is eating embarrassing now?
using food to avoid feeling cost me time, sanity, and worst of all: relationships.
The Ghost of Eating Past
I’m in head-to-toe American Apparel, sitting in the dietitian’s hard office chair. My tailbone feels sharp, like it could pierce through my disco pants. I try not to fidget, but should’ve tried harder, because she asks (as if she’s said it many times), “Need a cushion?”
She explains that pain sitting on hard surfaces was one of the symptoms of… well, why I was there.
Back then I thought I didn’t need treatment. I assumed this would resolve on its own, without any effort on my part, maybe by magic?
The ghost haunting me with this memory seems to know something I don’t, much like the dietitian did back then. I wonder what she’d think if she knew that over a decade later, feeding myself and accepting my body would require even more mental effort, with aging adding another layer.
It’s startling to realize the pursuit of thinness has been paramount in my life for this long. I’ve been examining why, and it keeps coming back to some version of: control, usually in service of being liked.
By now I know I cannot control how anyone feels about me, and yet I have an insidious belief: If I could just get thin enough… everyone would like me and all my dreams would come true.
Changing this thinking takes vigilance, especially in a culture that reinforces it. So to keep from falling back into extreme behaviors, I try to surround myself with people less swayed by diet culture, the kind Ellyn Satter would call “normal eaters.” I first encountered the term at 22, during treatment, when the dietitian handed me a printout (below).
Ever since, I have a reverence for normal eaters, but as much as I admire them, I fear becoming one. Or, more accurately, I fear my size would change if I did.
The Ghost of Eating Present
Liz Tran recently wrote:
”Change isn’t actually a light switch. It’s a garden. You can break ground. You can plant something new. But without consistent care, the weeds will always try to reclaim the space.”
Every time I get close to normal eating, I miss the validation I got while underweight, so I end up returning to restricting, then bingeing. My weeds take over.
When I first wrote about this cycle for Refinery29, the Daily Mail called me the “girl with anorexia nostalgia.” I didn’t know that was a condition or that I had it, until I saw photos of myself at smaller sizes.
This ghost points out that despite all the time I’ve written about it, this loop continues. Self-awareness hasn’t freed me, what will?
Perhaps pain?
After I heard Carrie Brownstein say, “nostalgia is memory minus pain,” I try to remember what being that size cost me: time, sanity, and worst of all, relationships.
Too many times I chose the private satisfaction of hunger over the messy intimacy of staying. From the outside, I just seemed busy. But anyone who got close enough would learn I can be distracted, distant, dysregulated, and impossible to soothe.
I’ve attempted to diversify my coping mechanisms, but when I’m stressed or sad, the only soothing I want is my old pal: emotional eating. Letting that go feels like losing a best friend, one who’s always been there for me.
We all have things we use to take the edge off and unfortunately, my preferred addiction is the most uncool of all. On this week’s episode with emotional eating expert Tricia Nelson, I lament that getting sober from alcohol not only is cooler, it’s possible to quit completely. Mine isn’t. As Tricia puts it, it’s like having to take a tiger out of its cage, pet it, and get it back in there, without getting bitten.
The Ghost of Eating Yet to Come
Buckle up, here’s where the haunting amps up…
This ghost pulls me deep into 2026, where I’m seeing more strangers, friends, and acquaintances dropping sizes, often with interventions that didn’t exist when I began white-knuckling it.
I don’t just notice the photos. I study them.
Rather than the culture widening to accept more sizes, more people are shrinking to fit its beauty standards, me included.
The ghost asks why this bothers me so much. If I’m honest, it’s because making my body smaller is sadly the skill I’ve put my 10,000 hours into learning. It’s the only craft I’ve mastered. The topic I’ve researched most. So it makes sense that in the vision I’m shown next I’ve returned to my apprenticeship: starving.
The high of becoming a smaller size, then another, then another felt familiar, but it no longer makes me stand out.
Next the ghost shows me the price I pay for that size: re-tallying the day’s calories late at night, like I’m auditing a company. Opening the fridge, first because I’m hungry and then because eating more will distract me from whatever feeling I’m avoiding.
In A Christmas Carol, Marley arrives dragging the chain he forged in life, made from the habits he refused to change. The Ghost shows me what my version looks like:
A skirt that won’t button.
A skipped meal.
A canceled plan.
I isolate, get lonely, soothe with food, and punish with restriction.
I’m haunted by the friends I bailed on and the exes I kept at arm’s length while I chased control. I’ve always known my behavior affected other people, but watching it play in quick succession knocked the wind out of me. Regret and sadness bubble up, so of course I think: what’s in the fridge?
But the ghost slams the fridge door shut, and in its place I’m shown a different future, that could have been if I had prioritized those relationships instead of my body.
Before I can grieve those alternative realities, I’m pulled ahead in time to yet another one. I see myself, older. My first thought is, how great my clothes fit on my tiny frame until I realize I’m brittle and alone. My body got smaller, but my life did too.
The Ghost looks at me like: Wanna keep going?
No, I got the gist. I wake myself up from this nightmare.
