Lifting Shame

“Put the wrappers on the table.”

That’s what my therapist said to me after I admitted to eating candy in secret and stuffing the wrappers down into the garbage so my husband wouldn’t know.

I was terrified to do it. An old and painful feeling surfaced when I imagined how it would go. I experienced it as an inner red heat rising from my stomach into my chest and finally into my face, leaving me flushed.

“What’s wrong with you?” I imagined him saying. Or, “You ate ALL of it?!”

There it was: guilt for eating all the candy when he wanted some, embarrassment that I couldn’t control myself, regret that yet again I had broken my promise to eat healthy and lose weight.

Now I ruined myself. People would notice because they’d see that I gained weight. I pulled out my larger pair of jeans from the closet, where I kept multiple sizes. I felt like a failure, like someone who just couldn’t get a handle on this.

Ashamed.

When I finally built up the courage, with the wrappers sitting on the table between us and tears welling in my eyes, I told my husband why I had hidden them. I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t stop binging on sugar that I didn’t want him to know. I assumed he’d judge me.

(By the way, of course he already knew.)

Instead, he walked around the table and gave me a hug.

Breaking the silence.

There are a lot of struggles we talk about openly. But struggles with food, body size, binge eating, emotional eating, and feeling out of control around food are often carried quietly and privately.

Like I did, many people feel deep shame about it — even when they’ve spent years trying their hardest to change. A lot of people believe their struggle with food is a personal failure. Shame pushes us deeper into secrecy, isolation, and hopelessness.

When I started my recovery journey, it took me a long time to feel comfortable talking about it. It was strange for some people to hear that I abstained from sugar and flour because I considered myself addicted. Abstaining from alcohol is easier for people to understand, but food? We need to eat, don’t we?

I got pushback:

“Can’t you just have one bite?”

“You have to try this!”

“Are you EVER going to eat dessert again?!”

No one would ask a recovering alcoholic if they could just have one sip. No one would ask whether one day they planned to return to drinking.

But for me, abstaining 100% is easier than even 99%. Even one bite is a risk because my brain won’t stop asking for more. I need food to survive, but I don’t need cookies and candy to survive.

Eventually, I found responses that felt safe:

“It’s just what works for me.”

As I became more solid in my recovery, I answered questions with increasing honesty. Often, that honesty opened the door for people to tell me about their own struggles with food and eating.

I also realized something important: most people pushing food on me were probably acting from their own discomfort, habits, or relationship with food. It usually had very little to do with me.

When I decided to become a health coach and help others get unhooked from addictive and emotional eating, I had to start talking about it more openly. I can still feel my face get red sometimes. That old feeling still comes back.

But I’m willing to talk about it anyway.

My mission is to help release shame instead of strengthening it through silence and hiding.

The shame began to lift when I started to understand that, as much as I wanted to feel in control, my behavior with food was not always simply a choice. These patterns are far more complex than a lack of strength or willpower.

They can be driven by a combination of genetics, hormones, brain chemistry, deeply ingrained habits, emotional coping patterns, stress, and our modern food environment. Many of these behaviors begin as survival mechanisms. Until we find other ways to regulate emotions and soothe ourselves, it can feel incredibly difficult to let them go.

It’s often a combination of:

• biochemical reactions in the brain

• stress and nervous system dysregulation

• fluctuating hormones

• ultra-processed foods and our food environment

• learned habits and coping mechanisms

Many people avoid seeking help because they’re afraid of being judged. But when we feel safe enough to admit what’s actually going on — and practice radical honesty with ourselves and others — it opens the door to recovery.

One of the reasons I created Real Forking Change is because so many people are struggling silently. I wanted to create a space where people can learn, heal, and rebuild their relationship with food and their body without humiliation or blame.

Shame lifts when we realize we are not alone — that there are plenty of other people stuffing evidence of their eating down into the garbage can.

There is something deeply powerful about discovering your experience is more common than you thought. That’s why connection matters. That’s why we need other people who understand these struggles.

How can you help someone you love without adding to their shame?

Often, the best thing you can do is avoid making someone feel like they are a problem to be fixed.

Many people struggling with food, weight, or out-of-control eating are already carrying deep shame privately. Support rarely comes from pressure, lectures, or comments about their body, even when they are compliments. It comes from compassion, safety, and feeling less alone.

If someone opens up to you, try listening without judgment instead of jumping straight into advice.

And if this made you think of someone you love, feel free to share it with them gently. Sometimes sharing this blog post in a group email can feel less personal and safer for everyone involved.

You never know who may need support, hope, or simply the feeling that they are not alone.

How you can get support.

If this resonated with you and you want to learn more about healing your relationship with food, reducing addictive and emotional eating, and building a more peaceful and sustainable way of eating, I invite you to check out the Real Forking Success Path program page.

The program is designed to help people better understand the deeper drivers behind their eating patterns while creating practical, compassionate, lasting change.

You do not have to keep fighting this alone.