128: Finley Amato Funsten: How Chronic Under Eating Shapes Women’s Metabolism and Energy Recovery
Why Eating Less Is Keeping You Stuck: What Finley Amato Funsten Wants Every Active Women to Know
You're training hard, keeping your portions "in check," and still feeling exhausted, moody, and like your body is working against you. Sound familiar? It's not a willpower problem, it's a fueling problem.
Tara sat down with Finley Amato Funsten, nutrition and strength coach, founder of Unfuck Your Diet, and owner of MADabolic Charlotte, for a conversation that is equal parts eye-opening and validating. If you've ever felt like you're doing everything "right" and still getting nowhere, this episode is basically a permission slip to stop shrinking yourself.
The Eat Less, Push More Trap
Let's start with the cycle so many of us know too well: eat less, train harder, feel terrible, start over every Monday. Tara and Finley got into why this pattern is so persistent, and why breaking it feels so counterintuitive.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: years of chronic under-eating don't just leave you tired. They fundamentally reshape how your body functions. Your metabolism adapts, your hormones shift, your hunger cues get muted, and your recovery tanks. The frustration isn't a character flaw, it's a predictable physiological response to not eating enough for your output.
Finley's lens is evidence-based, and her message is clear: the advice most women have been following was never built for women's physiology. It was built for smaller bodies, smaller goals, and a culture that still profits from women staying stuck.
Why Intermittent Fasting Often Backfires for Active Women
One of the biggest topics they tackled was intermittent fasting, specifically why it's become so popular among active women, and why it so frequently makes things worse.
Skipping breakfast might feel productive in the moment, but for women who are training and living full lives, it sets off a cascade of hormonal stress before the day has even started. Over time, hunger hormones actually adapt to skipping meals, meaning you stop feeling hungry in the morning even when your body desperately needs fuel. That's not discipline. That's your body learning to suppress signals it's stopped being able to act on.
Finley is careful to point out that IF isn't inherently evil, but for most active women, especially those already dealing with low energy, cycle disruption, or poor recovery, it's adding fuel to an already smoldering fire.
Sugar Cravings Are a Symptom, Not a Character Flaw
If you find yourself absolutely wrecked by sugar cravings, especially in the afternoon, Finley has a reframe that might change everything for you: cravings are usually your body screaming for protein and fiber that it didn't get earlier in the day.
This is one of those moments in the episode where you'll probably want to pause and replay it. We've been conditioned to see cravings as weakness, when they're actually data. Your body is smart. When it's under-fueled, it goes looking for the fastest available energy source. The fix isn't willpower, it's building meals that actually keep you satiated.
This ties into a broader theme Finley hits hard throughout the conversation: named diets — keto, paleo, Whole30, whatever's trending, fail women not just because they're often too restrictive, but because they teach rules instead of skills. There's no long-term framework for navigating real life, which is exactly why so many women find themselves back at square one.
The Return of Skinny Culture (And How to Spot It in Wellness Marketing)
Tara and Finley didn't sidestep the cultural piece, and honestly, thank goodness for that. Skinny culture never really went away, it just rebranded. Now it shows up in "clean eating" language, detox programs, and wellness marketing that still, at its core, centers shrinking over thriving.
They talked about how detoxes and cleanses don't actually work the way they're marketed, your liver and kidneys are doing that job already, but the appeal of a "reset" speaks to how lost so many women feel in their own bodies after years of conflicting information. It's worth asking: who benefits when women stay confused about food?
This section of the conversation is particularly relevant for anyone who follows a lot of wellness content online. Not all of it is bad, but the ability to filter fear-based nutrition science from actual evidence is a skill, and Finley breaks down how to start building it.
What Chronic Under-Eating Actually Looks Like
This is the part of the episode that may hit closest to home. Finley lays out the signs of chronic under-eating in a way that's specific enough to be genuinely useful: persistent low energy, poor recovery between workouts, cycle disruption, brain fog, and mood changes. These are symptoms, not personality traits. Not just being "someone who's tired." Not just "getting older."
The most important takeaway here is that the solution isn't a dramatic overhaul or another protocol. It's building sustainable nutrition habits that support the actual demands of your life, your training, your stress, your hormones, your goals. Slowly, consistently, without the diet culture noise drowning everything out.
The Bottom Line
Finley's work at Unfuck Your Diet is exactly what it sounds like, cutting through the noise to help women actually nourish themselves in a way that supports performance, longevity, and feeling good in their bodies. This episode is a masterclass in why the problem was never you.
If you want to go deeper on how to train and fuel your body in a way that actually works, check out BroadsCOACH for personalized coaching or browse our free resources to get started. And if you haven't already, you can find the full episode wherever you listen to podcasts or over on the Broads Podcast page.
You can follow Finley at @unfuckyourdiet on Instagram and visit her at unfuckyourdiet.co.
