Why You Feel Guilty About Food (And What It's Really About)
By Laura Clark, The Menopause Dietitian
A thought on food, capacity and giving yourself a little more grace, with Laura, The Menopause Dietitian
At Bramley, we believe wellbeing isn’t about having everything perfectly figured out. It’s about finding little moments to pause, breathe and come back to yourself, especially when life feels like it’s asking rather a lot of you.
So, we’re very pleased to introduce Laura, a registered dietitian and founder of The Menopause Dietitian. Laura works with women through midlife, helping them untangle the often complicated relationship between food, weight, health and happiness.
Her approach is refreshingly human. No guilt, no endless rules and no expectation that you should somehow be able to do it all.
I'm Laura, a registered dietitian who spends most days navigating the messiness of midlife, in conversations with my clients, and very often my own. Let me tell you a story from the other day.
I looked at the three browning bananas in my fruit bowl, and do you know what I felt?
Guilt. Not mild guilt either, proper, disproportionate guilt for three bananas that were never going to become banana bread. Guilt that I didn't have it in me to give them a second life.
That same day, guilt showed up again in the car. I hadn't rung my dad the night before, and he's old, and I should be a better daughter. And again, when my daughter got back from time away and I realised, slightly guiltily, that I hadn't missed her all that much. (Which feels like something we're not supposed to admit out loud. But here we are.)
Different situations. Same icky feeling underneath.
On a walk with a friend recently, she shared her version, heavier than mine, questioning her parenting, beating herself up over things that were never entirely hers to control. We both ended up in tears.
We'd come a long way from a few browning bananas, and yet it was the same feeling underneath. That tight, uncomfortable sense of not quite getting this right.
This is the work I do, day in, day out, both through my 1-1 Anchor Programme, working with women to make sense of the intersection between weight, health and happiness, and inside The Anchor Collective, the community I run for women who are ready to stop second-guessing themselves and feel calmer and happier in their relationship with food and body. We talk a lot about eating habits, because it's so often the place guilt likes to set up camp.
But the deeper work is rarely about the food itself. It's about untangling the noise around it, the shoulds, the standards, the quiet sense that you're supposed to have this all figured out by now. I hear it constantly, guilt about eating too much, not eating "well enough", drinking too much, not doing enough. Different words, same themes threaded through so many conversations.
But what we need to remember is that guilt isn't always telling you the truth. Psychologist Susan David describes emotions as data, not directives. Feeling something strongly doesn't mean it's an accurate read on what's actually happening.
Sometimes guilt just means you've brushed up against a standard, an outdated expectation of who you should be and what you should be able to hold. And in midlife, most of us are still measuring ourselves against a version of that standard that no longer fits.
We must make the distinction between capability versus capacity. You might be entirely capable of cooking beautifully balanced meals, staying on top of everything, being endlessly patient. But your capacity, what's actually available to you today, moves constantly, with your sleep, your hormones, your workload, how much you've already given that day etc.
Most of us keep expecting ourselves to operate at full capability regardless. So, when real life doesn't match, we don't question the expectation. We question and blame ourselves.
Looking at things through a different lens enables us to get curious and compassionate about our habits. Perhaps we notice that it’s not about a food choice being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but about what the need is. Food is one way we top up a depleted capacity, but so is rest. So is a proper laugh. So is someone sitting beside you while you cry. So is five unhurried minutes at the end of a long day, doing something that has nothing to do with being productive.
Nourishment, in the fullest sense, is anything that gives you back a bit of what the day has spent.
And that's exactly why I love what Bramley believes: that a pause doesn't need to be earned, and a small ritual isn't an indulgence bolted onto a good day. It's part of what makes any day workable. A body that's had a balanced and nourishing meal, with the opportunity to taste it, or a body that's had a moment to breathe and take in a nearby scent are activities doing the same job, just in different currencies.
So, if guilt's been loud for you lately, about food, your relationships with others, or just life in general, try pausing before you correct yourself. Ask: is this guilt telling me something useful, or is it measuring me against a version of myself that doesn't match my capacity right now?
If any of this has resonated, I'd love to have you in my corner of the world. I send out weekly reflections like this one - clear, calm, real life advice on food, nutrition, mindset and midlife health in the form of a short newsletter. Readers have described it as a "breath of fresh air", so if you're keen for some of that, come and join us here.
