food guilt is deeper than you think | the recovered-ish podcast ep. 12

hi! welcome back to recovered-ish.

today we’re talking about food guilt.
but not in the surface-level way it’s usually talked about.

because this isn’t just
“i feel a little guilty.”

this is the kind of guilt that hits after you eat and makes you feel like you need to fix it. immediately.

the kind that lingers.
the kind that turns into
“i shouldn’t have done that” → “i am bad.”

and if you’ve ever been stuck in that loop of
eat → feel awful → compensate → feel safe → repeat
this episode is going to make a lot of things click.

⚠️ content note
this episode discusses eating disorder thoughts, food guilt, and compensatory urges.
no numbers or graphic details.

in this episode, i talk about:

• why food guilt feels so intense
• the difference between guilt and shame (and why it matters)
• how guilt reinforces the eating disorder cycle
• why your body reacts like it’s in danger after eating
• where “good vs bad” food beliefs actually come from
• the problem with “clean eating” and food rules
• why this isn’t really about willpower
• why thinking differently isn’t enough on its own
• how to stop trying to “fix” the food
• what to actually do after you eat when the guilt hits
• real ways to regulate your body instead of compensating

resources / sponsor

sponsor

this episode is sponsored by Cozy Earth.

you guys know i’m really intentional about what i share here, and i would never partner with a brand that didn’t actually align.

cozy earth makes some of the softest, most comfortable loungewear and bedding i’ve ever owned. like genuinely the kind of stuff that makes you feel a little more taken care of in your day to day.

if you want to check them out, you can use code RECOVERY for up to 20% off.

