You’re Not Broken — You’re Caught in a Very Human Pattern

Most attempts to change eating habits start with a quiet but powerful assumption.

Something is wrong with me.

People don’t usually say it that bluntly. It shows up as questions instead.

Why do I keep doing this?
I know better, why can’t I do better?
Why do I seem to have no self-control?

These questions feel sensible. Responsible. Like the kind of thinking change requires.

But they come with a cost.

When you start from the belief that you are the problem, every eating decision becomes a referendum on your character. Food stops being food and starts being evidence.

Evidence that you’re disciplined or not. Doing it “right” or not.

At that point you’re no longer trying to improve your eating.
You’re trying to fix yourself.

And that’s just exhausting.

Humans are remarkably bad at identifying where their experience is actually coming from.

We assume our feelings are caused by what just happened — what we ate, what we weigh, what someone said, what the number on the scale did overnight.

But that’s not how experience works.

Your moment-to-moment experience is shaped by what your mind is saying about events, not the events themselves.

It’s our internal commentary that creates the emotional experience.

This is why one person can eat the very same food and move on with their day while another spirals into shame, guilt and vows of reform. It’s not the food. It’s the thinking.

Thought Is Fast, But Not Reliable

Your mind is constantly narrating.

It explains. Predicts. Warns. Evaluates.

It’s very good at its job — so good that we forget it’s just doing what minds do.

You walk past a bakery and smell fresh bread. Suddenly the urge to eat it can feel important. Urgent. Hard to ignore.

But here’s what’s actually happening:

A thought appeared.
That thought produced a feeling.
The feeling made the bread seem irresistible.

You keep walking and a few minutes later the urge is gone because your thinking changed.

That fluidity is the clue we usually miss.

The Illusion of Self-Control

When we misunderstand the source of our experience, we try to solve the wrong problem.

We focus on controlling behaviour rather than understanding what’s driving that behaviour.

So we fight urges.
Follow diets to control our hunger.
Make up rules to stop ourselves from eating certain foods.

And then we’re surprised when it feels like damn hard work.

But what’s happening is that you’re applying control to something that was never solid in the first place.

It’s easy to interpret giving into cravings as a lack of willpower or discipline.

But all that’s happening is that you’re responding to a momentary experience that looked very convincing at the time.

That’s not a lack of anything. That’s the human experience.

Nothing to Do, Something to See

So “what do I do?” I hear you ask.

Well this isn’t about managing thoughts, it’s about recognising what thoughts are.

Passing mental activity, taken a little too seriously.

When you see this, you see that you’ve been trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

You are not your thinking. You are the awareness behind the noise.

When you stop mistaking every thought for a fact, a quieter, more workable relationship with food tends to emerge all by itself.