Food guilt: Is calorie-cutting also cutting out the joy in your life? Experts weigh in

Do you usually scroll through a few reels and experience guilt over the noodle bowl you had for dinner last night or the chocolate milkshake you craved after work? Well, you are not alone!

There are a lot of people on the same boat. Food guilt is a growing concern among individuals who spend time on social media. It's where you tend to feel guilty of eating, constantly counting calories thanks to the tidal wave of diet-oriented content online, or just start disassociating with food.

Health-related food content on social media includes content creators who often discuss calorie reduction and marketing gimmicks that suggest what to eat and what not to eat. Falling into the trap of food guilt, are we living our lives a little less?

What exactly is food guilt and how to draw boundaries?

Food guilt isn't a made-up concept. According to a study, aimed to assess how media internalisation and pressure are associated with body mass index (BMI), disordered eating, and body image dissatisfaction in Indian adults and whether there exists gender differences within these variables, had results which indicated that BMI was significantly correlated with internalisation athlete, body shape dissatisfaction, and disordered eating, but not internalisation general or media pressure.

Overweight and obese men and women were found to be significantly more dissatisfied than underweight and normal‑weight men and women; however, the difference was not significant for overweight and obese males and normal‑weight and overweight females.

And what is it really about “healthy” snacks, “healthy” drinks, and everything zero carbs, no sugar, gluten-free and high on protein? Sounds like eating food is very complicated, resulting in this disassociation with food or creating a guilt around food. Experts weigh in. Clinical nutritionist Dr. Nehha Mahajan suggests that it is high time we go back to the simple home-cooked meals we used to enjoy earlier, rice or roti, dal, curd, a source of protein, some crunchy salad, ghee for good fats and you are good to go.

“It’s just not the content on social media, but a lot of marketing strategies need to be blamed too. A balanced, nutritious meal that is needed for the body is getting lost in this world of myths and misconceptions. For example, our relationship with carbohydrates. Though carbohydrates are now being treated as our enemy, we have grown up eating these. They are easy to digest, and easily break down into glucose which is food for the brain. If the brain is not getting enough food to function, it will end up having anxiety or sleep issues, and other peripheral problems,” says Nehha.

She suggests taking a 3-3.5 hours gap before your meal and bedtime, and almost everybody is fasting for 10-12 hours from their dinner to breakfast the next day, which is healthy.

“But many end up following fad diets like intermittent fasting, and end up being without food for 16-18 hours as well. That becomes problematic, especially for women, leading to hormonal imbalances. It’s a vicious cycle that people are just unaware of,” she adds. The OMAD (one meal a day) diet, for example, is the “most atrocious thing” to do, especially after eventful days, when you are eating well, like a wedding party or vacation. “One really needs to be blessed enough to have a strong gut and liver to function like this,” Nehha says.

Are “healthy” snacks really healthy?

“Not at all. Anything that is packed and has a shelf life has preservatives in it. And whatever they are made up of, they cannot be healthy,” breaks Nehha. “See the packed breads, packed curds, which have a shelf life of 10 days, our bodies are used to consuming it, we have been doing it for years. But the ones that have a shelf life of six months or more, are really questionable and eventually damage the gut. They are only healthy if made at home and consumed fresh,” she adds.

How does it mess with the brain and mind, how is the guilt developed? 

Health psychologist Puja Roy weighed in to say that it’s high time we bust these misconceptions, and feeling guilty around food and body dysmorphia are not limited to women anymore, neither is it limited to the age group of 20s-30s. “Scroll through social media, you will at least come across one reel which talks about a diet, weight loss management or calorie counts, and quite obviously, most of the stylised diets are tied to weight loss messaging, leading to body-image issues and restrictive eating,” says Puja.

There are two kinds of people that are coming to them- one who follows restrictive eating, leading to body image issues and the other is impulsive eating. “When someone is rigidly restricting their intake, even a small slip triggers a sense of failure, leading them to overeat. It can also lead to emotional eating as a mediator. We get to see that those who are more rigidly eating, they are more prone to emotional eating,” she says. “What we see is that people are either not being able to come out of this rigidity and is becoming hypervigilant while watching your calories and weight twice or even thrice a day, and if this rigidity slips even a little, they end up overeating, emotionally, overburdened by this sense of failure,” adds Puja.

Experts say that this is a vicious cycle that doesn’t seem to end. The only way to come out of this guilt is to stop following whoever you see on social media, listen to your body, and get back to the rhythm that you are grown up with.

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