Eating Body and Weight Matters

Category: Food, Eating and Relationships

  • The Psychology of Food and Eating

    Woman seated at a table by a window with a meal, looking outside.

    Food and eating are interesting areas to explore psychologically. In other words, this is about the connection between food, eating and the mind or psyche. Many people have a complex relationship with food and eating. It can be an area that causes shame or embarrassment and can be difficult to discuss. Yet we cannot be without food: we need it to nourish our minds and bodies and to survive. There are many aspects of the psychology of food and eating to consider. Each person has a unique relationship with food and eating. One of the first areas to consider is different types of hungers. Hunger can be physiological or, as Eric Berne described it, psychological (Berne, 1961). We can be physically hungry for food or psychologically and emotionally hungry, for example, for connection and relationship.

    Kathy Leach (2006) introduced the concept of a food script. She wrote about this in her book The Overweight Patient, which considered psychological reasons why some people may be overweight. The food script invites us to consider historical and current experiences, plus aspects of diet and eating cycle and body size. I see her thinking on the food script as more widely applicable and helpful when considering the wider psychological connections between food, eating and script in a variety of disordered eating, eating disorders and overeating contexts.

    Our relationship with food and eating is influenced by those who care for us while we are growing up, including through the modelling of eating behaviour. If a parent or carer has their own complex relationship with food and eating—for example, they may overeat, binge eat or undereat—this can influence how we think and feel about food and eating. There may be confusion around food and eating. This is likely to influence each person’s relationship with food and how it might develop.

    It can be helpful to reflect on the relationship you have with food, eating and your body. For example, when you are stressed, do you notice whether you overeat or undereat? Can you recognise when you feel hungry and need to eat? Can you recognise when you have had enough to eat? How do you relate to your own body?

    How other people are in our environment, how they relate to us and how we relate to them all have a role to play in how we are influenced around food, eating and the body. Western society has strong views and prejudices about body shape, size, food and eating. Although eating with other people can be extremely pleasurable, some people may find eating socially difficult or feel uncomfortable or ashamed of eating in front of others.

    Our lifestyle plays a significant part in how we relate to food and eating. Working long hours in a high-pressure job can take its toll on food and eating. Eating is a necessity that can appear lower on the priority list, and food may be selected for convenience and availability rather than nutritional value, for example. Food can form part of the rhythm or structure of our day and can be linked to timings and schedules, including the times when we nourish ourselves.

    What do food and eating mean to you? For example, what do you understand about the foods you like and do not like to eat? Are you familiar with what foods bring you joy, satisfaction or provide comfort? Do you think of food as a source of joy or comfort, or is it more functional for you? Is food about love, connection and social activity, or is it something associated with loneliness and done alone?

    For people who identify as neurodivergent, for example autistic people, the actual texture and structure of food can be extremely challenging. We overlook the texture and structure of food when we eat and yet, for some, it can be triggering, evoke emotions or overthinking, and be difficult. Again, the relationship an individual has with food and eating is unique to the person experiencing it.

    How familiar are you with your own emotions and how they might connect with your food and eating? Do you eat when you are happy or when you are celebrating? Do you eat when you feel sad or lonely? Have you considered and reflected on your relationship with food and eating? How would you describe the kind of relationship you have with food and eating?

    It is important to approach our own behaviour and relationship patterns by making space for curiosity rather than self-criticism. Food and eating may be connected with pleasure, comfort, celebration, habit, memory, culture, time, money and the people connected to us. There are usually a variety of reasons why we eat or behave around food as we do.

    Noticing what is happening can be a gentle place to begin. You might reflect on the times of day when eating feels straightforward or more difficult; the situations, feelings or relationships that are present; and what food and eating have come to mean in your life. The purpose is not to judge yourself or to make every meal perfect, but to understand your experience more fully.

