Why Do I Feel Guilty After I Eat?

A few months after I retired from skating, I visited a friend who had also recently stopped competing.

We were driving to the airport when we decided to stop for bagels.

Over breakfast, my friend shared that this weird thing happened to her every time she ate: she felt tremendous guilt.

She told me that she felt really confused because she didn’t understand why she constantly felt so guilty. She didn’t restrict her food intake or engage in compensatory measures after eating—she continued to eat the foods she wanted—but, like clockwork, as soon as she swallowed the last bite of food, guilt showed up and refused to leave.

What my friend was experiencing is something many people struggle with—and it can be very confusing. When you experience guilt after eating, the feeling may start to consume you. It can make you feel uncomfortable whenever you think about food and lead you to believe there’s something really wrong with you. Thoughts about food might start to dominate your life as you find yourself ruminating about what you just ate or are about to eat.

For many former athletes in aesthetic sports, there was a physical ideal to which we were implicitly or explicitly taught to aspire. To help us rotate faster, to “achieve better lines” or to potentially make training easier for a partner who was lifting us, we might have been taught the belief that “thinner is better.” This belief carried the assumption that fitness—and success—is tied to a physical aesthetic. We may have learned that a certain body shape was “good” and anything outside of this was “bad” and could even be viewed as a character flaw.

For some of us, these beliefs may have also contributed to the development of food rules. We may have adopted the rule that there were only certain times during the day when it was “okay” to eat, the rule that certain foods were “good” and others “bad” and rules about how many calories we could consume. Because of the desire to adhere to these rules, eating may have come with a lot of self-imposed fear.

After many years of experiencing these beliefs and following these rules, it makes sense that when we retire from our sport, these beliefs and rules would come with us. Although we may want to eat freely and know logically that there is no longer an aesthetic to which we need to aspire, we might find ourselves in the same position as my friend: feeling guilty after every meal. We may also feel ashamed because we don’t feel like this problem is “big enough” to warrant professional help, even though it’s impacting us every time we eat.

Guilt is an emotion that can stop us in our tracks. It can sit like a rock in our stomach and weigh heavily on our chest. Despite how uncomfortable it may feel in our body, I often tell clients that guilt can be a really helpful emotion—but only if the guilt reflects a genuine violation of our values.

For example, if I’m out shopping and I steal a pack of gum, I hope guilt shows up to tell me I’ve done something wrong. This is because I value honesty and following the law. In this situation, if I feel guilty, the emotion is appropriate because it’s alerting me that I went against my values. The guilt will hopefully motivate me to go back to the store, give back the gum and face whatever consequences I’m given.

On the other hand, if guilt presents after I’ve eaten a wonderful meal with loved ones or right after enjoying a dessert I’ve been dreaming of all day, and I don’t know why I feel guilty—i.e., I haven’t done anything objectively “wrong”—it’s likely conditioned guilt. This form of guilt stems from a learned belief about my behavior that doesn’t align with my values. It’s a belief I was taught and have adopted over time.

We are often not fully aware of these conditioned beliefs. I like to think of them as a playlist we pressed “play” on many years ago. At the time, the songs on the playlist might have been really popular; however, we haven’t yet realized that this playlist has been playing in the background of our minds for years—sometimes decades—and we may no longer enjoy or have any desire to listen to its songs.

If I grew up in a sport where I adopted the belief “eating sugar will make you fat”—and I was taught anything that could “make you fat” meant that you would be unsuccessful—whenever I eat a cookie, this belief may automatically start playing in the background of my mind. Because our beliefs influence our feelings, the belief that I have done something bad by eating this cookie may trigger the conditioned guilt I've learned to feel. This means guilt could show up even if the cookie was delicious, I'd been wanting it all day, and I logically know I've done nothing wrong.

Mindfulness helps us to begin to pay attention to what beliefs we might be holding on to that are causing the guilt we’re feeling. When we’re mindful, we start to listen to our thoughts with curiosity, to hear what songs have been playing and to assess how our beliefs are making us feel. We can then start to intentionally challenge and shift beliefs that aren’t serving us and in turn soften our guilt.  

If we believe eating a certain food is “wrong,” we can start to ask ourselves questions like: Why? What makes the behavior of eating this food wrong? Is it a fact that eating this food won’t make me successful or will change my body shape? Who told me that by eating this, I’ve done a bad thing? Do I believe a friend or a loved one should feel guilty or deserve punishment because they ate this? (Working with a therapist or an intuitive eating counselor can really help during this process.)

Our goal with challenging these beliefs isn’t to fight against them but rather to bring them into our conscious awareness, to look at them from a new perspective and to intentionally form new beliefs that align with our current values. When guilt shows up, we often assume we did something wrong. The key, though, is to assess whether we actually went against our values or whether the guilt is tied to a conditioned way of thinking. The goal isn’t to eliminate guilt altogether. It’s to learn to distinguish between guilt that can help us and guilt that comes from a song on a playlist we no longer want to hear.

The content on this blog is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy. The content does not replace a therapeutic relationship with a licensed mental health professional.