16 Apr Easter Guilt: Navigating Chocolate, Shame, and Food Anxiety with Care
If you’ve found yourself feeling anxious, guilty, or even ashamed around food this Easter—especially after eating chocolate—you’re not alone. Holidays can be a particularly difficult time for individuals who are navigating disordered eating or in recovery from an eating disorder. While others might see chocolate eggs and hot cross buns as a harmless seasonal treat, for you, they might feel threatening, emotionally loaded, or even triggering. At Positive Wellbeing Psychology, we understand the complexity of this experience. As psychologists who support individuals struggling with eating disorders and body image concerns, we want you to know this: your distress is valid, and there is a path toward peace with food and your body—even during challenging moments like Easter.
Why Easter Can Feel So Overwhelming?
Food-related holidays can disrupt your sense of control, especially if you’re living with rigid food rules, calorie counting, compensatory behaviours, or patterns of restriction and bingeing. You might notice:
- Increased anxiety about “unhealthy” or “off-limits” foods
- Guilt or disgust after eating “fear foods” like chocolate
- Shame linked to perceived loss of control or failure
- A desire to compensate through exercise, restriction, or other behaviours
These experiences often reflect deeply held cognitive distortions—rules about food, body, and worthiness—that the eating disorder uses to maintain its grip. Eating chocolate isn’t just about the chocolate—it’s about the meaning your eating disorder has attached to it.
What Is This Constant Guilt–Shame Loop?
It’s common to hear thoughts like “I shouldn’t have eaten that.” or “I’ve ruined everything.”, “I’ll make up for it tomorrow.”. This is the guilt–shame loop in action. The guilt focuses on behaviour: “I did something wrong.” and the shame focuses on identity: “There is something wrong with me.”
In the context of eating disorders, shame is particularly harmful. It can fuel secrecy, isolation, and increased reliance on eating disorder behaviours to cope. But shame is not a sign of truth—it’s a signal of suffering. Therapy for eating disorders often focuses on helping individuals deconstruct these internalised beliefs and learn to respond to guilt and shame with curiosity and compassion, rather than punishment.
What About Checking Behaviours?
Easter can also trigger a spike in checking behaviours, which are often part of an eating disorder’s repertoire of control strategies. These behaviours may include:
- Frequent body checking in mirrors or reflective surfaces
- Weighing yourself repeatedly
- Rigid tracking of calories, macros, or exercise
- Trying on clothing to assess perceived changes
- Mentally reviewing food intake throughout the day
While these behaviours might momentarily reduce anxiety, they reinforce body dissatisfaction and strengthen the eating disorder’s hold over you. In CBT-E (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Eating Disorders), we often support clients in identifying and gradually reducing these behaviours. As we do, emotional regulation skills and body tolerance can grow in their place.
How To Reframe Chocolate as Food, Not Failure?
One of the most healing shifts in eating disorder recovery is learning to view all food—including chocolate—as morally neutral. This might include chocolate is not “bad.” You are not “bad” for eating it. Your worth is not dependent on your food choices. This is a radical shift, especially if your eating disorder has convinced you otherwise for years.
During Easter, you might experiment with:
- Planned exposure to chocolate in a supported way
- Mindful eating, noticing the flavours, textures, and internal cues
- Allowing for satisfaction without the need to compensate
These approaches are consistent with principles of intuitive eating and are frequently integrated into recovery-oriented psychological treatment. Research has shown that reducing rigid food rules and fostering permission around all foods can help to decrease binge eating behaviours, support more positive body image, and enhance overall psychological wellbeing. Importantly, reconnecting with hunger and fullness cues is only possible once the body is adequately nourished—this is why establishing regular eating patterns is a foundational step before intuitive eating becomes a sustainable and meaningful approach.
Why Is Regular Eating an Essential Step Before Intuitive Eating?
While intuitive eating is often framed around listening to your body’s hunger and fullness cues, it’s important to acknowledge that this approach is not always accessible in the early stages of eating disorder recovery.
When the body is in a state of restriction—whether intentional or unintentional—natural hunger and fullness cues can become disrupted or suppressed. In this state, relying solely on internal signals to guide eating can be confusing, distressing, or simply not possible. From a evidence-based therapy approach and taking into consideration the medical model of eating disorder treatment, eating regularly and consistently is a critical first step in restoring biological and psychological safety. This typically means having three meals and two to three snacks each day, spaced every 3 to 4 hours, regardless of whether or not you feel hungry.
This structure helps to stabilise blood sugar levels, reduce binge–restrict patterns, and gradually rebuild trust between the brain and body. Over time, this foundation can support the return of reliable interoceptive awareness—the ability to notice and respond to internal hunger and satiety cues—which is a key component of intuitive eating. In other words, structured eating often precedes intuitive eating, and both have a place in the recovery process.
Tips On Managing Anxiety and Guilt This Easter:
If Easter feels daunting, we encourage you to approach it with care—not control. Here are some gentle strategies to support yourself:
1. Acknowledge What You’re Feeling:
It’s okay to name that this is hard. This doesn’t mean you’re failing—it means you’re noticing. Bringing mindful awareness to distress is the first step toward change. You might say: “I notice guilt showing up. I don’t have to obey it. I can hold space for it without acting on it.”
2. Pause Checking Behaviours:
Consider what it would be like to gently delay or reduce checking today. Could you move the scale out of sight? Cover a mirror? Skip logging a meal? These small acts of self-kindness are powerful steps in recovery.
3. Connect to Safety:
Make a list of grounding tools, safe people, or coping statements to call on if you feel overwhelmed. Examples might include:
- Breathing slowly with your feet on the floor
- Listening to a soothing playlist
- Texting a support person or helpline
- Repeating a statement like: “This is uncomfortable, but I am safe.”
4. Set Intentions, Not Rules:
Rather than food rules, consider setting a gentle intention for the day:
“I want to stay present with the people I love.”
“I want to nourish myself emotionally and physically today.”
Intentions support flexibility. Rules create rigidity. Recovery lives in the former.
When to Seek Support for Disordered Eating, Guilt or Shame Around Weight, Shape and Appearance?
If Easter leaves you feeling overwhelmed, out of control, or consumed by guilt—it’s a sign that deeper support may be needed. You don’t have to do this alone. At Positive Wellbeing Psychology, our Melbourne-based team has a special interest in supporting individuals with eating disorders (including AN, BN, BED, OSFED), disordered eating patterns and food preoccupation, body image distress and body dysmorphia, perfectionism and shame-based thinking, emotional regulation and self-worth.
Our team of warm and compassionate psychologist work with adults, adolescents, and families using evidence-based approaches tailored to each person’s needs. Whether you’re early in eating disorder recovery or have been managing these struggles for years, we’ll meet you where you’re at—with respect, compassion, and hope.
A Final Message from Us to You This Easter:
Recovery is not about “doing food perfectly.” It’s about learning to stay connected to yourself—even when it feels hard. You’re allowed to eat chocolate. You’re allowed to feel conflicted. You’re allowed to ask for help. This Easter, we invite you to let go of the need to fix, punish, or perform. Instead, come home to your body with gentleness. Offer yourself the kindness you would offer a friend. And remember—healing is possible. You don’t have to keep suffering in silence.