www.cozyearth.com

Recovery Skills Training — my step-by-step program for eating disorder recovery

get $57 off with code PODCAST
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Resources + Connect with Me:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'll eat more, but it will be like very clean. I hate that word, clean. Your food's not dirty unless it has dirt on it. You don't feel guilty because you did something bad. You feel guilty because your body has learned that's a threat. You are looking at this issue in such simplistic terms. It's almost like caveman, like broccoli good, pizza bad. No, we're intelligent human beings. You're listening to the Recovered-Isch podcast. I'm your host, Chloe Cox. And yeah, I know a thing or two about eating disorder recovery. Between my own very complicated history with disordered eating and the work I do now, I've seen this thing from pretty much every angle. This podcast is where we talk about the messier parts of recovery that don't really make it online. No platitudes, no inspirational quotes, just the real, raw, sometimes frustrating, sometimes surprisingly liberating process of building a life beyond your eating disorder. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome back to the Recovered Ish Podcast. I'm Chloe. Thanks for being here today. I am excited to talk to you. Last week I was feeling, and you'll all soon know more about this, but I was feeling really just like chaotic and off and blah. And you know what? I feel like it ended up being still a pretty interesting episode. And since I did that episode, if you haven't listened yet, I read through some of my old eating disorder treatment journals from over 10 years ago at this point. The first one was dated in 2014, I think. And I've been thinking a lot about that version of me, like the 18-year-old version of me, and holding her with a lot more fondness, I think. Sometimes I look back at that girl who was struggling so hard, and I think, like, man, if she had just made some different choices, my life could be so different. Maybe I wouldn't have had to go through this. And there's sometimes that I even get angry of like, uh, if she hadn't fallen down this path, like maybe I would not have this horrible part of my brain that just never stops berating me about food and body. And, you know, like I've told you all, it really doesn't bother me anymore in the way that it once did. But sometimes I just get like really angry and like shake my fist at the sky, and I'm like, why did I ever have to do the stupid things I did when I was 18 that made me turn into this like eating disorder monster? But reading back, I don't think it could have been avoided. For one. And number two, I'm so grateful for her. I am really grateful. You know, of course, not the fact that she had to battle something like an eating disorder, but I'm grateful for her insight, for her reflections. I'm grateful for the crisis that she went through that led me to where I am now. A life I have now, I wouldn't trade for anything. And I really don't think I would have had it if that version of me didn't go through these struggles. For one thing, I would probably be living in New York City, not in Southern California, five minutes from my parents. I never thought that that would be my life. I really always growing up thought that I would be on the other side of the country. I definitely would never have met my husband because we met out here and bonded because we'd both been through significant mental health struggles. His drug addiction, my eating disorder was something that really immediately we disclosed that to each other and bonded. I mean, he's the best thing that's ever happened in my life. And then he gave me my son. And like all of these amazing things in my life happened in a strange way because of my eating disorder. So, anyway, since then I've just been sitting with a lot of gratitude and almost reverence for that like fiery, struggling, sad, confused, mad version of me. She's pretty awesome and she's strong, and I'm grateful for that. So thanks for walking down memory lane with me last week and reading those. And maybe we'll do another revisit because there was a lot. I mean, man, there were like five journals completely full. We barely scratched the surface of the insight there. So maybe someday we'll return to it. That said, today I am feeling more like myself and thinking a lot about a topic that has come up consistently with my clients in the last week or two, my coaching clients and my therapy clients alike. When we talk about the biggest barriers to eating disorder recovery, two things tend to come up. One is the fear of weight gain. That's massive, and we've talked about that. But the other thing that comes up a lot is food guilt. When I eat, the feeling that comes up after that feels unbearable, that's one of those things that perpetuates the cycle of an eating disorder like no other. There's that like mountainous idea of my body's gonna change and I'm gonna gain weight, and that is like I can't even fathom. That's for sure a massive barrier. But then the other thing is like actually in the moment doing the thing, like actually in the moment, picking up your fork, putting the food in your mouth, swallowing it, and then sitting there afterwards, the feeling that overcomes a person when they're trying to recover from an eating disorder after you've eaten the food, there's not a lot of words that can describe how horrible that feeling can be. And the fact that it lingers and it lasts. So that's what we're talking about today. Or buckle up, I guess. Here's the thing about food: guilt. We first have to talk about what is actually the definition of guilt. And if any of