There is a meter inside my head continuously running data to answer that question.
This data ranges from my credit score to whether I packed the kids nutritious lunches to how many steps I walked to how much money is in my bank account. It is also wildly impacted by input from others. Someone says something nice to me, and I can fly high for days. Someone says something hurtful, and it can reverberate inside my head over and over and over.
On a deeply unconscious level, whether I am good or bad determines how I treat myself. As determined by an arbitrary assortment of ever-changing data points, some having nothing to do with me.
When I feel bad, I treat myself badly.
When I feel good, I treat myself well.
As a child, when I behaved badly--whatever that entailed--I was treated badly by my parents.
Fusing an association in my mind between bad behavior and bad treatment.
This led me to believe that when I was treated badly, it was because I did something bad. Even when I didn't know what the something was.
Bad children do not deserve food.
I do not remember being denied food, but I do have extremely strong connections between food and my sense of self as good or bad.
For most of my life, my sense of whether I was good or bad determined what I ate.
Sometimes, what I ate determined whether I was good or bad.
These things get switched around sometimes, you see.
For years I had longs lists of good and bad foods in my head. Based on fat and calorie content, largely. I stopped eating meat when I was in junior high school so I could rule out entire categories of food without getting pushback from my parents.
My weaknesses were bread and cereal, which absolutely made these bad foods. Also yogurt-covered almonds. Also, all desserts. I stopped eating them in my late teens and basically never resumed. I can often go months without sweets without feeling any sense of deprivation. Because I told myself I don't like them. Because they are bad.
And when I eat bad foods, it goes into the supercomputer in my brain and adds another tiny tick to the bad column. Along with each overdue toll violation, misplaced set of keys, failure to have something the kids need, car maintenance light being ignored, email in need of response, bill in need of paying, piece of clothing that doesn't fit, and negative comment on any of 30 weekly posts to the public.
My supercomputer keeps track of them all and keeps a running Good/Bad score. To inform how I treat myself until the score changes.
Which is, of course, something I'm trying to recover from.
Because I need to treat myself well regardless of my Good/Bad score. In fact, I really need to treat myself with extra love when my score is farther in the Bad zone. This is something our parents didn't understand. This is not our fault. Or theirs.
But it is wired into many, many brains.
I am far from the only person who determines what or how much they can eat based on an unconscious assessment of whether they are a good or bad person. Based on parenting that was often very well-intentioned. And also extremely damaging.
So on the days or weeks when I feel the hum of the Good/Bad meter growing louder, I try to remember it's an invitation to treat myself with extra love. That feeling bad, regardless of the factors that contribute to it, should not invite treating ourselves badly.
Because treating ourselves badly keeps us feeling bad.
It is by treating ourselves with love when we feel bad that we return to feeling good.
Treating ourselves with unconditional love--despite lacking it in childhood--is how we learn to feel bad less often.
Which often leads to loosening the associations with good and bad foods. And helps us more instinctually want to feed ourselves well. Including without harsh judgement.
Culinary Therapy Questions to Chew On
Are there foods you consider bad or good? Why?
What happens when you eat these foods?
Do you eat these foods only when you feel bad or good?
Do you eat these foods in order to feel bad or good?
What is your body telling you when it craves these foods?
Can you answer your body in a way that doesn't involve food?
Is answering your body's craving for this food the greatest self love you can show in this moment?
After decades of not listening to my body, I am profoundly grateful it still talks to me.
When I listen without judgement, I always find wisdom.
What we crave has so much to tell us. When we really listen and pay attention.
How and what you eat has so much to tell you.
Do you listen and pay attention?
How about to your kids? Do you listen to what they tell you with what they eat?
I try to do both, but I am also a completely imperfect human and parent getting things wrong all the time.
But the more I listen to my body and what it has to tell me, the more things seem to go in a direction I like. And the more my children have the modeling of someone who listens to her body.
Which often means overcoming deeply ingrained associations with certain foods and habits of eating.
Which takes time. So I learn to be patient with myself through the times when I fail to do exactly what I'm trying to do. Because this is how we learn and grow.
Today's breakfast was yogurt with a banana and cereal (?!?) and coffee with oat milk. Lunch was a Trader Joe's salad in a bag. Lots of water. Tonight I'm taking the kids out to dinner to celebrate the last Friday of the school year. And will seek protein since lunch had none.
Wishing you culinary therapy in your week ahead, whatever form it takes. A delicious meal out, cooking together with your kids, making yourself something yummy, writing about food, watching your favorite food show, or paging through a cooking magazine.
Each time we stop to celebrate food in any way, we are showing ourselves love and practicing culinary therapy.
Practice makes progress.