Ep. 264 Chronic Diet Culture, Postpartum Healing, and Coaching Women Differently with Coach Soraya Rufener

If you’ve ever felt like your body is fighting you no matter how “perfect” your nutrition or workouts are, this episode will feel like a deep exhale.

Today, I’m sitting down with Soraya Rufener, one of our coaches at Vital Spark, to share the story behind the safety, trust, and results her clients feel from day one.

Soraya isn’t just highly credentialed as a registered nurse and functional health coach. She’s lived through chronic dieting, body distrust, and the exhausting pressure to always “do more.” She started dieting at 13, spent years stuck in restriction cycles, and did everything diet culture promised would work. And yet, nothing was actually healing.

In this conversation, we unpack why willpower wasn’t the problem, how postpartum healing changed everything, and what rebuilding a body really requires physically, mentally, and emotionally. Soraya shares the moment she stopped punishing her body and learned how to support it instead.

We talk about why healing is layered, why consistency matters more than intensity, and how nervous system safety changes outcomes. She also opens up about how her lived experience reshaped the way she coaches postpartum moms and high-achieving women today. Most importantly, we explore what she refuses to repeat from diet culture—and why coaching women differently matters.

If you’re exhausted, frustrated, or quietly wondering why nothing seems to work anymore, this episode will remind you that you’re not broken.

You’re unsupported.

Time Stamps:

(1:17) Our Incredible Coach Soraya

(6:02) Early Teen Soraya

(9:17) Finding Bodybuilding

(15:02) The Food Noise

(17:09) Shifting To The Healing Phase

(19:55) The Mental Side of Healing

(22:47) 3 Kids In 4 Years and The Postpartum Journey

(31:23) Our Bodies Aren’t The Enemy

(34:15) Where To Find Soraya

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