you have been in therapy, you've probably parsed out the difference with your therapist or in a group. There's a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is this idea of I did something bad. Inherently, guilt itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. You have to understand about our emotions. Emotions have evolved evolutionarily. We have strong feelings more than anything because they help us survive. You have a strong feeling of joy, it reinforces that what you're engaging in is good and it's good for your health. That's why like connecting with other people brings a lot of joy. That's a survival-promoting behavior. If we go back to like our ancestral roots, feelings of fear. You need fear to keep yourself safe in the wild. For me, I've told you all about my fear of snakes. That is like an all-consuming fear. And that didn't just happen out of nowhere. That's something hardwired into my biology because snakes are dangerous, specifically poisonous snakes. If one bit me, I could die. Like it makes sense why we have these emotions. Even sadness, like when sadness comes on, it communicates something. Something's not right, something's been lost. We need to reconnect, we need to find comfort, we need to find safety. Like all of our emotions really do have a purpose, and guilt has one too. As bad as it feels, when guilt comes on, it communicates I did something that needs to be corrected. I made a choice that resulted in some sort of negative outcome that should be remedied. For example, I have said I hate you to my sister one time in my entire life, and it was over a really stupid thing. I think we were watching a TV show or something, and she changed the channel, and I screamed that I hated her. And then my parents took me aside and said, Chloe, that's your sister. You can't say that you hate your sister. Like hating someone is a really strong negative word. It means you really deeply dislike them. And they really explained to me, like, what does hate mean? And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm horrified. I don't hate my sister. I just hated what she did. That was an awful thing to say. And I never said it again. I went back to my sister and said how sorry I was. I was sobbing. Also, it has to be stated that as a child, I had very big feelings and never wanted to do anything wrong. My parents were amazing in the way that they really fully explained to me when I did do something wrong why that was wrong without shame. They did not make me feel shame about it, but they really explained to me, hey, this is what that means. I don't think that's what you meant. And it wasn't. I mean, I guess that explains a positive sense of guilt. I felt horribly guilty that I had said this thing to my sister that I did not mean. I went, I said sorry, we hugged, she's my best friend. Uh guilt can be helpful in that way. When we feel guilty about things we should feel guilty about, it can help us to correct and repair. Let's say you you like shoplifted from Target, you feel a little guilty about that. Probably not the best thing to repeat. When you actually do something that's maybe not so great, the feeling of guilt makes sense and is actually kind of helpful. It helps you to maintain your relationships, it helps you to live a life according to what your true values are. Guilt isn't so bad when it's appropriate, but that's where it gets muddy with an eating disorder. Eating disorders make us feel guilty about things that we have no business feeling guilty about. And that guilt is so all-consuming that it pushes us to overcorrect so that that feeling goes away. This comes up so often, I mean, daily, with most people that struggle with an eating disorder. Your eating disorder has a plan for the way that the day should look eating X amount of calories, eating this food, not that food. But sometimes life doesn't go according to plan. Sometimes you are extremely hungry, and you're like, I can't follow the eating disorder right now, and you eat the thing. Or maybe you ate something, you eat something, you find out later what the nutrition facts are, and that gives you so much guilt and anxiety that you're like on the floor crying. Personal experience with that, obviously. It is such a key ingredient in perpetuation of the eating disorder cycle. I mean, we could clearly draw it out. If I had a whiteboard right now, I would draw it. You have the eating disorder rule. When that rule is broken, the food event occurs. Immediate feeling of guilt, intense guilt, extreme guilt, maybe followed by anxiety and fear. There's a mix of really negative emotions, but guilt is the one that keeps chanting and nagging and pushing at you with this thought of I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have done that, I've got to fix it, I've got to fix it. When you are holding such intensity in your body, it becomes a necessity to do something about it because it feels almost like you're gonna die. And that's where it goes back to this evolutionary pattern that our this evolutionary response. The guilt that then lends itself to fear feels so all-consuming and so intense that it does feel like you're gonna die because that's what it's telling your body. So the directive from the guilt is fix it, fix it. You shouldn't have done that, fix it. And usually what that leads to is some form of compensation, which you can fill in the blank with whatever that is for you, exercise, purging, overcorrecting from restriction, like I can't have XYZ the rest of the day or the rest of the week or whatever it is. And so then you reestablish a sense of safety of like, okay, it's gonna be all right because I'm gonna do all these things to make it all right. And then you feel