How to Not Feel Guilty After Eating
If you’re like me, you might have noticed the conventional advice around avoiding foods like sugar or other treats doesn’t work well for you and makes it all the more irresistible. Let’s explore how one of my clients who has struggled with binge eating tapped into her inner wisdom by using self-compassion, pleasure, and permission.
You, too, can have a sense of space and more breathing room around food. You can have something like ice cream stored in your freezer, allow yourself to eat it, enjoy it, put it away, do it again another day, and even have times when you think about it and decide you don’t actually feel like it. Can you imagine?
A Client's Story: Overcoming Food Shame
Let’s unpack this idea together. I have a client I’ll call Lisa who was worried about her health and how what she’s been eating that she perceives as “bad” is affecting her health. I’m in conversation with Lisa and she’s talking about the sugar thing and how it makes her feel bad physically and all that.
We’ve been down this road before, talking about eating too much sugar and sweets. Sometimes it’s been from a space of awareness that she doesn’t want to eat it because she notices how it makes her feel physically, but mostly it’s still from a space of buying into the external voices that she has learned from and still currently believes are bad for her.
Here’s the thing - when Lisa operates from this space of believing she shouldn’t have it and policing herself around it, it causes all kinds of dysfunction. She’ll think about eating something that she wants but also thinks she shouldn’t have, for example, Oreos. When she eats it anyway, the shame comes flooding in, which opens Pandora’s box. It quickly devolves - she compares herself in this state to a squirrel rooting through the cabinets with constant thought of “Why can’t I control myself?”
Separating Nutrition from Your Relationship with Food
I shared my opinion that she needs to separate the health/nutrition of a specific food or meal from what I’m calling your relationship with food. Because we’ll never not be in a relationship with food. And when you’re caught in this cycle of restriction and then overeating, and mentally judging yourself for foods you like and trying to avoid them, you need to focus on this problem first.
Focusing on only the nutrition aspect of food when you’re struggling with binge eating is like using nutrition as a weapon. Let’s not use what can sometimes be a helpful tool as a weapon against ourselves. Instead, focus on your relationship to food and how you relate to it first to help you get out of the feeling like you can’t control yourself around food.
Healing your relationship with food is the priority. Eating sugar or hyper-processed foods for some time as you do this won’t hurt you long term, but the often unrecognized mental, and emotional health effects of long-term guilt and shame from dealing with disordered eating and binge eating definitely will.
Breaking Free from Food Shame: Unconditional Permission to Eat
What was helpful to bring in here was the idea that letting go of the mental restriction and actual avoidance of certain foods that Lisa didn’t yet trust herself around would be key. She argued, “But I can’t eat ice cream every day.”
I asked her innocently, why can’t you eat ice cream every day?”
Something clicked for Lisa, by which I mean I startled her into “seeing” her thinking and gave her just enough pause to consider - who’s voice was that? Is it true?
But then the concerns came up: Fear of letting go and fear of failure because she’s not eating the right thing and might devolve into a spiral of binge eating.
I suggested the possibility again of her being able to eat something sweet and enjoy it thoroughly and not feel any guilt.
Lisa had already done a lot of internal work of healing around recognizing and responding to her needs in living her life, which easily translated into being able to connect to her body’s physical sensations of hunger and fullness, and the ability to listen to and trust her body. She was ready for this.
Finding Pleasure and Satisfaction in Food
For her, we found the way “in” that felt good despite the uncertainty of trying something new with the idea of “treating” herself. She could admit that she’s deserving of pleasure and satisfaction. It would be as if she was this grandmotherly figure who was speaking to her grandchild, saying, “Of course, you can have two scoops of ice cream!” And meaning it with nothing but pure love and delight at getting to take our her grandchild and treat her through this experience with food.
The result was Lisa was able to eat some delicious ice cream and simply enjoy it as a treat when she felt like it and not eat it when she didn’t. It led to an even richer discussion in our next session about making foods like white bread and pasta the forbidden fruit and the what the hell effect that happens when you eat them. The ice cream in the freezer is no longer calling her name at all hours.
Reconnecting with Your Inner Authority
Working with people to reconnect them with their inner authority and show them how to tune out the external noise and listen to their bodies is part of what lights me up. If this sounds amazing and you’re not sure and yet you’re curious, I would love to speak with you 1:1 about where you are in your relationship with food. I know it can be loud and noisy! If you’d like someone to help you tune back into you - I offer a complimentary 50-minute consultation call.
Ready to get started? I’m just one step away…
All you need to do is fill out my ‘new client questionnaire’ — this helps me get to know you a little better, understand your needs, and see whether we’re a good fit for working together.
I’ll then contact you (within 1-2 business days) to discuss next steps.
Jayne Anne Ammar is the owner of Health on Your Terms, and offers an alternative approach to support women struggling with emotional and binge eating towards food freedom, which is centered around sparking new insights, cultivating self awareness, emotional work, and unlearning old habits.