Ep #9: How to Stop Feeling Guilty About What Or How Much You Eat

Hi! How are you? I’m amazing. I’m super excited to be talking to you today. Podcasting is fun! I feel like I can teach you so much more when I’m talking to you rather than when I’m just writing a blog so this is great. I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

Alright, now onto today’s topic which I’m sure a lot of you deal with.

Guilt.

Most people feel guilty after binge eating but, you might also feel guilty after overeating, after eating past full, after eating what you think is too much of what I call joy food, or after eating a food you think is bad, that’s not nutritious, or that is high in calories, fat, or carbs.

You just feel so bad about what or how much you ate. You think you did something bad or something wrong. You think you shouldn’t have done it.

I used to experience this a lot. I of course felt the guilt after binge eating as most people do. I would think what I did was terrible and embarrassing. But I’d also overeat, eat past full or eat beyond my calorie goal and feel bad about it, or eat something that wasn’t on my plan or eat too many sweets and feel bad about it.

And then the guilt would drive me to give up on myself. So, I’d just go eat more.

It’s that, “I already did something bad so I might as well just do more bad things” mentality.

Which just doesn’t even make sense if you really think about it.

I felt bad about what I did so I’d just go do more of it? What?

But that’s the way it goes so often. We end up doing counterintuitive things when we’re in a negative headspace.

We don’t like what we did, so we feel bad, and then we do worse.

For example, say I ate half a pizza, I mentally beat myself up for it and feel guilty about it, so then I keep eating more pizza. The result being? Now I ate a whole pizza instead of half.

So let’s talk about why you feel guilty and why you eat more and binge when you feel guilty.

Starting with why you feel guilty.

You might think it’s because of what or how much you ate.

But it’s actually not.

It’s possible that a person could eat a candy bar one day and be fine with it but then eat it another day and feel guilty.

It’s possible that a person could eat 3 cookies one day and be fine with it but another time they might feel guilty about eating just one.

If it was the food or the amount, then they would feel guilty every time they ate the candy bar and whether they ate 1 or 3 or any amount of cookies.

Now, maybe you do feel guilty every time. Maybe every time you eat a certain food you feel guilty or every time you eat a certain amount you feel guilty.

But, if it was the amount or the food that made you feel guilty, that would mean you would never be able to do it without feeling guilty.

And thankfully, that’s just not true.

Because really, it’s how you think about the food or amount that causes you to feel guilty.

Remember the thought model I taught you in the previous episode?

You experience circumstances. Your circumstances trigger thoughts. Those thoughts cause you to feel the feelings you feel, your feelings drive your actions, and your actions create your results.

You feel how you feel because of what you’re thinking, not because of your circumstances and not because of what you did.

So any guilt you feel is caused by your thoughts about the circumstance.

The circumstance is that you ate a cookie. Now what do you think about that?

If you’re feeling guilty, it’s most likely something along the lines of, I did something wrong, or bad, or I shouldn’t have done that.

That’s why the guilt is there – because you’re thinking you did something wrong or bad.

So why do you think that?

It’s likely that you’ve been taught that certain foods are bad, or that certain foods will make you gain weight, or that you can’t eat certain foods if you want to lose weight.

Or if it’s not just the food you feel guilty about eating but the amount, you’re judging yourself, being hard on yourself, and are mentally beating yourself up for having eaten that much.

And I’m not even just talking about the amount that people usually eat when they binge.

I’m talking about eating two pieces of cake or more than what the bag says is a serving of chips.

You might be talking to yourself in a way that makes you feel guilty for that. You’re guilting yourself.

So it all comes down to what you believe is right and wrong when it comes to food and amounts and also how you talk to yourself when you eat certain foods and amounts.

And you don’t have to be so hard on yourself and judge yourself so harshly.

If you eat two pieces of cake rather than one, you don’t have to then tell yourself that you did something bad or wrong or mentally beat yourself up and criticize and guilt yourself.

That kind of self-talk and feeling guilty about what you eat is completely optional.

It’s also not useful.

It drives self-hatred, self-sabotage, regret, and usually leads right to restricting or bingeing.

Or when you create that guilt, you might eat more to cover it up and to not feel it.

Or, when you create that guilt, you might then start the all-or-nothing thinking where you think you did something wrong or bad, you messed up your day, so you might as well keep being bad, keep eating, and so you end up bingeing – especially if you vow to be good tomorrow, which means you won’t eat any quote “bad” foods tomorrow, or indefinitely, so you then want to get rid of them now by eating them all.

That’s how your guilt can turn into more eating and bingeing.

So again, guilting yourself isn’t useful.

What is useful, if you did eat an amount that was too much, is accepting what you did, understanding why you did what you did without judgement, and forgiving and being kind to yourself.

And what is useful if you ate a food that you consider to be unhealthy, is to allow yourself to eat it. You don’t have to label it as bad or feel bad about eating it. It’s okay. It’s just a delicious food and you don’t have to make it mean anything other than that.

The reality is that you ate what you ate, or you ate how much you ate. Now you have the option of telling yourself that you did something wrong or bad, that you shouldn’t have, and feeling guilty about it or, accepting what happened and being at peace with it.

You ate it. Period. That’s all you need to say.

You don’t have to judge it or judge yourself for it.

Now, you may think that if you don’t feel guilty then you’ll just keep doing it.

But I want to tell you that this is not the case.

You can choose to not feel guilty about it and choose to not do it again.

You can acknowledge that it wasn’t something you want to be doing, and that maybe it didn’t produce the outcome you wanted and choose to not do it again.

And when you’re accepting of what happened, rather than guilting yourself, you’re going to be in an emotional space that will more easily allow you to move forward and do better.

It’s so hard to do that when you’re feeling guilty. When you’re feeling guilty you’re likely just going to ruminate about what you did, be hard on yourself, and do nothing productive.

Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t make yourself feel bad on purpose.

Think about this, would you try to make your best friend feel guilty after eating something or an amount they ate? Would you tell them they did something wrong? I doubt it, because you wouldn’t want to make them feel worse.

You’d tell them encouraging things. Why? Because you want them to feel better and do better. Not feel worse and sit in a negativity hole.

So do the same for yourself. No guilt holes. Feel at peace, be accepting, be encouraging, and then do better.

You might have made a mistake, and making mistakes is normal, we all do it sometimes, and it’s also part of the process. Making mistakes is a way to learn.

If you eat too much, it’s just a learning experience. You don’t have to make yourself feel bad about yourself.

If you ate what you think is too much, you can either beat yourself up and think you did something bad or wrong, or that you shouldn’t have done that, or you can look back without judgement and figure out what you would have done differently. What specifically can you learn from this and how can you do better next time?

And you might have done nothing wrong at all by eating a specific food. Again, it’s okay to eat food that isn’t nutritious sometimes. That’s quote “normal” eating. And if you’ve been being too restrictive with that food, then I encourage you to not be so restrictive and to eat it so you don’t create urges to binge on it. Eating it sometimes is better than eating it never and then bingeing on it.

So regardless of what happens, guilt doesn’t have to be an obligatory feeling every or any time you eat, whether it’s a binge or a bowl of cereal.

You don’t have to berate or judge yourself, you can be compassionate, kind, supportive, and encouraging.

You get to decide what you think about what you did and how you want to feel about it.

It’s up to you.

So drop that guilt!

Okay, now before I go, if you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to or follow this podcast! Make catching all the episodes easy on yourself. And if you don’t know how to subscribe or follow, I got you. You can email info@coachkir.com to get a walkthrough for how to do it.

Alright, have a great week of guilt-free eating!