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It Wasn’t Love — It Was a Craving to Numb
How I Mistook Food Obsession for Passion, and What I Found Beneath It
For most of my life, I thought I just really, really loved food. I was the kind of person who talked about dinner while still eating lunch.
I watched cooking shows religiously.
I planned trips around restaurants, took pride in knowing the best local bakeries, and insisted that food was my “love language.”
And for a while, that was the story I told: I was a foodie. A passionate eater. Someone who lived for flavor.
But there was another part of the story I never told — the nights when I ate until I was sick, the afternoons I spent alone in the car with takeout containers scattered on the passenger seat, the shame that clung to me like grease on my fingers.
Those parts didn’t feel like “love.” They felt like loss.
It took me years to admit the truth: I wasn’t in love with food. I was addicted to it.
There’s a difference between pleasure and compulsion. But I didn’t see it at first.
Because food is pleasure, right? That’s how it starts. It comforts. It connects.