safe again. And that's the real kicker because that reinforces I did do something wrong. And when I correct that wrong thing, then I'm okay. That's incorrect. That isn't correct, but it feels really correct because once we've fixed it, our body can calm down, we find regulation again, we feel safe, and then it reinforces the idea. Yeah, I shouldn't have eaten that food. But that was really terrible because look at how it made you feel horrible. Problem is two things. First of all, your eating disorder keeps raising the bar, makes more rules, intensifies the rules, and there's gonna be obviously detrimental impacts on your health and your mental well-being, but it also makes it harder to stay within the boundaries of those rules. So you're going to break them again. And when that rule gets broken again, the response to the guilt gets more intense. It just gets more and more intense. And then the desire or the need to fix it also gets more and more intense. The return back to safety feels even better because now you're returning to safety from an even more heightened space, which then reinforces the idea that that rule maybe should even be more intense than it was. So, do you see what an insidious trap all of this is? Rule followed by guilt, followed by directive, followed by correction, followed by a feeling of regulation and safety, then lends itself to more intensity, even narrower rules, and even more intense guilt. And it just gets worse and worse and worse. So, this is all stuff you probably just know to be true as you're listening to it from your own personal experiences. And it also explains how an eating disorder gets deeper and deeper and deeper the more that time goes on, because biologically, this is happening in our nervous system and cognitively. The rules are being reinforced cognitively, which then top down from your brain to your body communicates that this is the pattern that has to continue to keep you safe. And actually, to illustrate this point even further, I can share that this is the exact cycle that led me from a place that crossed the threshold from disordered eating to a full-blown eating disorder. You all know my story by this point. When I was in my freshman year of college, I would say that's when I was teetering really on the edge of disordered eating to eating disorder. And I wasn't fully in a cycle of what became a very restrictive eating disorder quite yet. I was in this cycle of feeding myself throughout the day. But every time I would feed myself, and I think you can recall this from last week and reading my journals, there was this sense of guilt and self-loathing that would come up where I would be meeting my needs. I would be eating what I thought was quote unquote healthy and what I thought I needed, which was probably even a bit more restrictive than I knew at the time. And then every time I would go and eat something off the plan of what I thought was right and what was healthy, the feeling of guilt and disgust was so intense that the message that I got was you should never have that. You should never have that again. Which really, in the end, was what led me down the path of intensifying my rules and avoiding the bad feeling. I've said this before about perfectionism, and I'm now realizing how much it applies to an eating disorder, too. Perfectionism, a lot of people think perfectionism is about wanting to be the best or having really high standards or achieving something great and pushing yourself to that goal. When in actuality, perfectionism is a lot more, is a lot more about fear and avoiding a bad feeling. When a perfectionist makes a mistake, that feeling is so awful that they will avoid it at all costs, which is why it makes achieving perfection feel so imperative. It's the same thing here with an eating disorder. Eating disorders become so much less about achieving a certain body or working towards a certain goal or aesthetic, and so much more about, man, I can't feel that way. Like I will do anything. It's so much easier to not eat that food and not feel guilty than it is to eat that food and be overcome by guilt. It's so much more about avoidance of a negative feeling than it is about achieving a positive one. And that's what it was for me in that space and time was eventually I realized I can't tolerate feeling that guilt anymore. So I'm just gonna not. And boom, that was the pipeline. Like, slide right into an eating disorder because I could not physically tolerate feeling so awful and guilty. If you're nodding your head and you're like, yeah, that's it, you're also probably wondering, like, okay, what do I do about this? Because it feels like it can't be undone. Once you've lived with this for so long and had this response so intense for so many years, it's like, how could I ever not feel guilty when I eat X, Y, and Z? And I certainly have thoughts on that too, which we will get to. But the other thing that I want to touch on before we move there is that I almost feel like food guilt is a misnomer. It sounds so it honestly kind of sounds too tame to describe what that experience is. When you feel a little guilty, it's like, ooh, I feel a little guilty. I don't know. When you think about something like, oh, a guilty pleasure, like a guilty pleasure TV show. I mean, I watched like every season of The Bachelor ever during my maternity leave. And I was just sitting there with my newborn watching The Bachelor, and I was like, is this the best thing to have on while I have like my newborn here? Probably I felt a little guilty about that, but I was like, eh, it's fine. That's what you normally think of with guilt, is like, ooh, I feel a little guilty. Like, this is maybe not the best thing to do. Food guilt is