Episode 23

Healing Your Inner Eater with Jessica Setnick (Part 1)

Published on: 19th November, 2025

In Part 1 of this conversation, Jessica Setnick breaks down the origins of our eating patterns by tracing them back to infancy, early attachment, and the messages absorbed from caregivers. She explains how babies experience comfort, connection, and safety through feeding — and how disruptions in this process can shape emotional patterns for decades.

Jessica introduces her “influence map” exercise, showing how parents, grandparents, teachers, and even family culture leave imprints on how we feel about food and our bodies. Through stories and examples, she illustrates how eating behaviors that seem confusing or frustrating in adulthood are often logical responses to early experiences.

This episode sets the foundation for understanding food not as a moral issue, but as a deeply human, emotionally wired one.

Buckle up. Settle in. Let’s ride.

🧭 In This Episode

  • Why “hope and science” actually work together in obesity treatment
  • What new medications are targeting — and why receptor variety matters
  • How early weight-loss patterns may predict long-term response
  • Why surgery + medications may be the strongest approach for many patients
  • The massive gap in pediatric access — and how telemedicine could change it
  • The risks and realities of compounded and gray-market medications
  • What a future integrated, one-stop weight-management system could look like

🪞 Key Takeaways

  • Our earliest feeding experiences shape how we seek comfort and safety.
  • Childhood food messages often run on autopilot well into adulthood.
  • “Healing your inner eater” starts with understanding the stories you inherited.
  • Emotional eating has roots in survival, not weakness.
  • Awareness creates choice — not shame.

⚠️ Content Note

This episode discusses childhood food experiences, emotional connections to food, early attachment, family messages, intergenerational patterns, and how these shape eating behaviors. No explicit medical advice is provided. Themes include comfort, safety, self-worth, and food as emotional language.

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🏷 Keywords / Tags

inner eater, emotional eating, food patterns, childhood messages, comfort and food, family dynamics, inherited beliefs, food psychology, eating behaviors, self-worth, intergenerational patterns, healing work

Next Time

🎧 Next time, we dig into the family food rules and body beliefs that shaped us — the “finish your plate,” “treats mean love,” and “good girl/bad girl” eating patterns we absorbed without realizing it. Jessica explains how trauma (even unrelated to food) gets woven into eating, and why some foods become emotional triggers.

It’s validating, clarifying, and seriously eye-opening.

👉 Make sure you’re subscribed to Life in the Bari Lane so you don’t miss our next ride.

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About the Podcast

Life in the Bari Lane
Come along for the ride — it's no fun going alone.
Life in the Bari Lane is your 30-minute dose of real talk about life after bariatric surgery — the good, the hard, the weird, and the “nobody warned me about this” moments. No fluff, no “just follow the plan” nonsense — just honest conversations about what it’s like to change your body, your habits, and your whole damn life.

This podcast is a space for the highs and lows of the weight loss journey. Because here’s the truth: bariatric surgery is a tool — not a magic fix. It’s still work. It’s still messy. And it’s still life — with a different GPS.

Whether you’re pre-op and researching, post-op and thriving, or somewhere in the “what the hell did I just do?” stage, you’re in the right lane. This show is about building community — the kind that gets it, supports you, and doesn’t sugarcoat the process.

I’m Sacha — a real-life bariatric patient navigating this wild ride — and I’m here to keep it honest, funny, and deeply human.

You’ll hear:
💥 Unfiltered talk about the hard days
🥗 Nutrition talk that’s actually realistic
🧠 Mental health, body image, and identity shifts
👯‍♀️ Support systems and “friendship fallout”
💪 Motivation that doesn’t suck
🙃 Oops moments, progress wins, and honest reflections

New episodes drop weekly — short enough to fit into your day, but packed with the good stuff to keep you going.

About your host

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Sacha Holder

Sacha Holder is a project manager, podcast host, and bariatric patient who’s not here to pretend it’s all perfect. With over a decade of professional experience and a whole lot of lived experience, she creates podcasts that tell the truth about what it means to live, heal, and grow — through chaos, and curveballs, while keeping it together (mostly).

She’s the voice behind Life in the Bari Lane, a bite-sized bariatric podcast for real people navigating post-op life, and The High-Functioning Disaster, a show about showing up even when everything feels like too much. Through humor, honesty, and zero judgment, Sacha builds community through conversation — because no one should have to figure it out alone.