    Many messages we hear in society about food and bodies can encourage people to see eating as something that must be controlled, earned or judged. These messages can make it harder to notice what we need, or to speak openly when eating feels complicated. A more compassionate and curious approach recognises that people have different histories, bodies, circumstances and needs.

    Being kind to ourselves does not mean that food and eating will always feel easy. It can mean allowing space for complexity, including the possibility that our relationship with food may change and evolve at different points in our lives.

    If food and eating are causing ongoing distress, affecting everyday life, or feel difficult to manage alone, it may be helpful to speak with an appropriately qualified service or professional. Talking with someone can offer a supportive space to explore what is happening with warmth and compassion.

    Food and eating are essential to life, but they can also carry many personal meanings. Taking time to understand those meanings can be an important and compassionate part of understanding ourselves.

    Explore TA101: Psychology of Food and Eating

    For a specialist focus on the psychology of food and eating, find out more about TA101: Psychology of Food and Eating: https://eatingbodyandweightmatters.com/ta101-eating-body-and-weight/

    References

    Berne, E. (1961), Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, Grove Press, New York, reprinted Souvenir Press (1975)

    Leach, K. (2006) The Overweight Patient: A Psychological Approach to Understanding and Working with Obesity, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London

  • When Food Is Love

    When Food Is Love

    INSIGHTS / BLOG · FOOD, EATING AND RELATIONSHIPS

    When Food Is Love

    Food is so often more than food. It can be welcome, comfort, celebration, memory, and care. We may show love by holding someone in mind and making their someone’s favourite meal, bringing soup when they are unwell, baking for a birthday, or placing a warm, soothing drink in another person’s hands. From our earliest days, being fed is often connected with being held, soothed, noticed, and kept safe.

    This is normal and there is nothing wrong about this. Food is one of the first ways many of us experience care. Before we can understand words, we may learn that warmth, closeness, and relief can together. A bottle, a meal, a snack, or a familiar taste can become part of the emotional language of home.

    But what happens when food begins to carry more than its share of that emotional work? What happens when eating becomes one of the few reliable ways to feel comforted, accompanied, rewarded, or soothed?

    Food and the language of attachment

    Attachment is the word often used to describe the bonds we form with the people who care for us. When care is available, responsive, and protective, we can come to learn that our needs matter and that closeness is possible. Relationships and childhoods are shaped by human connection and are therefore never perfect. We need, often enough, to be loved and valued, and to be met with kindness and care.

    For some people, however, relationships have also involved uncertainty, distance, criticism, loss, or hurt. They may have learned early on to manage big feelings alone, to stay attentive to other people’s moods, or to avoid needing too much from anyone. These patterns can continue long after the original circumstances have changed.

    Food can become appealing in this kind of relationship landscape because it asks so little of us. It does not communicate with us. It does not misunderstand us, look away, become impatient, or leave the room. It offers consistency and availability in a way that people may not always have been. It can offer immediate sensation and relief: sweetness, fullness, warmth, familiarity, distraction, or a temporary quietening of distress. It offers a relationship.

    That does not mean that a person loves food “too much”, or that food is the problem. It may mean that food has become a dependable companion in a life where dependable emotional connection has felt uncertain or difficult to find.

    The hungry heart

    In the context of Transactional Analysis, and my therapy work with eating, food and weight, I often consider Berne’s psychological and also physical hungers (Berne, 1964). Both types of hunger are relevant here. Physical hunger is real and deserves to be responded to. It is natural to feel hungry when we need to eat. So too are the psychological hungers that can sit alongside it: the hunger to be seen and recognised, to belong, to feel valued, to be touched safely, or to be accepted unconditionally for who we are.

    These psychological hungers I will refer here to as the “hungry heart”. They are not childish or selfish needs. They are real human needs. Yet they can be hard to name, particularly when we have learned to ignore them or when there has been no obvious place for them in our relationships.