a different beast, it just feels way more intense, which is why I think it's less food guilt because it so quickly turns into shame. And that's the identity element of it all. Food guilt starts out with I ate something bad that I shouldn't have eaten, but very quickly it turns into I ate something bad, so I am bad. And that's the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is I did something bad, shame is I am bad. And I think that's what food guilt becomes is I ate this, I shouldn't have eaten it. And because I chose to eat this, I suck. I'm disgusting, I'm awful and bad. That's why it's so hard to sit with. Because if it was really you just made a mistake and did something quote unquote wrong, it would be like, okay, I can move on from that. It happened once, whatever, but it's not that. It's I did this, so what does it mean about me? It means I'm a person that eats this, which means I'm a person that's lazy or undisciplined or fill in the blanks, you know. We all have that narrative. And that's what's so hard to sit with is I can't be that person. I can't be the kind of person that eats that because I have this certain view of what that kind of person is, and I can't associate myself with that. That's where it becomes so deep and woven into identity that it does feel impossible to disentangle. I should pause here and tell you that it is possible to disentangle it. It's not a feeling that has to last forever. And I want to assure you that from my own experience. I mean, that there are foods that I used to avoid, like the plague, because of this feeling of guilt, that I now have every single day of my life without a second thought. So I want you to know it's possible to do this. Albeit it's hard and takes time and takes a lot of retraining. And I think that's where I want to take you next in this episode is like, how do we even start? How to even start this? Because it's essential in recovery that you have to tolerate this feeling. Like, I'm not gonna sugarcoat that for you. There's no real way to fully recover from an eating disorder without facing the food guilt. I think a lot of us want to find that like magic path of okay, I'll recover, but I'll eat all my safe foods, just more of them. And so then I won't feel as guilty or bad. Or I'll eat more, but it will be like very clean. I hate that word, clean. Your food's not dirty unless it has dirt on it. But I will say you can make progress there for a time, but you're still in a prison. You're still defined by those rules, and that guilt is still lurking on the other side when you don't follow those rules. It's a prison that maybe has a little bit of a wider perimeter, but it's still a prison. So I won't sugarcoat it. Food guilt is something you have to look at. And maybe there's some peace in just accepting it. It's like there's no way around it. You're gonna have to feel it, you're gonna have to face it. But I think one thing we have to start with is tracing where that food guilt started. Where did it come from? Where did we learn it from? And you guys, the sources of this guilt, there are endless sources. Okay, before we continue, I want to talk about our sponsor, Cozy Earth. And I actually really mean it when I say this one. Feels aligned with everything we talk about on this show. You guys know how much I believe that recovery shows up in the small stuff, the tiny daily choices that are really just acts of kindness towards yourself. And one of mine lately has been what I'm putting my body in at the end of the day. I've been wearing Cozy Earth's Bamboo stretch knit pajama set, and they feel like I'm wearing nothing. Genuinely so light, so cooling, and the waistband doesn't dig in or squeeze at all. They just exist on your body. I put them on and I'm like, oh yeah, this is what comfortable is supposed to feel like. I also have their bamboo sheets made from viscos from bamboo, and they actually regulate your temperature while you sleep. So no more waking up hot and sweaty at 2 a.m., just real rest. If you're someone who's learning to be a little bit gentler with yourself and like, hello, that's exactly what we do on this show. This is such an easy place to start. Seriously. There's a 100-night sleep trial, completely risk-free, and a 10-year warranty. Head to cozyearth.com and use my code Recovery for up to 20% off. If you get a post-purchase survey, let them know you heard about it here. Because home isn't just where you live, it's how you feel. Comfort lives here. Cozy Earth. I mean, my earliest memories of learning what food is good and what food is bad. It's hard to even remember a time where I didn't think about food that way. Even in the most well-intentioned households, I think you start to pick up on that where it's like, okay, these are foods that we have in our house all the time. And then these are foods that we only have on Christmas, or these are foods that we only have at birthdays. And there's an idea that, like, that's a special food, and we shouldn't have it every day. Those are so implicit, doesn't even have to be said, but we start to categorize like green light food, red light food, yellow light food. But I guess when I really started to take it in was in my freshman year health class. I loved that teacher, but some of the material in that class I have a problem with, the curriculum. For one thing, we watched a documentary about eating disorders that would have been the most triggering thing ever, ever if I had one at the time. I'm just was an insane thing to have a group of high schoolers watch. And I remember thinking at that time, oh my gosh, that could never be me. And then fast forward a couple years, and it was. But I we watched that documentary, and then like five minutes