Mailchimp RSS suddenly including 'featured image'

I have been using the RSS driven campaign feature in Mailchimp for a number of months, using the merge tag *|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|* To pull the content (mainly text, with a few links). The wordpress theme I am using has a ‘featured image’ at the top of each post. Previously that has not shown up in the email campaigns, but yesterday it began appearing (and at full size and oddly positioned, rather than scaled). Does anyone know a workaround to include the formatted text but not the image? When I try codes which are just pulling the plain text the alt text for the image is still showing up at the beginning. (carolyntate.co)