EPISODE 38: Why Ignoring Your Cravings Makes Emotional Eating Worse, Not Better

This episode contains discussions around emotional eating, cravings, and our relationship with food and desire. Please engage gently. This content is educational and is not a substitute for professional support. If you are struggling with your relationship with food, please reach out to a qualified healthcare professional.

You wanted the chocolate.

You chose the rice cake instead. You told yourself you were being good. And then an hour later you were still thinking about the chocolate, and probably ate more than you would have if you'd just had it in the first place.

If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you.

The problem starts before you open the fridge.

Diet culture has taught us that food is moral. That there are good foods and bad foods. That eating certain things makes you good and eating other things makes you bad.

Think about the language most of us use without even noticing. I've been so good today. I was so bad on the weekend. I need to earn this. I'll work it off later.

What this language does is take something entirely neutral, food, and turn it into a referendum on your worth, your character, and your self-control. And when you approach food with that kind of charge around it, when there's already guilt before you've taken a single bite, you are not in a regulated state. You are already slightly activated, already slightly braced.

The food isn't the problem. The charge around the food is the problem. And that charge was handed to you by diet culture long before you ever developed a complicated relationship with eating.

What actually happens in your brain when you ignore a craving.

Your brain has a seeking system driven by dopamine. Its job is to motivate you toward things that matter, things that keep you alive, things that bring you relief. And when that seeking system is activated, it doesn't quietly wait to be satisfied. It keeps searching. It keeps the wanting alive until the thing is found.

So when you want chips and you have popcorn instead, your seeking system does not go, great, close enough, we're done here. It goes, that wasn't it. Keep looking.

This is why you can eat an enormous amount of food that isn't what you actually wanted and still feel completely unsatisfied. Your brain was never looking for calories. It was looking for a specific thing. And until it finds it, the seeking continues.

But this isn't just about neuroscience.

When you override a craving, swap it out, tell yourself you shouldn't have it, something else is happening underneath. You are relating to your own desire as something that cannot be trusted. Something that needs to be managed.

And for so many women, that relationship with desire didn't begin with food. It began much earlier. In a family system where expressing a need or an emotion got a response that taught you your needs were not welcome. Where you were told, don't cry, stop being so dramatic, you're too much.

Where you learned that the way to be loved and accepted was to shrink your needs, manage your feelings, be easy, be quiet, be good.

And so you got very good at it. At overriding what you actually wanted. At finding the substitute. At performing okayness while something underneath kept quietly searching.

And now here you are, doing the exact same thing with food.

Every time you swap the chocolate for the bliss ball, you are not just substituting a food. You are reenacting a very old pattern of telling yourself your needs don't matter.

The rebel parts.

When you label a food as bad, when you tell yourself you're not allowed to have something, you don't just create a seeking system that keeps searching. You also activate what Megan calls rebel parts.

Parts of you that have been told no too many times. Parts that are tired of being the good girl. And those parts will want the thing more, not less, precisely because it's been forbidden.

This is why binges so often involve the exact foods on the forbidden list. Not because you're weak. Because your system is trying to find balance and meet the needs that have been suppressed for so long.

What food freedom actually looks like.

It doesn't look like eating only salads. It doesn't look like having no preferences or never eating for comfort.

It looks like food just not being a big deal. Not carrying that charge. Not consuming mental energy that could go somewhere else entirely.

It looks like wanting something, having it, enjoying it, and moving on without it meaning anything about you.

It looks like getting curious rather than judgmental when you notice the urge to eat. Asking, am I actually hungry? What do I actually need right now? And being honest about the answer without shame.

If you are someone who thinks about food constantly.

Your brain is searching. It's doing its job. But underneath that search there is usually a need that has gone unmet for a very long time.

Not just a need for a specific food. A need to be heard. To have your desires matter. To stop performing okayness and actually get what you're looking for.

The path forward is not more discipline or better substitutes. It is getting curious. Building a relationship with your own needs based on trust rather than management.

That is what this work is about.

Ready to go deeper?

Book a free consultation with Megan: https://megandarnell.as.me/?appointmentType=69722155

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This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional support. If you are struggling with your relationship with food, please reach out to a qualified healthcare professional.