later, he was showing us how much sugar was in orange juice, and very clearly categorizing like that thing that you're eating right there on your desk, this is how much sugar is in it, and showing us with a bag of sugar in a food scale. And at the time, I didn't really care too much. I was like, okay, whatever. Like, I'm fine to eat that. I eat it all the time. It's whatever. But it did tell me, like, oh, okay, bad food. That food is bad. This food is good. Fundamentally, there is a problem with moralizing food. I won't be so naive to say that every food has the same nutritional content. That's just not true. There's different vitamins, minerals, macronutrients in all foods. They serve different purposes at different times, but it's really unfair to say this is a bad food and this is a good food when all food just serves a different purpose. When I am starving, like so hungry, I'm not gonna reach for a broccoli stick. That will not satisfy me. The best way that I've ever had this illustrated to me was in treatment when a dietitian said to me, and maybe I've shared this on the podcast before, she was like, Okay, you are on a deserted island, and you can choose to either have an unlimited supply of pizza or an unlimited supply of broccoli. Which food do you choose? And I thought, well, broccoli. That's the healthiest one. That's the best one. That's the good food. And she was like, Okay, you died. You died because broccoli is not going to sustain you living on a deserted island. You cannot survive on only broccoli. Not gonna live. And she was like, if you had chosen pizza, that would actually have been the healthiest food for you to survive on that deserted island because it is a complete nutritional food. You've got your carbohydrate source, you've got a source of lipids, and you've got a source of protein. You would have survived and thrived if you had chosen the pizza. And I was like, wow, okay, that really does illustrate it. Which I know many of you listening will might have some more pushback from that eating disorder brain place. But the point is, when we ascribe value, moral value to certain foods, then we start to equate our own worth with the food that we choose. I chose the broccoli in that scenario because I thought that was the good choice. And I want to be seen as good. I want to be good. I saw in my brain pizza as the bad choice. And I thought if I chose, that would say something bad about me. Flash forward 11 years, and pizza's like my favorite food ever. We actually have pizza night every Thursday in my house, but that's the real problem. It's like all food can fit in a quote-unquote healthy diet. The problem with moralizing food is what it does to that cycle and what it does to our identity and the intensity of emotion that comes up from a single choice. You choosing to have the pizza instead of the broccoli does not mean anything about who you are. That's preposterous. You choose the pizza and suddenly you're a bad person, or you're undisciplined, or you're lazy. What that's so reductive. How can you reduce your personhood down to a choice about a literal snack? And that's what I wish I could tell that version of me. Was you are looking at this issue in such simplistic terms, it's almost like caveman, like broccoli good, pizza bad. No, we're intelligent human beings. There's nuance to this. Broccoli is a great food to have, it can't be the only food you have. Pizza is a great food to have. It also can't be the only food you have. So to say that one is good and the other is bad, it's looking at factors in literally no context. And so I guess that's the first thing to see is these rules that we have learned have been oversimplified to an insane degree. And you owe it to yourself to look at this with a bit more nuance. The subtle messaging that we absorb repeatedly throughout our lives, certain foods are clean, certain foods are wellness focused, certain foods promote health. And if you choose those foods, you are a more worthy human being. Honestly, that makes me kind of sick to think about. And I know that I believed that once, but it's so not who I am to look at a person and see what's on their plate and make a moral judgment about their character and their worth. So why do we do that to ourselves? It's to avoid why do we do that to ourselves? The problem is we don't ever ask that question, really, because the feeling is so bad, that's all we think about. We just don't want to feel that sense of I'm worthless because I chose that food. So instead of questioning the broader system and our beliefs, we can't. We only focus on, I feel so dysregulated, I feel so panicked from having that food that I have to fix it, and that's all that matters. It's so much more urgent. It feels like survival. So I guess the first thing that needs to happen is a clear separation of these beliefs. This idea of this food is good, that food is bad, isn't something I ever chose, is fundamentally reductive, and is actually against my values as a person. If you can get behind that, you have a step in the right direction. And I would encourage you to do more of your own research as well. There's so much as far as like information to consume that is anti-diet, so much more accurate than the clips of like salads and cottage cheese that we're seeing on Instagram. The what I eat in a day is like my advice to you would be like really get off of Instagram if those are the things that are on your algorithm. And I'm saying that as somebody that like creates content on Instagram. That is a glossy aesthetic version of food moralization that you don't need to be seeing. You see these images of beautiful food, healthy quote unquote food, and then a gorgeous, gorgeous girl who like