Phew. These aren’t the shadows of what will be, only of what *may* be if I don’t change.
Scrooge doesn’t change because he finally understands. He changes because he stays in the feeling long enough to let it cost him. Fear. Grief. Responsibility.
Like him, I felt the terror of where my life is headed, which made me willing to show up differently the next time my clothes get tight. Even if I’m hating myself, I’m still thinking about… myself. So instead, I’ll text someone back. I’ll offer something: a ride, a joke, a voice note. If this seems altruistic, it’s not. It’s my selfish attempt to flee my spiraling mind.
Connection will work as my sedative, but when it wears off, I’ll be alone with my thoughts, and the fridge will look like a trapdoor again. If I open it, I won’t have to feel the frustration, disappointment, or fear.
I can stay in this cycle, rationalize it by calling it one of my quirks. Or finally hone the skill that can help me break the loop.
The ghosts weren’t the first to reveal feeling as my solution.
My therapist in my early 20s always told me,
“You think your feelings instead of feeling them in your body.”
And a medicine man in Bali five years ago sternly prescribed,
“Don’t try to feel better, try to get better at feeling.”
I intellectually understood them both, but learning to tolerate a broader spectrum of emotions requires practice, which I did not. I’m ready to put my 10,000 hours into letting out anger, regret, jealousy, and shame. (Watch out!)
As unappealing as those feelings are, suppressing them doesn’t just spare me pain, it mutes the brighter ones too. And I want to feel the full spectrum now.
Last night, when I wandered in the kitchen yet again, I sat down in front of the refrigerator before I opened it. I’ve become extremely skilled at ignoring my body, but this time I noticed the cold tile through my jeans. That my chest felt tight and, that I was crying. Was that it? Feeling? Maybe grieving? It passed (wasn’t so bad). Unlike in the dietitian’s office, my tailbone didn’t hurt. It was just… cold.
Does this mean I’ve grown? Am I better now? Was it magic? Maybe for today.
If there is magic in this twisted world, it’s choosing to stay and feel, not flee.
If you don’t relate to any of my food/body madness, what is universally relatable is change. It’s coming for you, too—actually, it already has. You used to be the size of a loaf of bread; now you’re 4.5–6.5 feet tall. You survived puberty and learning long division, you can survive this phase of aging too, even if society makes it tough.
Good luck trying to stay with whatever comes up for you to feel. I hope you let it pass instead of anesthetizing with whatever you turn to to take the edge off. And if you don’t, that’s okay too.
Love,
Katie
*Thanks for reading, sorry for the clickbaity title. I frankensteined together a few old dispatches on this topic. Not sure if the Scrooge spin worked but I wanted to write about this now since this time of year can be challenging for emotional eating. But I’m so slow (see here) I missed the moment… 🥴
If you related to any of this, here’s a list of what’s actually helped me over the years, before diet culture hits us with New Year, New You!
It’s an excerpt. The full version, plus a list of people who helped me, is linked below.
Trying on clothes order of operations.
In the dressing room or when you order online, start with the bigger size. If it fits cool, move on. If not, get a smaller one. You don’t get a medal for being a smaller size and clothes often look better with some room, that doesn’t mean you need to become smaller you can just buy clothes oversized. *Avoid three-way mirrors at all costs. Buy → try at home → return.Bodies heal! Appreciate… functioning.
Bones repair.. Skin grows back. They grow babies in them. Notice their resilience.Change what you want—accept what you’re keeping.
Our society also puts a premium on “natural” beauty. We can question why we want to invest in changing ourselves, but also it’s okay to do what makes us feel better…Decide you will potentially change parts of your appearance, then accept the rest. Not even accept, lean into the rest. For example, my nose is big and I’ve always been self-conscious of it. I have a friend with a similar nose, who did change it and that’s cool too. But if it’s not changing right now I might as well lean into that feature rather than hating it.Get out of your head.
I’m learning embodiment—letting sensations pass like a 90-second song instead of numbing. Moving helps.Get dressed without spiraling.
An outfit you like and a good hair day makes a difference. Keep one go-to uniform per season. Put away clothes that don’t fit. Replace what you need—annoying, yes, but better than shoving yourself into outfits like a sardine.Exposure therapy.
Look at people in bodies your size or bigger. And mute anyone who makes you feel bad—even if they’re delightful.LOL.
Making people laugh makes you hotter.Do what you can but make your life your art project not your body.
Sleep, hydrate, move a little. Think of yourself as a pair of eyes instead of how you look to other eyes. Redirect self-doubt into self-expression—writing, talking, creating. Unused creativity is not benign.
Full list is here:
If you at all relate or would like to talk about this further let me know. I’d genuinely love to know where you all are with this?
FRESH NEW EPISODE #483
Felt very very seen by this post <3
Your writing 🫶🏼 your brain ♥️ YOU!!! 🫂here with you even though I’m not with you. I get it! I really do. I miss you! And I’m so grateful you’re still writing and podcasting and processing this with us all. Sending you a lot of love back from Michigan!!!!