There is a growing awareness that we cannot separate emotions and food, a binomial that on many occasions becomes something pleasurable and on other occasions a torment. Quite often I meet in consultation with people who have a great feeling of guilt for having eaten certain foods or, simply, for having eaten when they thought 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 mean by guilt?
Let us begin by briefly clarifying what guilt is. We could say that the feeling of guilt is the sensation of having done something wrong or of having infringed some rule, which produces a great continuous discomfort. If we talk about feeling guilty after having eaten, we mean that we think that we have infringed some kind of rule regarding food and therefore we have made a mistake.
Where does guilt come from when we eat?
One of the reasons why we feel guilty after eating is because we have categorized some foods as good and bad. Thus, when we eat something that is “bad” or we consider that it is “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 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 food 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 is fattening, that banana is too caloric and should be avoided, that it is not good to eat bread, etc. We have built up a large number of food myths based on popular arguments that have nothing to do with scientific evidence. Therefore, it is necessary to review each of these premises and contrast them with reliable information to dismantle ideas that we have probably been ingrained for a long time.
Another aspect that affects guilt after eating is to set strict and rigid guidelines with food, which would be to forbid ourselves to eat certain foods. Eating or not eating guided by a rigid guideline takes us away from the primary and necessary sensation of hunger and satiety. Our body moves away from the compass that gives us such valuable information as when to eat. Thus, when I listen to my body and feel hungry, I feel guilty if this happens outside the pattern we have set for ourselves.
The consequences of feeling guilty about food
But the worst part of guilt is that it is accompanied by shame and punishment. When we feel that we have made a mistake and we 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 overeaten through food restriction or physical exercise.
There are also other forms of compensation or punishment such as self-induced vomiting, using laxatives inappropriately, 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, encourages obsession with food and generates even more guilt. Restricting food increases anxiety and the desire to eat it, which is often the prelude to binge eating. So we restrict to compensate for what we have eaten (punishment), then we binge (guilt and frustration), restrict again and get into a hamster wheel. We end up thinking of ourselves as the problem because we are not able to stop this cycle, which considerably lowers 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 these are habits and ideas that have been installed in our lives for a long time, so we must understand that we will need time.
First of all we have to replace guilt with responsibility, this mobilizes us and moves us away from victimization, adopting an active attitude towards change. Then we have to work to achieve the main objective, which is to reconnect with our hunger and satiety signals, moving away from “eating with our head” (from beliefs, rules, prohibitions) and getting closer to eating from awareness and the needs of our body. This requires work with psychology and nutrition, psychoeducation and emotional and experiential work. Observing if guilt is a feeling that appears recurrently in the day to day is also an interesting exercise that can explain why we feel this way with food.
If you feel this way, 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.