looks aspirational. You don't need to be taking that in. You're taking too much of that in, probably right now. And instead, fill your mind with some new information, with some more nuanced information. I will link some things, I will link some books and resources in the show notes too. If you want to do some more of your own research, Food Psych by Christy Harrison. That's a podcast. She also has a book, I believe, called like anti-diet or something like that. Great informational resource to go to. Another podcast I absolutely love is called The Maintenance Phase. And it breaks down these different dietary trends and actually looks at the research and gets extremely factual on like what is actually like what's the truth behind these diet fads and the misinformation really that's being promoted about our food. The intuitive eating book is a beautiful one to go to at any time, really. But that's a great place to start. You need to clear your feed of any of this information and start filling your brain with some things that are gonna challenge you and challenge this ideology. That's the cognitive part of this. But the core shift that really helped me when I was trying to move through food guilt was really not about thinking or changing my beliefs at all. I think that's a very important piece of it that needs to be ongoing work, but that alone is not going to help in those moments when you really are freaking the heck out after you've eaten something. I think that work can be done on the front end, and you can have that information to counter the eating disorder voice. It might actually even get you to like pick up the fork and eat the food that you fear. And I think that's really important to know, like a mantra I would use is my body doesn't know the difference. My body isn't labeling this good or bad. My body is just glad that I'm nourishing. That's it. And I would tell myself that and I would pick up the fork and I would eat the food. What happened after is a conditioned response, which you have to understand that it's not just gonna go away by thinking differently. That might help a little bit, actually, it might help a lot. But if this is so hardwired into your nervous system, we have to expect that your body is still gonna respond with some panic, with some fear, with that intense feeling of guilt. And that's where we have to separate okay, my body's still learning this. My brain is on board, my body is not on board yet. So we have to learn, okay, my body's gonna respond to the belief that's been ingrained. I might believe something different now, but my body's still gonna panic. And so instead of correcting the behavior, which was eating the food, and that's what your brain will scream at you right after you eat it, is fix it, fix it, do something different, compensate, X, Y, and Z. Yes, that might provide regulation and safety for a bit in the moment. It's not going to help you long term. And it's actually not really what your body needs. It's a shortcut to safety that isn't going to be sustainable. It's only going to reinforce that fear. So instead, we have to separate the feeling from the action. You don't feel guilty because you did something bad. You feel guilty because your body has learned that's a threat. We know now that it isn't. And so instead of responding by correcting your action, how can you respond by attending to your feeling? And that's the tricky part. You don't need to fix anything that you've done, but we do need to take care of ourselves and take care of the emotion. So, what I would do, and what I advise a lot of my clients to do in this situation is eat the food, ground yourself in logic before and what you value and what you believe, expect a sort of shitstorm afterwards, but have a plan to take care of yourself and ground. So the first part of the work is cognitive, the second part of the work is somatic. Instead of fixing the guilt by compensating and playing into the eating disorder, attend to the guilt by giving yourself what you actually need, which is a sense of safety. So this can look so many different ways. For me, at first, before I had a lot of these skills, was calling someone that could regulate me. This is called co-regulation. Somebody that I knew was a source of safety for me. And very often, that was my sister. I remember in treatment, we went to a lunch outing. Those were always so fun. This was during PHP. We had Mexican food, and then afterwards, they always had us do our snack, like our afternoon snack, right after the lunch outing, which was a massive challenge. And we would go out and have like some kind of dessert or something like that. And we went to Dunkin' Donuts. And I chose what I thought was the safest donut. And I came home and stupidly Googled the calories and found out that it was not, in fact, the safest donut. And I freaked out. This is like a core memory from treatment of mine, where I was in the treatment apartments, like literally on the bathroom floor sobbing to my sister. And I called her and I was like, I ate this and I don't know what to do, and I'm freaking out, and it's awful. And my sister was like, Chloe, I had two donuts this morning. You're okay, you're gonna be fine. And she was like, It's okay to have a donut. You might not feel like that right now, but like seriously, it's not a big deal. Like, I had two today, and I'm really happy. And you'll get through it and you'll be fine, and you didn't do anything wrong. And so, I mean, you guys know at this point, my sister has been someone that throughout my recovery, and especially in my early days, was really, really there for me. And her relationship with food was something I really felt jealous of and also tried to model my own after. And