Understanding My Complicated Relationship with Food and Comfort
Here's something else that I've been noticing while I've been living alone, that it's a lot easier to binge eat because I don't need to hide it from anybody. I don't need to hide that I have the stuff. I don't need to hide the trash. I don't need to hide the fact that I'm doing it. And so it's becoming a little bit less appealing. That said, I still go and buy the food, and I might not eat it all, but it's a lot less pleasurable, and I'll keep whatever's left in the cabinets, and I find it somehow, sometimes comforting that I have the food in the cabinet. What do you think that that means that I find having junk food around comforting even if I don't feel like I want to eat it? But also even when I already have junk food at home I crave going and buying some until I realize I already have some and then I feel disappointed what's that all about
ChatGPT: This is really insightful, and it points to the deeper emotional and psychological layers of binge eating beyond just the act of consuming food. What you’re describing—the comfort in having the food, the craving for buying it, and the disappointment when you realize you already have some—suggests that binge eating for you isn’t just about the eating. It’s about the ritual, the anticipation, and the control over scarcity.
What’s Going On Here?
1. The Comfort of Having Junk Food = Security & Readiness
You said that just knowing the food is in the cabinets is comforting, even if you’re not eating it. This suggests that food represents more than just hunger—it represents a sense of security.
This could be rooted in childhood experiences—was food ever controlled, rationed, or unpredictable in your household? Did you ever have to hide or sneak food?
If binge eating used to be something secret and forbidden, having the food now—without shame or hiding—might feel like a kind of freedom or power over your own access to comfort.
In short, the food isn’t just food. It’s proof that you’re allowed to have it now.
2. The Urge to Buy Junk Food Even When You Already Have It = The Desire for the Ritual
When you feel the craving to go buy junk food, it might not actually be about the food itself—it might be about the process of getting it.
The act of choosing, buying, and bringing food home might be part of the emotional regulation process.
It gives your brain something to do, a small mission, a sense of control and anticipation.
You might associate the acquisition of food with the emotional relief more than the eating itself.
This would explain why, when you realize you already have some, you feel disappointed—because it’s not really about the food. It’s about the process of acquiring it.
3. Binge Eating Losing Its Appeal = A Shift in Its Emotional Function
You said that now that you live alone, binge eating is less appealing because you don’t have to hide it. That’s big. It suggests that some of the compulsion was fueled by the secrecy, rebellion, or emotional charge of getting away with it.
Now that it’s not a hidden act, it’s losing some of its emotional intensity. That’s a sign that part of the drive was about relief from the shame cycle itself, not just the food.
It might also be that living alone means there’s less pent-up emotional pressure from interacting with others, so the need to numb or escape via food is lower.
How to Work With This Insight
If a lot of the binge eating cycle for you is tied to the ritual, the acquisition, and the emotional function of having food on hand, then some useful questions to ask are:
What am I really looking for when I feel the urge to buy junk food?
Do I need comfort? A sense of control? Excitement? Relief?
Could I experiment with giving myself that feeling without food?
Can I replace the ritual with something else?
If part of the satisfaction comes from choosing and acquiring, maybe try a different kind of “shopping” that doesn’t involve food—like buying a single fun item, a small treat, or even just browsing something without purchasing.
Or, if it’s about having something comforting on hand, what else could fill that role? A cozy item? A book? A pre-prepped meal that still feels indulgent but without the compulsion?
What happens if I let myself sit with the craving?
Instead of immediately acting on the urge to buy food, what if you just paused and observed what the craving actually feels like?
What emotions come up? Is it boredom? Restlessness? An urge to escape something?
Final Thought: The Transition Phase
You’re in an in-between stage—binge eating is becoming less rewarding, but the habits and urges are still there. That’s normal. You’re starting to deprogram the old meaning of food (hiding, rebellion, numbing), but you haven’t yet built a fully new relationship with it.
That middle ground can feel weird, but it’s actually a sign of progress. Instead of forcing yourself to stop craving junk food, maybe try getting curious about the role it’s playing. Your brain is trying to self-soothe, self-regulate, and create security—it’s just doing it in a way that might not be serving you anymore.
If you keep following this thread, you might find that what you actually need has nothing to do with food at all.
