayzahealth.com or connect on social media.

Thanks for listening—and as always, be gentle with yourself as you continue finding your way home. 💛

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In this episode of Thrive Beyond Size, I share a very personal story about a rough week that ended with severe food poisoning—and the unexpected clarity it gave me about body trust, intuitive eating, and how our bodies communicate with us.

• Why intuitive eating feels “easy” when your body is screaming—and harder when it’s whispering
• How illness stripped away food rules, self-doubt, and overthinking
• The difference between loud body signals (like food poisoning or burnout) and subtle daily cues
• Why diet culture teaches us to ignore hunger, fullness, satisfaction, and discomfort
• How burnout, anxiety, panic, injury, grief, and stress often represent the body escalating its message
• Why loud body signals aren’t punishments, but protective responses
• How ignoring whispers often leads to screams
• What loud moments can teach us about clarity, trust, and embodiment
• Why intuitive eating lives in everyday attunement—not dramatic crises

• When has your body spoken very loudly to you in the past?
• What was it trying to tell you in those moments?
• What do you think your body needed that you may not have been ready to hear?
• What might your body be whispering to you right now about food, rest, pace, or care?
• What would it feel like to take those whispers seriously?

Your body doesn’t need to scream to deserve your attention.
Intuitive eating is the practice of listening—again and again—before it has to.

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What if the most valuable part isn’t the most obvious one?

In this episode of Thrive Beyond Size, Michelle shares a series of small synchronicities that led her to reflect on Earl Grey tea—and the surprising fact that its signature flavour comes not from the fruit itself, but from the oil in the peel of bergamot.

From there, she explores how this metaphor applies to so many areas of our lives.

Michelle unpacks how diet culture and dominant wellness narratives train us to focus on what’s visible, measurable, and socially rewarded—while ignoring the quieter, subtler layers that actually make nourishment possible.

In this episode, you’ll hear reflections on:

• Why we’re conditioned to value outcomes, control, and appearance
• How diet culture strips eating down to function while discarding pleasure, satisfaction, and safety
• The “peel” of eating: sensory experience, connection, comfort, and meaning
• How body distress often comes from focusing only on appearance rather than body wisdom
• Why the nervous system may be the most overlooked layer of all
• How safety and regulation create the foundation for sustainable change
• A gentle invitation to get curious about what you may have been taught to ignore

This is not an episode about fixing yourself or doing more. It’s an invitation to widen the lens, soften your focus, and explore what becomes possible when you stop discarding the peel.

As always, take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, and approach yourself with curiosity and compassion.

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In this episode, Michelle explores what happens when you don’t know the next step—and why that experience is far more human (and helpful) than we’ve been taught to believe.

She discusses:

• Why not knowing feels so uncomfortable—and where that discomfort comes from
• How diet culture and hustle culture both promise certainty and control
• The nervous system’s role in urgency, overthinking, and premature decisions
• Why uncertainty is often information, not danger
• How the urge for clarity can show up with food, body image, relationships, and work
• The difference between aligned action and action driven by discomfort
• Why some seasons are meant for pausing, integration, and listening—not fixing
• How body trust requires slowing down and tuning into subtle signals
• What it really means to “stay present” instead of forcing answers

Michelle also shares a powerful reflection prompt to help you notice where you might be pressuring yourself to know more than you do right now—and what might shift if you allowed yourself to simply not know, just for today.

Reflection prompt from the episode:

Where in your life are you pressuring yourself to know more than you actually do right now?
And what might shift if you allowed yourself to not know—just for today?

As always, thank you for being here and for allowing this to be a space where certainty isn’t required and being human is enough.

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This New Year’s episode is both a moment of accountability and an invitation—to myself, and to you—to approach 2026 with more patience, presence, and trust.

Rather than setting resolutions or performance-based goals, I share the principles guiding me forward, shaped by the lessons of 2025, my changing relationship with energy, and a deepening awareness of what it truly means to feel at home in my body.

We begin with an overview of A Year of Coming Home, my year-long container designed to support intuitive eating from the inside out. I explain why nervous system regulation and embodiment must come before intuitive eating can truly work, and how chronic stress, overwhelm, and disconnection from the body make it nearly impossible to hear—or trust—our inner signals. You’ll hear how somatic practices, gentle movement, and creating safety in the body are foundational to this work.

I also share how yoga—especially yin and restorative practices—has profoundly supported my own relationship with food, body, and presence, and why I’m pursuing yoga certification to bring these practices into my work. Alongside this, I talk about asynchronous coaching inside A Year of Coming Home and why this model of support feels so aligned and nourishing.

Looking ahead to the podcast, I share plans to include more guest stories and a powerful upcoming project amplifying real experiences of weight stigma in healthcare. I also introduce a year-long personal experiment: offering daily tarot reflections as a free practice rooted in intuition, reflection, and nervous system awareness.

On a personal level, I reflect on turning 50, committing to a full year of yoga and strength training, spending more intentional time alone in nature, and continuing to explore spirituality through practice rather than just theory. I also share my curiosity around traditional Chinese medicine as I navigate perimenopausal digestive changes.

One of the most tender parts of this episode explores how my work in medical assistance in dying has reshaped my understanding of surrender and transitions—and how the wisdom of the dying process might teach us how to move through life’s many endings with more grace and less resistance. This reflection has sparked a deeply personal writing project I’ll be carrying with me through 2026.

Finally, I share my word for the year—patience—and why learning to slow down, sit with ideas, trust timing, and allow things to unfold feels like the most important practice of all.

If you’re craving a gentler, more embodied way of moving into the year ahead, this episode is for you.

www.wayzahealth.com

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This episode drops on Christmas Day, and instead of a polished year-end recap, Michelle offers a slow, embodied reflection on the year that was. She shares why she chose rhythm as her guiding word, how that intention reshaped her relationship with movement, rest, and energy, and why perimenopause became an unexpected teacher in listening more closely to her body.