so having her on the other end of the phone to bring me back down, I felt her safety and it made me feel safe. Co-regulation is a really beautiful one if you have someone in your life that really is that source of safety for you. Even if there aren't words to be said, sometimes just giving a hug to a safe person or holding their hands, looking in their eyes, and breathing with them at the same time, that can do wonders for a nervous system. Another way that it can look, if you don't have access to this kind of safe person, if you have a weighted blanket, wrap yourself in a weighted blanket. For me, lying on the ground can be really, really helpful as well, like literally grounding on the ground, putting your legs up the wall. And I would do this a lot in my yoga class, and that helped me a lot. Even things like bilateral tapping, where you cross your arms, like put one hand over your chest and cross the other one and tap back and forth. That can be very, very regulating. There are so many different things that you can use. A very simple one is the like 54321 grounding strategy, where you look for five things that you can see, four things that you can hear, three things that you can feel, two things that you can smell, and one thing that you can taste that really snaps you back and brings you back into your body very quickly. The list goes on and on using your sensory awareness, like the sense of smell, turning on some grounding music. Sometimes for me, it's actually turning on some extremely loud music and moving my body. Shaking can be very, very helpful. I mean, there's so many things, and I could actually do a full episode on just like somatic grounding skills and tools that you can add to your arsenal. But the point is, your feeling needs to be taken care of. The food doesn't need to be fixed. If it's hard to think of, like, okay, how would I take care of this feeling? Imagine how you would take care of a small child, seriously, who was feeling this way. How would you talk to her? What tone of voice would you use? Would you give her a hug? Would you set her up to watch her favorite movie? Would you grab her a cup of tea? What does she need? Maybe she needs to scream. Maybe she needs to throw a pillow at the wall. Think about what you would do to support a kiddo that's having a really hard time, that's feeling some really strong things, and give that to yourself. That's how you actually get through food guilt. It's not about changing your belief system overnight, it's about consistently feeding your belief system with new information, challenging the fear foods, actually eating them, anticipating and knowing that it's gonna feel bad, and then taking care of your feelings, not fixing. And the more that you do that, your nervous system learns something new. It learns that it can eat those foods and that you will be safe after. And the best part of that is it stops reinforcing the idea that you need to avoid those foods in order to feel safe. And that's really at its core why I can now eat pizza every week and not freak out. I could eat it every day. I love pizza. That's how food guilt gets resolved. We have to challenge it, but we also have to take care of ourselves and interrupt that reinforcement loop that makes it seem like the only way to feel okay is to avoid and have stronger rules. The really important thing is establishing that safety within yourself and then taking a different action, not fixing the food, not compensating, not restricting more later, but deeply knowing okay, I can take care of myself, I can take care of this feeling, and I can move on. I can shake it off, I can do the next right thing. And I know that you can. It's really hard. I'm not gonna lie, it's really hard. And it takes work on the cognitive side and the somatic side. Both of those things need to happen. So it's gonna take a while. But the best place to start is by just picking up the fork, eating the damn food, and having a plan to take care of yourself afterwards. I hope that that is somewhat helpful and not discouraging. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it takes a long time, but I want you to deeply know that it's possible. I I know I'm not someone that often comes onto this podcast and is like, full recovery is possible. Like, I do think it is, obviously. I'm more living in the nuance of the recovered-ish space. Obviously, that's the name of the show. Of like things can get a lot better. And I still have an eating disorder voice that talks to me from time to time. Things can be amazingly better. And this is one of those moments where I really want you to know that food guilt does not have to be a part of your life forever. There's so many things I used to be deeply afraid of that are so normal to me now, and this is exactly how that happened over the course of several, several years. So a little hope for you today. Okay. Well, that about wraps it up. I actually had more to say about that than I thought I did. And I hope that it provided some insight for you, something to think about, some like really actionable steps to take away. As always, I so appreciate you being here. Would love to know what you think of the episode. If you can leave a comment on YouTube or a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, that would be so helpful for me. I feel so passionate about this podcast and feel so grateful that I now have sponsors coming onto the show that help make this feel more possible and accessible for all of you. All links that I've mentioned will be in the description or in the show notes. I cannot wait to talk to you more next week. This has been a delight. Okay, everybody. Eat your food, take care of yourself. I will see you next week.