I want to talk about something that doesn’t get discussed the way it should.
Not in the way that makes people feel judged, or broken, or like they just need to “try harder.” But in a way that might, I hope, make some of you feel a little more understood.
Because if you have ever found yourself eating when you weren’t hungry, or not eating when you were, or following rules around food that felt impossible to break, or using food to get through a day that felt completely overwhelming, then this is for you.
And the first thing I want to say is: you are not weak. You are not out of control. You are not failing.
You are coping. And coping, even when it costs us something, is a form of intelligence.
Let’s start with a question nobody usually asks
When we talk about difficult relationships with food, whether that’s restricting, bingeing, obsessing, over-controlling, or anything in between, the conversation almost always focuses on the behaviour itself. Stop doing this. Change that. Here’s a meal plan. Here’s a goal.
But here’s the question that I think matters so much more:
What was your relationship with food actually doing for you, at the time it started?
Because it was doing something. It always is.
Food, and the way we use it, control it, avoid it, or turn to it, is one of the most powerful emotional tools available to us as human beings. It’s legal. It’s accessible. It works quickly. And for a lot of people, especially in moments of real pain or powerlessness, it becomes a way of managing something that feels completely unmanageable.
That’s not a character flaw. That’s a human being finding a way to survive.
When life feels out of control, we look for something we can control
Think about the times in your life when everything felt chaotic. When you were going through something really hard – a relationship falling apart, a loss, a job, a childhood, a situation you simply could not escape or fix.
In those moments, most of us reach for something that gives us a sense of order. Some people clean obsessively. Some people overwork. Some people withdraw. And some people, many people, turn to food.
Deciding exactly what you will and won’t eat, following strict rules, making everything predictable in that one small corner of your life: it’s a way of creating structure when the rest of the world has none. It’s a way of feeling like something – anything – is within your reach.
And on the other side of that, eating when the feelings get too big – eating past the point of hunger, eating in secret, eating to feel something softer and more manageable than what’s actually there – that’s not greed. That’s a nervous system looking for relief. And it finds it, at least for a little while.
These aren’t failures of willpower. They are creative, resourceful responses to genuine pain.
The problem we don’t talk about enough
Here’s something I see come up again and again, and I think it’s one of the most important things to name:
Sometimes, the source of our pain is not something we can change.
Not everything can be fixed. Not every difficult situation has an exit. Some people are living with grief that doesn’t resolve, or circumstances that can’t be walked away from, or histories that can’t be rewritten. And when we are in pain that we cannot change, we become very motivated — understandably, naturally, humanly — to change how we feel.
Food is one of the fastest ways to do that.
It’s never really about the food. It’s about finding a way to feel differently when you can’t change what’s making you feel this way.
When we understand that, the whole thing looks different. It stops looking like self-destruction and starts looking like self-preservation. An imperfect, sometimes harmful form of it — but self-preservation nonetheless.
Why shame makes everything harder
One of the cruelest things about difficult relationships with food is that they tend to attract shame — from other people, from the culture we live in, and most painfully, from ourselves.
And shame, as it turns out, is one of the least effective motivators for change that exists. We know this. We have probably lived it. Feeling terrible about ourselves rarely makes us treat ourselves better. It usually just adds another layer of pain on top of the pain that was already there.
What actually helps — what research shows, and what I see in practice — is understanding. Being able to look at a behaviour with curiosity instead of judgment. Asking “what is this doing for me?” instead of “what is wrong with me?”
That shift — from self-blame to self-understanding — is often where real change becomes possible. Not because we’ve forced ourselves into something, but because we’ve genuinely understood ourselves enough to want something different.
What I want you to take from this
If any of this resonates with you — if you recognised yourself somewhere in these words — please hear this:
Your relationship with food makes sense. It made sense when it started, and it makes sense now, even if it’s also hurting you.
You found a way to get through something difficult. Maybe many difficult things. And the tool you found had a cost — most survival tools do. But that doesn’t make you broken, or beyond help, or beyond change.
It makes you someone who needed more support than they had, and found a way through anyway.
The path forward isn’t about willpower or discipline or finally getting it right. It’s about understanding what the food relationship has been doing for you — and, gradually, gently, building other ways to meet those same needs.
That’s slow work. It’s not linear. And it’s absolutely possible.
And if you’re supporting someone else
If you’re reading this and thinking of someone you love — a partner, a child, a friend — who you’re worried about, I’d ask you to try something:
Before you say anything about what they’re eating or not eating, ask yourself if there’s something else going on for them. Something harder, something older, something they might not have the words for yet.
The most helpful thing you can often offer is not an opinion on their food. It’s the experience of being truly seen, without judgment, by someone who is on their side.
That, more than almost anything, is what creates the conditions for healing.
If this post resonated with you, feel free to share it. And if you’re finding your relationship with food – or with your feelings – difficult to navigate, reaching out to a psychologist or therapist is a genuinely worthwhile step. You don’t have to have it figured out before you get support.