How to Challenge Food Shame : with Kristen Schweers

Food Shame

Take a moment and think about a favorite snack food from your childhood. Think about the times you ate it, remember the colors, textures, and flavors, try to recall how eating it made you feel. For me, it’s a toss-up between Goldfish crackers, Top Ramen, and Cheetos. I was clearly into salt and cheese as a kid.

As an adult, can you remember the last time you ate your childhood favorite? Even better, can you remember a time when you ate them without feeling guilty or as if you were indulging in some forbidden treat? Let’s take it a step further- how do you talk about these foods in front of your kids?

I encourage you to consider these questions because if you are like many of the clients I work with, you feel pressure to eat and serve “healthy” foods and guilt or shame when the foods don’t quite hit that mark.

Words Matter

The first time I realized adults feel shame about the foods they eat, I was around 10-years-old. I caught my grandma {orange handed} sneaking Cheetos before dinner. The same Cheetos she told me I couldn’t have because I would spoil my appetite and needed healthier foods. Years later, I realized it was the first time I caught someone sneaking food and one of my earliest memories of food being deemed unhealthy.  As I reflect back on my relationship with food, I remember too many moments like this with friends and family. Comments like “I was so bad this weekend, I ate so much {insert “bad” food here}” or “I shouldn’t eat this, I’ve been so bad lately” or even “I’m trying to be good, so I am going to get a salad” tossed around innocuously.

I am guessing you have not only heard comments like the above but have actively made similar ones yourself.  Most people are completely unaware as to why these comments may be harmful, so I want to share a bit about why they are. A few things are happening here: 1) a hierarchy of food has been created and food is sorted into categories of good and bad to consume, 2) we feel a sense of shame or guilt when we eat the bad foods, potentially leading to a host of other issues.  

Shame vs. Guilt

Let’s talk for a moment about shame and guilt in general. I will preface this with almost everything I ever wanted to know about this topic, I learned from Brene Brown. Per her work, guilt is the thought “I did something bad” while shame is “I am bad”. Guilt typically arises when we do something that does not align with our values, like yelling at a loved one at the end of a bad day. Shame is what arises when we interpret human flaws as mistakes in our core selves. Shame might show up as “I am a terrible wife/mother/friend for yelling at {loved one}”.  Shame is taking us from recognizing we had a rough moment, and interpreting it as being a bad human. When applied to the arbitrary hierarchy of “good” and “bad” foods, we are setting ourselves up for a battle against shame and guilt as many times a day as we eat or feed the little ones.

The judged foods I hear most often tend to include organic, non-GMO, fast food, all-natural, processed, free-range, local, and on and on the list goes. Parents buying organic, free range, local foods are glorified. Parents who give their kids Happy Meals are vilified. While these may be two ends of a spectrum, it happens in subtler, smaller ways all day long.  The reality is, nutrition is a complex topic that is quite literally impossible to get perfect. Eggs, soy, coffee, and meat are just a few examples of foods that have competing research showing they are healthy AND unhealthy, depending on which articles you read.

Practice Mindful Eating

Feeling shame for eating pleasurable foods can create a list of issues that are surprisingly tough to fight. Eating perceived “bad” food is connected to secret eating, eating beyond fullness, and compulsively eating. In the extreme, this contributes to binge eating behaviors in both children and adults.  Often, those eating in shame are not mindful of the experience and over-consume when disconnected from their bodies. Food shame is a common experience in disordered eating and is linked to chronic dieting.

So how do we start to challenge food shame? The first step is to work on improving your outlook toward food. Notice how often you attach judgment to the food you or others eat and neutralize the food by naming the nutritional value it offers. That food you call “junk” really does have something to offer. A can of Coke offers carbohydrates. A dinner of hot dogs and mac and cheese offers protein, fat, carbohydrates, and several important micronutrients. If it’s food, I promise you it is offering some nutritional content. Second, we want to learn to eat and provide these foods in moderation. Adults and children who are exposed to processed foods on a regular basis without shame or withholding attached to the food will learn to moderate their intake of these foods and will be less likely to compulsively overeat them. And finally, we must trust that our bodies will tell us when we need all the foods. Trust that we, and our children, will tire of the potato chips and also want vegetables. Trust that we, and our children, can love both home-cooked meals and a quick bite at McDonald’s when needed.

About Kristen

Kristen Schweers is a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist who runs her private nutrition counseling practice Real Nutrition PLLC in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, WA. Her passion for nutrition counseling comes from a genuine love of food and people. Kristen’s expertise in the field has developed over the last decade working in mental health and various wellness settings. She has been trained in the fundamentals of  DBT, CBT, ACT, FBT, and IFS forms of therapy and actively applies these modalities to her work.  Kristen’s professional work is heavily influenced by the work of Ellyn Satter, renowned dietitian, and researcher on family feeding systems. When working with adults, she helps people develop their relationship with food using the Health At Every Size and Intuitive Eating models. In essence, her life’s mission is to help others break free from diet culture and weight stigma while learning to love their relationship to food.