Have you ever reached for food when you were stressed, lonely, or overwhelmed, only to feel guilty afterward? In this episode of Dr. Marianne-Land, Dr. Marianne Miller, LMFT, explores the guilt so many people carry around emotional eating and why that guilt does more harm than the eating itself. She shares how comfort eating has always been a part of human connection, memory, and regulation, and why diet culture has twisted it into something we’re told to feel ashamed of.

This episode includes discussion of emotional eating, guilt, diet culture messages, and eating disorder recovery. Please take care while listening and step away if you need to.

Dr. Marianne discusses what she’s noticed while eavesdropping at restaurants when people turn down dessert by saying they “don’t want to be bad.” This everyday example highlights how morality gets tangled up with food, especially with foods that often bring us joy and comfort. Instead of labeling emotional eating as wrong, Dr. Marianne reframes it as information about what we need in the moment.

Listeners will learn practical strategies for releasing guilt, including naming emotions before and after eating, shifting language around food choices, and building a toolkit of regulation strategies that includes but isn’t limited to food. Dr. Marianne also speaks directly to neurodivergent listeners, offering sensory-based and executive functioning supports like low-lift eating, grounding practices, and compassion for how food can play an important role in daily self-care.

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt stuck in the cycle of eating for comfort, feeling guilty, and then eating again to soothe that guilt. Dr. Marianne offers a liberation-based perspective, showing how every act of compassion toward yourself is also resistance to diet culture, fatphobia, and ableism.

If emotional eating has ever left you feeling guilty, this conversation will help you release shame and see food as a source of connection, care, and freedom.