Maya Eid, CNP, is a Certified Nutritional Practitioner and Behaviour Change Specialist whose work focuses on sustainable nutrition, emotional eating, body image and helping people develop a healthier relationship with food.
In the latest episode of No Excuses Club by Protein Chefs, Certified Nutritional Practitioner and Behaviour Change Specialist Maya Eid joins the conversation for a thoughtful discussion about emotional eating, body image, diet culture, sustainable weight loss and the habits that shape our relationship with food.
The interview begins with a question that sounds simple but quickly opens the door to something much bigger: if most people already know what healthy food looks like, why do so many still struggle to eat well consistently?
For Maya, the answer is rarely a lack of information. Most of the women she works with already understand nutrition. They know vegetables are good for them, they know protein matters, and many have spent years reading about diets, tracking food or trying different approaches to weight loss. The problem is often what happens between knowing what to do and actually being able to live that way over time. Maya explains that many of her clients arrive after cycling through diets, losing weight, regaining it and eventually blaming themselves for not being disciplined enough. Her work often moves beyond food itself and into body image, emotional eating and behaviour change.
As the interview continues, the conversation turns toward the way our relationship with food is shaped long before adulthood. Maya talks about the influence of parents, caregivers and family habits, including people who grew up in households where dieting was normal or where finishing everything on the plate was expected. Those early messages can stay with someone for decades. A child who learns that leaving food behind is wasteful may later become an adult who struggles to stop eating when full, even when they understand intellectually that they no longer need to finish everything in front of them.
This is one of the reasons Maya is reluctant to describe nutrition struggles as a simple issue of willpower. Many of the people she works with are already disciplined in the areas that society usually recognizes: they show up for work, take care of families and manage demanding schedules. The challenge around food may have much more to do with routines, environment, stress and learned behaviour than with a lack of commitment.
One of the strongest sections of the conversation focuses on the way food becomes attached to morality. People describe themselves as being “good” when they follow a diet and “bad” when they eat something outside it. A cookie, dessert or restaurant meal can suddenly become proof that an entire day has been ruined. Maya sees this black-and-white thinking as one of the patterns that can make healthy eating harder to sustain. When one choice is interpreted as complete failure, it becomes easy to abandon the rest of the day and promise to start over again later.
The same idea comes up when the conversation turns to cheat meals. Maya questions the logic of restricting heavily throughout the week and then treating one meal as a reward for having been “good.” In her view, this can reinforce the same all-or-nothing thinking people are trying to escape. A healthier relationship with food leaves more room for flexibility, allowing someone to enjoy food throughout the week while still working toward their goals.
The interview becomes especially interesting when it shifts from psychology to the practical reality of eating well in a busy life. When asked whether prepared meals can genuinely support healthy eating, Maya gives a very practical answer: convenience matters. Not everyone has the time to shop, prep and cook every meal, and for many people the real alternative to meal prep is not a perfectly home-cooked dinner. It may be skipping a meal, ordering something quickly or grabbing whatever is available. In that context, prepared meal delivery can make healthy eating easier to maintain.
She returns to the same point later when discussing decision fatigue. Many of her clients accidentally work through lunch because the day becomes too busy. By the time they realize they need to eat, they have already spent hours making decisions and managing responsibilities. Having a prepared meal ready in the fridge or at the office removes one more decision from the day. It is a simple idea, but an important one: sometimes healthy eating becomes easier not because someone has more discipline, but because the environment has been designed to make the better choice more convenient.
When Maya is asked what she would look for in a healthy prepared meal, she brings the conversation back to the basics. A balanced meal should include a good source of protein, fibrous vegetables, carbohydrates and fats, with the portions adjusted according to the person and their activity level. While discussing the meals in front of her, she specifically mentions Protein Chefs, noting the amount of vegetables included and the importance of fibre, which she says many people are not getting enough of.
Later, during a more relaxed rapid-fire section, Maya is asked what kind of meals she would choose if she were using a meal-prep service for an entire month. Her answer leans toward the athletic-style meals: a solid portion of carbohydrates, at least around 30 grams of protein, plenty of vegetables, healthy fats and food with good flavour and seasoning.
That last point fits well with the broader theme of the interview. Healthy eating does not need to mean bland eating, and nutrition does not need to become a constant exercise in restriction.
The discussion then moves into one of the most familiar problems in modern wellness: the search for the perfect diet. Maya talks about the flood of conflicting nutrition advice people see online. Sugar is bad. Gluten is bad. Dairy is bad. Carbohydrates are bad. Then another trend appears and the rules change again. She argues that many people become so focused on finding the perfect way to eat that they lose sight of whether their diet is actually sustainable or appropriate for them. In the extended discussion, she also pushes back against the idea that women should simply eat less, emphasizing the importance of carbohydrates and of eating enough.
Her own experience influenced that perspective. Maya explains that her early interest in nutrition began partly as a search for the perfect diet and eventually became too rigid. As she later worked with clients in a gym environment, she began noticing that some people were achieving the physical results they wanted while becoming increasingly preoccupied with food and their bodies. One client became fixated on a very small area of her body; another, despite being deeply unhappy, expressed relief at least at being skinny. Those moments pushed Maya to look more closely at what people actually believed weight loss would give them. Was it really a lower number on the scale, or was it confidence, safety, acceptance or a stronger sense of self-worth?
Emotional eating becomes another major part of the interview, and Maya approaches it without the usual judgment. Food can be comforting, and eating in response to stress, sadness, anger or exhaustion is not something she treats as a moral failure. Instead, she encourages people to look underneath the behaviour and ask what they actually need in that moment. Sometimes the answer may be connection, movement or rest. Sometimes the answer is simply that the person is genuinely hungry.
The distinction becomes particularly important when physical hunger and emotional hunger happen at the same time. Someone may skip lunch, arrive at the end of a stressful day physically hungry and also want something comforting because they are emotionally exhausted. Rather than describing that as a failure of discipline, Maya encourages people to become more aware of what is actually happening.
The conversation around evening cravings develops from the same idea. Many people feel in control during the day and then find cravings much stronger at night. Maya points out that by evening, the distractions are gone, mental energy is lower and the person may not have eaten enough earlier. What looks like a sudden collapse in willpower may be the result of an entire day spent working, making decisions and ignoring hunger.
Another theme that runs through the episode is self-compassion. Maya challenges the common belief that people need to be hard on themselves in order to change. She compares the internal voice to a coach: constant criticism does not necessarily produce better performance. Self-compassion, in her view, does not mean abandoning goals. It means pursuing them from a place of self-respect rather than shame.
By the end of the interview, the conversation has moved through weight loss, emotional eating, meal prep, body image, diet culture, cravings, healthy habits and the pressure to eat perfectly. Yet the clearest takeaway comes in one sentence.
“Health is supposed to support your life. It’s not supposed to be your entire life.”
That idea brings the entire conversation together. Healthy eating should support energy, wellbeing and the life someone wants to live. It should not require constant guilt, obsessive tracking or a permanent feeling of failure.
For Maya Eid, sustainable nutrition is not about achieving perfection. It is about learning to eat in a way that can exist alongside work, relationships, social life, stress and the normal unpredictability of everyday life. Prepared meals can support part of that process by reducing time and decision fatigue, but the deeper work is learning how to build habits that remain flexible enough to last.
Watch the full conversation with Maya Eid on No Excuses Club by Protein Chefs in the video above.