    Eating can sometimes become a way of responding to these feelings when words, support, or intimacy have been unavailable. A person may turn to food after a lonely evening, after conflict, during boredom, when they feel rejected, or when suppressing emotions, for example. The eating may be an attempt to seek comfort or suppress feelings that are hard to express or haven’t been addressed in relationships with self or others.

    Food may bring genuine comfort in the moment. This is likely to be short-lived and further food might be sought to maintain that comfort. Difficulties can arise when food and eating is the only comfort available, or when it is followed by shame, fear, secrecy, or harsh judgments about the body and the self.

    When intimacy feels complicated

    Emotional intimacy is the experience of being known, seen and understood by another person, it involves being able to experience vulnerability with another person. It may look like being able to say, “I am struggling,” and being met with compassion. It may be shared laughter, a difficult conversation, a reliable friendship, or a relationship in which there is room for both people’s needs to be respected and attended to.

    For people who have not experienced enough emotional safety, emotional intimacy can feel risky and at times impossible. Being close may bring a fear of disappointment, rejection, dependence, or exposure. At the same time, the longing for connection does not disappear. It can remain present beneath a great deal of self-sufficiency and often defensiveness.

    Food can sometimes become a substitute for moments of connection not because a person is failing at relationships, but because it is more easily accessible than vulnerability. It may be easier to plan an evening around a favourite food than to contact someone and risk feeling unwanted. It may be easier to soothe oneself privately than to ask for comfort from someone else.

    This is understandable. It is also a gentle invitation to become curious about your own process: What am I needing here, alongside food? Perhaps the answer is still food. Perhaps it is food and rest. Or it may be food and connection with another person: a conversation, a walk with someone, a hug, a message, a support group, or the permission to feel what is there.

    How we learn to fall in love with food

    Our relationship with food begins long before we make conscious choices about it. It begins early on in life and cannot be avoided as it is needed for survival. Food can hold the taste of family, culture, tradition, survival, celebration, and belonging. A particular meal may remind us of someone who loved us. It may be tied to a time when life felt simpler, safer, or more connected.

    It can also become entangled with rules and conditions. When food is restricted, moralised, used as a reward, or made a source of conflict, it may take on even greater emotional power. The more a person is told that certain foods are forbidden or that their body is a problem to be solved, the harder it can be to have an easier or more settled relationship with food and eating.

    A compassionate approach does not mean that food cannot be emotional. Food can be sensual and pleasurable. It can be comforting. It can be part of social connection, love, and relationship. The aim is not to make eating purely functional, but to widen the sources of care and relationship that are available to us.

    Making room for more connection

    If food has become a trusted companion, it deserves compassion rather than shame. We can think of food in TA through Leach’s concept of food script (Leach, 2006). Someone makes sense of how to be in the world through their food script and their thinking , feeling and behaviour in relationship with food and eating. For example, it may have helped a someone get through lonely, painful, or overwhelming life experiences. The food script might help survive painful and difficult experiences and yet psychological hungers need more than food. They need love.

    Building emotional connection can begin in very small ways: telling one trusted person a little more truth; accepting an invitation; spending time with people who feel safe; seeking support from a psychotherapist or counsellor; or joining a community-based group around a shared interest. None of these actions promises instant intimacy, and not every relationship will be right for us. But each can be a step towards a life in which psychological needs are met through relationship and connection rather than food alone.

    When food is love, it is not necessary to reject it. Perhaps the gentler task is to let love become bigger: to include nourishment, pleasure, friendship, safety, connection, tenderness, and relationships in which we can gradually learn that we are allowed to need and be needed.

    If eating feels distressing, compulsive, or difficult to manage, speaking with an appropriately qualified health professional, such as a GP, dietitian, psychotherapist, or eating-disorder specialist, can offer support tailored to your circumstances.

    eatingbodyandweightmatters.com

    References

    Berne, E. (1964) Games People Play, Grove Press, New York

    Leach, K (2006) the Overweight Patient: A Psychological Approach to Understanding and Working with Obesity, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London