Michelle explores the cultural pressure to “account for” ourselves at the end of the year—and why not following through on a plan is not a moral failure, but often information, wisdom, or a nervous system response asking for care. She reflects on healing a long-complicated relationship with movement through weight-neutral personal training and a renewed yoga practice, and how these shifts supported emotional regulation, presence, and rest.

The episode also traces how these personal insights influenced the evolution of Wayza Health, including the release of Nourish Yourself: Body+Mind, the creation of The Self-Trust Lab, and the development of A Year of Coming Home. Michelle shares why nervous system capacity is foundational to any change work—and how slowing down, rather than hustling, has guided both her business and her deeper training in trauma-informed, somatic practices.

This is a gentle invitation to reflect on your own year with compassion, to question rigid definitions of success, and to consider what it might look like to choose rhythm over pressure as you move into the next season.

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Next week is Christmas, and as Michelle reflects on the season—what it holds, what it doesn’t, and the quieter spaces many of us feel at this time of year—an insight from a yin yoga class offers an unexpected theme: boredom. In yin yoga, long-held poses can bring up discomfort, restlessness, and resistance…but what caught Michelle’s attention was her teacher’s invitation to notice boredom specifically. That word landed immediately, because boredom wasn’t just present in the pose—it was familiar in life.

From there, Michelle explores boredom as one of the “quieter” emotions we’re rarely taught to recognize, name, or stay present with. She shares a powerful childhood message about packing emotions into a shoebox and putting them away, and explains how many adults grow up fluent in managing the “big” emotions—like anger, grief, or anxiety—while remaining unsure what to do with subtler ones like boredom. But emotions aren’t problems to fix. They’re signals—like dashboard lights—offering information from your nervous system about what’s happening inside and around you.

Boredom, Michelle suggests, is often uncomfortable not because it’s painful, but because it’s empty. It creates space, and for many of us, space doesn’t feel safe. That’s why boredom becomes prime buffering territory: snacking when we’re not hungry, scrolling without thinking, turning on noise, opening tabs, staying busy—anything to outrun the sensation of “nothing happening.” The goal isn’t to judge these patterns. It’s to recognize them. Because bored eating often looks and feels different than hunger-based eating, and without emotional awareness, we end up eating at boredom rather than listening to what it’s asking for.

Michelle invites you to consider what boredom might be teaching: a need for rest, novelty, connection, creativity—or a deeper discomfort with being alone with yourself. She shares how boredom has shown up in her own seasons of hustle and burnout, and how her resistance to stillness once made meditation feel nearly impossible. And she offers a simple, powerful practice: notice boredom in micro-moments (red lights, waiting rooms, the kettle boiling), name it, feel it in your body, notice the urge to escape, and stay with it for just ten more seconds.

The episode closes with a layered personal insight: the contrast between poses like pigeon—where discomfort makes the emotional message loud—and more comfortable poses where boredom emerges and the lesson is quieter. In that quiet, Michelle recognizes a theme that’s been following her: patience. Not forcing action because of anxiety, but slowing down long enough to let the message come through. And she invites you to reflect on your own relationship with boredom—and to reach out and share what you discover.

• Why boredom is a “quiet” emotion that often gets overlooked
• How boredom creates space—and why space can feel unsafe
• What buffering is, and why boredom is prime buffering territory (food, scrolling, busyness, noise)
• How bored eating differs from hunger-based eating
• How emotions function as nervous system “dashboard lights,” not problems to fix
• What boredom may be trying to communicate (rest, connection, novelty, creativity, burnout, fear of stillness)
• A simple micro-practice to build tolerance for boredom: name it, feel it, notice the urge, pause for 10 seconds
• Why learning to sit with boredom supports emotional resilience and body trust
• How yin yoga revealed a deeper theme: patience, and letting decisions come from clarity rather than urgency

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In this week’s episode of Thrive Beyond Size, Michelle takes you to a tiny table in Canmore, Alberta, where a seven-course chef’s tasting menu becomes so much more than “just dinner.” After choosing the vegan “gatherer” menu, she’s guided through each course like a story—learning where the ingredients came from, how the flavors and textures play together, and what each dish is designed to awaken. Somewhere between the foraged mushrooms and a pot pie-level craving for something creamy and warm, Michelle realizes how present she feels: quiet mind, soft body, senses sharpened. From there, she unpacks why our senses aren’t decorative when it comes to eating—they’re biologically woven into digestion, satisfaction, and safety. She breaks down sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste as core parts of attuned eating, explores how diet culture has taught us to fear pleasure, and explains why satisfaction is a biological need, not an indulgence. Finally, she invites you to experiment with one meal this week where you let all five senses guide you, not as a performance, but as a way of coming home to your body.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Michelle’s seven-course tasting menu experience in Canmore and how it unexpectedly woke something up inside her
• How sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste are all biologically tied into digestion and satisfaction
• Why beautifully plated food, enticing smells, and even the clink of cutlery can change how nourished you feel
• The role of texture and temperature in attuned eating (and how “creamy and hot and smooth” led her straight to halibut pot pie)
• How diet culture makes pleasure suspicious and teaches us to distrust foods that taste “too good”
• Why satisfaction is a biological need and how lack of satisfaction fuels feeling out of control around food
• What happens in your body when you shift into “rest and digest” and eat from a place of nervous system safety
• A simple experiment you can try with one meal this week to engage all five senses and notice what softens and what awakens

If you try this five-senses experiment with a meal, Michelle would love to hear how it goes. You can connect with her on Instagram @wayzahealth or by email at michelle@wayzahealth.com.

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