There is increasing awareness that we cannot separate emotions and food, a binomial that on many occasions becomes something pleasurable and on many other occasions a torment. Quite often I find myself in consultation with people who have a great feeling of guilt for having eaten certain foods or, simply, for having eaten when they believed they should not. This feeling of guilt generates great emotional discomfort in the person who experiences it, and can have severe consequences such as feeling insecure, incapable or vulnerable, thus negatively impacting their self-esteem and self-concept.
What do we understand by guilt?
Let’s start by briefly clarifying what the feeling of guilt is. We could say that the feeling of guilt is the feeling of having done something wrong or having broken some rule, which produces great continued discomfort. If we talk about feeling guilty after having eaten, we mean that we think that we have violated some type of rule regarding food and that therefore we have made a mistake.
Where does guilt come from when we eat?
One of the reasons we feel guilty after eating is because we have categorized some foods as good and bad. In this way, when we eat something that is “bad” or we consider “unhealthy” is when this feeling appears. It should be said that no food is bad or good in itself, what is bad or maladaptive is the meaning that we give to the food derived from beliefs that we have been building from the diet mentality and restrictive eating. It is important to look beyond what we eat, that is, to be able to pay attention to how we eat it: if we do it consciously, impulsively or compulsively, if we enjoy the food, if we feel like it…
In addition to identifying the categorization of foods as good or bad, it is also interesting to review the internal and external norms regarding the way we eat to understand where the guilt comes from when we eat. It is very common to hear that eating pasta at night makes you fat, that bananas are too high in calories and should be avoided, that it is not good to eat bread, etc. We have built a significant number of food myths based on popular arguments that have nothing to do with scientific evidence. Therefore, we must review each of these premises and contrast them with reliable information to dismantle ideas that we have surely had ingrained for a long time.
Another aspect that affects guilt after eating is setting strict and rigid guidelines with food, which would prohibit us from eating certain foods. Eating or not eating guided by a rigid guideline distances us from the primary and necessary sensation of hunger and also satiety. Our body moves away from the compass that gives us such valuable information as when to feed. This way when I listen to my body and feel hungry, I feel guilty if this happens outside the guideline we have set for ourselves.
The consequences of feeling guilty about food
But the worst part of guilt is that shame and punishment coexist with it. Feeling that we have made a mistake and have made a mistake, we think that the way to remedy it is to pay for it. The most common way is to compensate for what we feel we have eaten too much through food restriction or physical exercise.
There are also other forms of compensation or punishment such as self-induced vomiting, improper use of laxatives, etc. It is the price to pay for the “sin” I have committed, as a penance. This circle ends up becoming a violent way of treating ourselves, fosters an obsession with food and generates even more guilt. Restricting foods increases anxiety and the desire to eat them, this is often the prelude to binge eating. So we restrict to make up for what we have eaten (punishment), then we binge (guilt and frustration), restrict again and get on a hamster wheel. We end up thinking of ourselves that we are the problem because we are not able to stop this cycle, which considerably reduces our self-esteem.
How to get rid of this feeling of guilt about eating?
Getting rid of this feeling of guilt with food takes a lot of work and a lot of patience. Generally, they are habits and ideas that have been installed in our lives for a long time, so we must understand that we are going to need time.
First of all we have to replace guilt with responsibility, this mobilizes us and keeps us away from victimizing ourselves, adopting an active attitude towards change. Then we must work to achieve the main objective, which is to reconnect with our hunger and satiety signals, moving away from “eating with our heads” (from beliefs, norms, prohibitions) and approaching eating from conscience and needs. of our body. This requires work with psychology and nutrition, psychoeducation and emotional and experiential work. Observing whether guilt is a feeling that appears recurrently in our daily lives is also an interesting exercise that can explain why we feel this way about food.
If you feel like this, I want to tell you that it is possible to change it and relate to food in a different way. Without guilt, without shame and without punishment. I encourage you to ask for help and start a process to make peace with food.
