I want to tell you about a nine-year-old girl.
She was sitting with Shirley Billigmeier, the guest on this week’s episode, working through something most adults never find words for. And in the middle of their conversation, this child said something that neither of them planned for.
“I see. We got comfortable with uncomfortableness.”
Shirley paused. She said it back to herself. Because in one sentence, a nine-year-old had named something that decades of diet culture, nutrition research, and wellness advice had never quite managed to say clearly.
We didn’t lose our connection to our bodies because we’re weak. We lost it because we got very, very good at tolerating what didn’t feel right. And somewhere along the way, we stopped noticing.
That’s what this conversation is really about.
What Shirley Told Me That I Couldn’t Stop Thinking About
Shirley Billigmeier has been doing this work for decades. Long before “intuitive eating” became a phrase people used, she was sitting with clients — one on one, in the trenches — helping them find their way back to something they’d been told they couldn’t trust: themselves.
She calls her approach Innergetics. And the foundation of it is almost unsettlingly simple.
You were born knowing how to eat.
Not in a vague, philosophical way. Literally. As an infant, you had a clear start and a clear stop. You communicated with your whole body. Nobody had to teach you. Nobody had to give you a plan.
And then the world started talking. And you started listening to it instead of yourself.
Finish your plate. Don’t waste food. Eat now, you might be hungry later. Three meals a day. More protein. Less carbs. More carbs. Less everything. More discipline.
By the time most of us are adults, the original signal is still there. It’s just been buried under so much noise that we can’t find it anymore.
The Story About the CEO
One of the moments in this conversation that stayed with me was a story Shirley told about a CEO she worked with.
He understood the concepts. He got it intellectually. But every day at two in the afternoon, he had an overwhelming urge to eat — even when he knew, logically, that he wasn’t hungry.
So Shirley asked him a question.
“If eating didn’t exist right now — if it just wasn’t an option — what would you do at two o’clock in the afternoon?”
He stared at her.
He was the CEO of a company. A person who made decisions all day. And he had absolutely no answer.
Because eating, she explained, had quietly replaced everything else. It had become the thing he reached for in the in-between moments. The pause. The transition. The two o’clock lull. And in doing so, it had slowly crowded out his access to his own creative mind, his own thoughts, his own way of being in the day.
He hadn’t noticed. Most of us don’t.
What This Episode Is Really Asking
I’ve been thinking about what makes this conversation different from the dozens of food and wellness episodes that exist out there.
I think it’s this: Shirley isn’t trying to change what you eat. She’s trying to change your relationship with the moment just before you eat.
That moment when you feel the urge. When something pulls you toward the kitchen. When you reach for something and you’re not quite sure why.
She calls that the most important moment in the whole process. Not because eating is the enemy. But because that moment, if you slow down enough to feel into it, is almost always carrying information. About what you’re feeling. What you’re avoiding. What you actually need.
And the more you learn to read it, she says, the quieter everything gets. The food noise. The mental chatter. The exhausting back-and-forth. It doesn’t disappear overnight. But it begins to settle.
One Line From the Episode That I Keep Coming Back To
Near the end of our conversation, Shirley said something I wrote down immediately.
“Eating was meant to give us energy. It was never meant to drain our energy.”
And I think that’s the heart of it. The goal isn’t restriction. The goal isn’t control. The goal is getting back to a place where food does what it was always supposed to do — nourish you, satisfy you, and then let you get on with your life.
Not occupy it.
🎧 Listen & Watch
Full Episode on Spreaker: Eating Too Much? Your Nervous System Is the Problem
Full Podcast Series — Inner Eating with Shirley Billigmeier: Listen on Spreaker
Watch on YouTube: Why You Can’t Stop Eating (It’s Not About Willpower)
🔗 Connect with Shirley Billigmeier & Innergetics
🌐 Website: www.innergetics.com
📖 Free Book — Inner Eating: Download here
📸 Instagram: instagram.com/innergeticsmethod
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shirleybilligmeier
👥 Facebook: facebook.com/learn.innergetics
Before You Go
If any part of this landed for you, I’d love to know. Hit reply and tell me — what’s your two o’clock in the afternoon? What’s the moment in your day when the pull shows up?
And if you know someone who’s been quietly exhausted by this particular struggle, send this to them. Sometimes the most helpful thing is just knowing there’s a name for what you’re feeling.
With love, The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi
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Kids have this way of cutting right through everything we've built up around a topic and saying the thing we needed to hear. This episode hit me in a way I didn't expect. What's the most unexpectedly wise thing a child has ever said to you about food, your body, or taking care of yourself?