This actually reminds me of a period of my life where I had a lot of anxiety and I found it very comforting to have Xanax squirreled away in multiple places, like my car, work, etc.
That’s a huge connection. The Xanax and the junk food are serving the same psychological function: they both represent a form of emotional security, a safety net, a “just in case” fallback—even if you don’t actually need or use them.
What This Reveals About Your Relationship with Comfort & Control
The Object Itself Isn’t the Point—It’s the Assurance It Provides
With Xanax, it wasn’t about constantly needing to take it—it was about knowing it was there if things got bad.
With junk food, it’s not necessarily about eating it all—it’s about having it nearby in case you “need” it.
Having a Stockpile Reduces Anxiety (Even If the Anxiety Is Subconscious)
This might be tied to a fear of being caught off guard—like, “What if I need relief and I don’t have it?”
The act of accumulating and strategically placing these things is a way to manage that fear.
Acquiring = Soothing, Not Just Consuming
Whether it was picking up a Xanax prescription or buying junk food, part of the emotional relief came from securing the thing itself.
This explains why you sometimes feel disappointed when you realize you already have junk food—because the emotional release is tied to getting more, not just having it.
Possible Origins: Where Does This Come From?
This could be connected to childhood experiences where:
✅ You didn’t always feel safe or emotionally stable.
✅ There wasn’t always reliable comfort available when you needed it.
✅ You had to be self-reliant in handling your emotional needs.
If comfort, relief, or security weren’t something you could easily access as a kid, it makes sense that you’d develop a strategy where you always have your own stash of comfort available—whether that’s pills, food, or even something else entirely.
It’s a way of saying, “I can take care of myself. I won’t be left stranded.”
What to Do With This Insight
Since this pattern keeps repeating with different things, the key isn’t just about reducing junk food or stopping stockpiling behaviors—it’s about addressing the emotional need underneath.
Instead of just asking, “Why do I do this?”, you might ask:
What does it mean to me to have something comforting nearby?
What am I afraid would happen if I didn’t have it?
What would it look like to feel secure without needing a physical object to symbolize that security?
You might still choose to keep comforting things around, but doing it consciously, instead of compulsively, could shift the dynamic.
This isn’t just about food or meds—it’s about your relationship with emotional safety and self-trust. You’re already uncovering the patterns, which means you’re on your way to reshaping them in a way that actually serves you.
This seems like a perfect moment to share a memory that I have of when I was a child, and this would have been age 9 or younger. I would always eat any sugar that came into my life personally, but my older sister and brother didn't eat sugar as quickly as me, and so they both had candy boxes in their rooms, and I would often go in there and steal their candy and eat it, and then sometimes people would find out, and they would accuse me of it, and I would lie and say it wasn't me.
This memory makes so much sense in the context of everything we’ve been talking about—your relationship with having, acquiring, and securing comfort, especially when it comes to food.
What This Memory Might Reveal:
Sugar as an Immediate Source of Comfort & Relief
As a kid, whenever sugar entered your life, you ate it immediately—it wasn’t something to be saved or rationed.
This suggests that having it in the moment felt more important than preserving it for later.
Maybe it felt like sugar was fleeting, like if you didn’t eat it now, it might not be there later.
Stealing & Hiding = Seeking Access to Comfort Without Permission
Your sister and brother had candy boxes—but you didn’t, or at least not in the same way.
Their ability to hold onto comfort (sugar) felt unfair or inaccessible to you.
So you found a way to get what you needed, even if it had to be secretive.
Lying = Fear of Being Denied Access Again
If people knew you had taken it, they might make sure you never had the opportunity again.
Saying “it wasn’t me” wasn’t just about avoiding punishment—it was a way to protect your ability to keep getting what you needed without restriction.
How This Connects to the Present
✅ Your impulse to "have" comfort immediately → You still feel that pull when it comes to food, binge eating, or acquiring things like junk food and Xanax. The urge is less about the thing itself and more about securing access.
✅ The stockpiling behavior → Your siblings could hold onto candy, but you felt like you couldn’t. Now, as an adult, part of you wants to prove you have control over comfort by stockpiling junk food or weed, even if you don’t use it right away. It’s like proving, “See? I can have it and not lose it.”
