12 subtle signs you may have an unhealthy relationship with food

Watch out for these warning signs that your thoughts, feelings, or behaviours around food might be unhealthy for you

1. You have strict rules around what and how much you consume.

A pattern with most of these signs is feelings of anxiety, stress, guilt, or shame when deviating from food rules and expectations you’ve enforced on yourself.

2. You feel like you need to ‘earn’ your food.

This can play out through punishing yourself with extreme exercise for indulging, or restricting what you eat when you feel you’ve not moved enough.

3. You experience guilt over food choices.

Rather than listening to your body, its hunger cues, and what you need to fuel yourself, you view certain foods as ‘good’ and others as ‘bad’.

4. You prefer to not eat around others.

You might find yourself extremely self-conscious and anxious at the thought of eating in front of other people for fear of judgement.

5. You change your eating habits while around other people.

This might be putting on a display or feeling guilty about ordering what you want. For example, you might be really restrictive in private, but eat more while around company to intentionally avoid drawing attention to this, or it could be that you order smaller portions or lower calories choices because you’re worried what others will think.

6. You completely avoid certain foods or food groups.

While there can be important reasons to stay away from certain foods (e.g. allergies or intolerances), this is more in relation to self-enforced rules around food, potentially related to diet culture perceptions, or thinking certain foods are ‘good’ or ‘bad’. You might cut out carbs completely, or fats, dairy, or gluten, not because you need to from a health or medical perspective, but because they have been ‘demonised’ by the media.

7. You find yourself bingeing.

This can be an eating disorder in itself, particularly if you’re regularly bingeing and purging. But even if you find yourself being restrictive for several days, or weeks, and then going to an extreme with what you’re eating, this can be a sign of an unhealthy, and unrealistic, relationship you’re holding yourself to with food as it’s not manageable in the long-term.

8. You use food to address your emotions.

This could be that you either ‘eat your feelings’ or restrict yourself when you’re unhappy, stressed, or depressed, or you use food as a comfort mechanism without really acknowledging the root cause of the emotions themselves.

9. You find it stressful to eat out or at social occasions.

While there can be plenty of valid reasons for social eating to contribute to stress – from the cost of meals to options for dietary restrictions, or those with misophonia – this is related to feeling extreme anxiety around being able to follow your personal food rules when dining out, and a preoccupation over what others will say or think about your food choices.

10. You find yourself changing your eating habits based on how you feel when you look in the mirror that day.

This could also apply if someone makes an off-hand comment about size or weight, or any incident (e.g. comparing yourself to someone on social media) that changes your mood. Essentially, something happens to knock your body confidence, and you notice it impacting your food choices that day.

11. You find yourself thinking about food constantly.

If you always have calories, your next meal or snack on your mind, or potentially find yourself really craving things, but ignoring those hunger cues, it could signify that your relationship with food needs some care and attention. This is where it becomes a borderline obsession, and the thing you spend most of your attention and energy focused on.

12. Hyper-aware of calories consumed.

You feel uncomfortable eating or drinking anything without knowing how many calories it contains, and having the equation in your head of what you’re consuming versus what you’ve burned. You also likely have a mental limit for what you will eat, and will refuse to go above that, no matter the circumstances.