Feeling guilt over your food choices? Living in a world where the diet industry makes billions of dollars and offers contradictory information at best, it is no wonder that many of us feel that there are “good” or “bad” foods and feel immense guilt over our food choices. So how can you live a normal life eating the foods you enjoy without feeling guilty afterwards?
These five steps will help you overcome guilt over your food choices:
Step One: Awareness
First, take an inventory of the times you feel guilty after eating certain foods. Make a list of all of those foods. If you are not quite sure, carry a piece of paper with you to make notes throughout the day of the foods you ate and how you felt afterwards. This is an important part because you need to know what the problem is to figure out the solution.
Another way to get this information is through visualization. Maybe there are foods that you don’t keep in the house? Think about what it would be like to eat them. You can also visualize yourself eating things that the diet industry often calls “bad,” like sweets, candies, carbs or fast foods. If you feel guilty, put it on your list.
Step Two: Normalize
You are not broken if you feel guilty after eating some sweets or potato chips. It is very normal in the American culture to think of foods as “good” or “bad.” The diet industry popularized this idea to keep people following the prescribed diet they are selling. We have been taught that we are weak, uncommitted or undisciplined when we eat these “bad” foods. Even desserts are described as sinful. But this is nothing but a story that the diet industry has told us to convince us that we need their help to be successful in our weight loss journey.
So be kind to yourself. Remind yourself that many people struggle with the idea of “good” and “bad” foods. And just as many feel guilty after eating certain foods too.
Step Three: Be compassionate
Guilt is often brought on by the way we talk to ourselves after we eat certain foods. Watch for that inner voice that uses should or shouldn’t and condemns you as a flawed person for making that choice. What would you say to a young child who ate a few too many cookies and had a tummy ache? Would you condemn them as having no self-control? Would you tell them this single act is the reason they will always be fat and ugly? I hope not. And you don’t deserve that either.
That young child needs some comfort and to learn how to listen to their body the next time they eat cookies. The cookies aren’t bad but eating past the point of enough results in feeling sick. They need words of comfort and hope that the future will feel better than it does now. And so do you. Yes, maybe you over-did it on the cookies too. That doesn’t make you a terrible person. It means you also need words of comfort and hope that the future will feel better.
Step Four: Retrain your brain
How do you make the future feel better? Retrain your brain. Guilt is a feeling that is created when you think you have done something “bad.” Thoughts like “I’m so weak and will never be able to lose my weight” or “I knew I couldn’t control myself around those potato chips” or “I always stuff my face like a pig when we have pizza” all create feelings of guilt.
The key to feeling better is to replace those guilt producing thoughts with thoughts that create hope for you. Here are some that my clients find very helpful:
- I’m learning to be at peace with my food choices.
- Today’s actions do not determine the entire course of my life.
- Even when I feel guilt, I can go on to make a good decision.
- Food is food and I’m a good person no matter what I choose to eat.
Step Five: Get help
Many of us have spent decades repeating the “good” food, “bad” food narrative in our heads. It takes time to unwind those thoughts and practice new ones. If you are willing to put in the daily practice you can absolutely change those narratives, heal your relationship with food and stop feeling guilty for your food choices.
But sometimes the work to undo those narratives seems too difficult or you may want those results faster and that’s where I come in. As a weight loss and life coach, I can help identify those thoughts quickly and help you replace them. As a person who has lost over 93 pounds, I know what you are going through and can help you on your journey.
If you want help identifying where the guilt over food is coming from, I can help you. Sign up for a 30-minute call with me today.
Your coach,
Andrea