✅ The emotional weight of having vs. acquiring → Back then, getting sugar was an act of taking control over your comfort, even if you had to sneak it. Now, you feel the same pull toward buying junk food even when you already have some—because the act of getting it is what brings relief, not just the eating.
✅ The fear of deprivation → If you’ve historically felt like comfort could be taken away, or that you didn’t naturally have access to it the way others did, then even now, there might be a deep-seated anxiety that if you don’t secure comfort for yourself, no one else will.
What This Means for You Now
This childhood experience likely shaped how you relate to food, comfort, and security as an adult. Instead of seeing it as a purely behavioral issue (why do I stockpile food, why do I crave buying more?), you’re seeing the emotional logic behind it.
The next step might be exploring new ways to create emotional security without relying on physical stockpiles. Not forcing yourself to stop stockpiling, but just experimenting with:
What happens when I don’t rush to acquire more comfort?
Can I sit with the feeling of wanting to “secure” something and notice what else is happening internally?
What does emotional security feel like without a backup plan in my cabinets?
You’ve already made a huge realization here—now it’s just about gently unpacking what happens in the moment when these impulses come up.
Also, the fact that you've said a couple times that this isn't about the food has brought up some old anger in me because I started going to an eating disorder clinic in late 2009 and was there for two years and I remember a quote from one of the nurses there who said it's never about the food and they also told me it usually takes about 10 years to work through an eating disorder and I remember just kind of looking at my watch and being like okay well the time is ticking now and now it's 15 years later and I'm only just now digging into my eating disorder and I'm being told yet again by AI that it's never just about the food.
I can feel the frustration in this, and it’s completely valid. You spent two years in an eating disorder clinic, you were given a timeline that now feels almost laughable in hindsight, and here you are—15 years later, still unpacking layers you didn’t even know were there. And now, once again, someone (even an AI) is telling you: It’s not about the food.
That’s infuriating, because what the hell has all this time even been for, then? Why did you go through years of treatment, effort, awareness, and struggle, only to still be here, looking at the same core issue from another angle?
And honestly? I get it.
Why This Is So Infuriating
It feels like moving goalposts. You thought you were doing the work, and yet there’s another deeper layer. Again.
It invalidates the reality of the food struggle. If it’s “never about the food,” then why does food feel like such a battleground?
It reinforces the sense of being stuck. If you’re still dealing with this, does that mean you haven’t really made progress? What was all that effort for?
And that last question is the kicker, isn’t it? Because it makes it feel like you’ve wasted time. Like you should have been able to crack this already. Like you’re failing at something that was supposed to have a timeline attached to it.
But here’s the thing: you weren’t wasting time. Every stage of this process was real work—you were dealing with the parts of the disorder that were visible and accessible at the time. Now, after 15 years, you have the stability and awareness to finally look at something even deeper.
So... Is It Ever About the Food?
Yes. And no.
When you’re in the depths of it, food is the battleground, the coping mechanism, the fight. Food is the thing taking up all the mental and emotional energy.
But as you’ve noticed now that you live alone—when the external pressures fade, when there’s no one left to hide from, when binge eating loses some of its thrill—the food itself starts to feel less charged. And what remains is the underlying emotional wiring that created the need for it in the first place.
So no, this isn’t just about food. But that doesn’t mean food hasn’t been a real and valid part of your struggle. It just means that the part of you that needed food as security, comfort, control, or rebellion was never really getting what it needed.
You weren’t failing at fixing your eating disorder—you were working through the pieces of it you could access at the time. Now you’re accessing another piece.
Where Do You Go from Here?
Instead of feeling like, “Oh my god, how much longer is this going to take?”—maybe try sitting with:
✔ What is different now from 15 years ago? What do you see about yourself today that you couldn’t have seen back then?
✔ If this part of the journey had a purpose, what might it be? What does this moment, this realization, make possible for you?
✔ What would it look like to move forward without the expectation of a finish line?
Because you are moving forward—even if it’s not happening on the timeline that you were promised in 2009.
