Why Food Guilt Isn’t Your Fault And How to Start Letting It Go

If food guilt worked to make you stop eating and lose weight, then you'd already be happy with your body. I’m here to tell you that no, you’re not broken - this system created by diet culture is. There is nothing wrong with you, and you are not alone in this 💚

Where food guilt comes from

Food guilt is a byproduct of diet culture: after dieting for a while, you have of course internalised some of the messages that this diet has been feeding you. It can range between anything from thinking carbs are going to make you put on weight, to fruits are bad for you because there’s too much sugar and it’s better to eat a chocolate bar than an avocado as it’s better value for you and your points/syns/calories (people who have done diets like WW and Slimming World will probably remember those odd rules as much as I do 🙃).

If you go on any social media platform at the moment, we’re right in the “Summer Body” and “Hot girl summer” trends - where people decide to start dieting to have reached a certain weight and look a certain way by summer. We are constantly bombarded with information on what we should and shouldn’t eat. So many rules, that make us feel guilty from the moment we start breaking them - because we are human beings, not robots, and life is about much more than being perfect.

Trying to be perfect with what you eat - and by that I mean religiously respecting a set of rules 24/7 - is one of the main causes of food guilt. Of course, if you try so hard to stick to your eating plan from the moment you open your eyes, if you’re offered a piece of cake at work and eat it, you’re going to feel guilty for ruining the efforts you made all day.

You can see how much we have internalised food guilt by the language we use when we eat something that wasn’t part of what we had decided we were going to eat that day: “I’ve been bad today”, or “I was good at lunch, I only had a salad”. But here’s what’s important to remember: food has no moral value, and what you eat doesn’t make you a bad or a good person. Chocolate is not “bad”, lettuce is not “good” - they’re just foods. And it’s time we put them back in their place. This shame that we have internalised as women isn’t our shame to carry.

What that food guilt really does to you

In addition to being quite uncomfortable, this food guilt can also be responsible for most of your challenges around food: your bingeing, your emotional eating, thinking of food constantly, not being able to focus on anything else until you have eaten all the chocolate bars left in the cupboard? Probably caused, or at the very least made worse, by the guilt you feel about eating those foods.

Let’s see how that works: you come home from work after a tough day. All you want is to have some chocolate (which you haven’t had in a week because it’s bad to have chocolate every day) and relax in front of Netflix. But you’ve been so good all day, is that a good idea? Well, you eat your two pieces of chocolate anyway. You immediately feel guilty because chocolate is bad for you, and it’s so uncomfortable that you decide to eat one more piece because it will soothe you and make you feel better. Now you feel even guiltier because you’ve thrown away all the efforts you made that day, so you finish the whole bar, because if there’s no more chocolate in the house, well, you won’t be able to eat more. So you feel even more guilty, and decide to not have chocolate again until next week, because clearly, you can’t be trusted around it and you can’t control yourself. Of course, that cycle will repeat itself again in a few days. Sounds familiar?

That was me. That was my clients. Many of us have been there and are now on the other side - it doesn’t have to be that way forever 💚

That food guilt created by food rules also disconnects you from your body: you’re not able to truly listen to your body when you feel guilty about what you eat. You’re so busy trying to listen to all the food rules you are bombarded with instead of tuning into what your body is asking for, you don’t trust it anymore and completely disconnect from it.

The other effect that food guilt has on your body is that it trains your nervous system to associate eating certain foods with danger. This will create stress in your body, activate your sympathetic nervous system (responsible for the "fight, flight or freeze" response) which will slow down your digestive system, make nutrient absorption less efficient and increase insulin and cortisol production in your body (which can signal to your body to store fat and weight instead of building muscle). Every time you will be in front of those foods, instead of seeing them as what they are, you will see them as a trigger for something unpleasant that will happen to you. And what does that do? That creates more guilt. What a vicious circle, right?!

A new path for you

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want guilt to rule my life. I want to experience beautiful things, have fun, fulfil my dreams, feel great about myself - I don’t want food to take 90% of my brain and I don’t want to feel guilty every time I eat a chocolate chip cookie. So what can we do?

We rebel against all the rules we have been given and we practice something new: compassion. Compassion for yourself for being human, for being perfectly imperfect, for not eating perfectly according to someone else’s rules, for using food to soothe yourself.

Bringing your attention to what is going on, and being curious about what you are going through while eating is a new way for you to explore. Being aware and present when you eat and giving yourself permission to eat will remove some of the guilt. But like everything, this is a practice. It might feel like an edge at first, but it will get easier and easier with time. Your nervous system needs to be healed so you start feeling more comfortable around food, and you can be relaxed while being eating, instead of it being a cause of stress.

Self-kindness and compassion are key here, in addition to reconnecting with your body: you’re a team, your body isn’t your enemy. Food isn’t your enemy either, it’s just food.

This is what we do in Feed your Freedom: we learn to trust ourselves again around food, we heal our nervous system to be comfortable around food, we go deep to understand what is causing our emotional and/or binge eating.

You weren’t born ashamed of your hunger and for your food choices. You were taught to be, by society, by diet culture. But you can unlearn that and find your way toward food freedom.

If you’re ready to take that first step, I’d love to invite you to book your complimentary consult today 💚