Why You Can’t Keep Certain Foods in the House without Bingeing on Them, & How to Rebuild Trust Around Food
There’s a box of chocolates sitting on the sideboard in our dining room. It’s been there for three weeks now; untouched, unopened, and, I’ll admit, gathering a literal layer of dust on the lid. Every time I walk past, I tell myself I’ll deliver them soon, but it hasn’t happened yet (which probably says something about the current state of my nervous system’s freeze response, but that’s a post for another time. ahem.)
The chocolates aren’t even hidden away in a cupboard - they’re right there in plain sight. Lindt’s special edition box: rose gold and glossy; with all my favourite flavours. The kind of box that once would have whispered my name from across the room. These days, it’s quiet. I see them, smile a little at the dust, and carry on with my day.
The Comfort That Tried to Hold Me
It wasn’t always like this.
When I was younger, I used to buy boxes of chocolates as gifts - for teachers, friends, church members, family - and more often than not, I’d have to replace them before the day arrived. Sometimes four or five times. I’d even wrap them early, thinking maybe the paper would protect me from myself. But eventually, the pull became too strong, and I’d find myself unwrapping them in a quiet rush, racing the inevitable wave of guilt, remorse, and shame I knew was coming to engulf me like a tsunami.
Back then, chocolate wasn’t just chocolate; it was all I had to hold me in a life that felt like my only purpose was holding others. Those chocolates were a way to soothe something I couldn’t yet name. A way to reclaim something I didn’t even realise had been taken from me.
Now, those same boxes sit quietly on my shelf. I notice them, but they don’t call to me in the same way. It’s not that I don’t like chocolate - I do! Passionately. It’s just that I no longer need them to hold me together.
It Was Never About Willpower
I can still remember the feeling of those moments - the push and pull between wanting and not wanting, between promise and punishment.
It’s easy to mistake what was really happening back then as “lack of discipline” or “no willpower.” But the truth is softer, and far more human.
When the body is underfed or undernourished, the pleasure centres in the brain light up in response to energy-dense foods - like chocolate. It’s biology, not brokenness; a survival system doing its best to protect you.
And when life feels like a pressure cooker - finances, commitments, to-do lists, relationships, work, school - food can become one of the few places where relief is allowed. That is not failure. It is a way of coping.
The shift for me didn’t happen overnight. It came slowly, as nourishment became consistent, as my nervous system began to feel safer, as I learned to listen to what my body truly needed - not just what it was desperate for.
The Quiet Work of Reconnection
What changed wasn’t the chocolate. It was my relationship with my body.
Through this work - the slowing down, the nourishing regularly, the noticing - I began to rebuild a kind of trust with myself. The more I tended to my body’s needs, the less it needed to shout.
I’ve eaten chocolate slowly, many times now. I know how it feels in my body - the texture, the richness, the way my energy shifts as my body works to receive the sweetness I’ve given it. So, when I pass the box on the shelf, I can pause and ask, is that how I want to feel right now? Sometimes the answer is a full body yes. Sometimes it’s no. Both are welcome.
That’s what we build in Somatic Nutrition Therapy: a relationship with food that begins in the body, not the mind. A way of eating that honours the language of sensation over the noise of shoulds.
Peace, In A Box Of Chocolates
Maybe I’ll eat them before I hand them over. Maybe I won’t.
Either way, I’m not worried anymore. The peace isn’t in whether I eat the chocolate or not - it’s in knowing that there is spaciousness around the choice.
That I can have food in my home without fear.
That I can listen to my body and trust what it tells me.
That I no longer need to turn away from myself when the craving comes.
It’s such a simple thing, really - that box of chocolates, gathering dust on a shelf - and yet it holds the story of what happens when the body finally feels safe enough to choose.
If you’ve ever felt haunted by the food in your cupboards, I want you to know: peace isn’t found in avoiding it. It’s found in learning to listen - to the hunger, the fullness, the fatigue, the longing, the relief. To the body that has been trying to speak all along.