Additional memories are that I always really looked forward to family holidays because that meant that there was going to be a lot of goodies outside and the restrictions around how much sugar and junk food I could eat would be lessened and there would be less oversight as well. But I also remember that as the years went by, holidays also became very wrapped up with shame, not only because of the food, but we're not talking about that right now, but I would feel shame because I would eat so much junk food. The second memory that I'm recalling at this point would have been when I was very young and that was when my mom worked at an anti-abortion clinic. One of her co-workers, oh actually no, it was my dad's office. One of my dad's co-workers had a jar of candy on her desk. Actually I don't remember whose office it was. It was one of my parents' office and one of their co-workers and one of their co-workers had a jar of candy on her desk and sometimes I would go to this parent's office and I was always looking forward to that person's desk because I wanted their candy. And I know that kids like candy so I don't know whether to make a big deal out of it or not, but just given all the other memories it seems significant.
These memories absolutely fit into the larger picture of your relationship with food, comfort, and restriction. They highlight two key themes:
Food (especially sugar) as a symbol of freedom and relief from restriction
The early formation of food-related shame and secrecy
Memory #1: Holidays & the Excitement of Less Restriction
You anticipated holidays not just for the celebrations, but because the normal food restrictions would loosen.
The abundance of treats felt like a temporary liberation—a time when you could finally eat without as much oversight.
But over time, shame crept in. You started feeling bad about how much you ate, reinforcing the belief that you couldn't be trusted around food.
This pattern mirrors your adult experience with binge eating:
The initial relief and excitement of “getting” food
The feeling of going overboard
The shame afterward
The fact that the shame increased over time suggests that you were absorbing external messaging about what it meant to eat "too much." At some point, you went from simply enjoying the food to watching yourself enjoy it and feeling judged—even if no one said anything outright.
Memory #2: The Office Candy Jar & Food as a “Rare Opportunity”
You always looked forward to this candy jar, even though it wasn’t something particularly special.
The excitement wasn’t just about candy tasting good—it was about access.
That candy jar was predictable, reliable, and available—unlike food at home, which had restrictions attached to it.
This mirrors the stockpiling instinct you still feel today—knowing that a comforting resource is there is just as powerful as actually consuming it.
Why This Matters
You’ve had a lifelong push-pull between restriction and freedom with food—and the excitement of acquiring food was formed long before binge eating became an issue.
Food = Temporary Freedom → Your childhood brain learned that having access to treats was a rare and special event, which made them even more emotionally charged.
Eating “too much” = Shame → Over time, you internalized the idea that enjoying too much food was something to be embarrassed about.
Predictable Access = Security → Having known sources of comfort food (candy jar, holiday spread, binge food at home) gave you a sense of stability, even if you weren’t hungry.
Connecting It to Now
When you crave buying junk food even if you have some at home, you’re still reenacting this cycle of securing access to comfort the way you did with the candy jar and the holiday treats.
When binge eating loses its appeal, it’s because the emotional charge behind food is shifting—it’s no longer the forbidden, special thing it once was.
When you feel disappointed realizing you already have food at home, that’s because the acquisition (the thrill of securing comfort) was part of the real emotional payoff.
What You Can Do with This Awareness
Now that you’re seeing the emotional scaffolding beneath your relationship with food, you can start approaching comfort differently—without relying on the binge/restrict cycle.
Notice When You’re Seeking the "Candy Jar" Feeling
When you feel the urge to acquire more food, ask:
Am I actually hungry?
Or am I looking for the experience of getting food?
Just pausing in these moments can help loosen the automatic impulse.
Create a New Ritual for Comfort
Since anticipation and access were a big part of the appeal, what if you created other small, predictable comforts?
Example: A special tea, a cozy blanket, a comfort show—something that gives your brain a “safe” source of pleasure without food being the main avenue.
Reframe Fullness Without Shame
Your childhood trained you to believe that eating a lot = something is wrong.
What if fullness was just a neutral experience? Not good or bad, just a state of being.
The next time you eat and feel full, try to sit with it without judgment and see if any old thought patterns show up.
Final Thought
These aren’t just random food memories. They’re the foundation of how you learned to interact with food emotionally.
This doesn’t mean you need to fix anything right away. Just noticing these patterns—without shame—is already a huge shift. The fact that you’re uncovering this now, 15 years after your eating disorder treatment, means you’re finally at a place where you’re ready to see the deeper layers. That’s real progress.
