What if You Didn’t Need to Fix Your Eating?

Written by Vania Phitidis
Peaceful Eating Coach
Last updated on 21 August 2026

Three months ago, a client described a constant feeling of wanting to eat, along with an edgy, uncomfortable feeling that went with it. His eating seemed to be a constant event that was taking up a lot of time and attention.

Over the last couple of months, he’s been eating when he’s hungry, eating whatever he wants and stopping when he feels satisfied. He’s not trying to eat less or following a set of rules about what he should and shouldn’t eat.

Recently, though, he’d had a few days where his eating was less attuned than usual. He’d eaten past the point where it was enjoyable or satisfying and had felt uncomfortable afterwards.

What interested me was less about what he was eating, or how much, and more about what was happening while he was eating. His awareness was sharper. He was aware that he wasn’t enjoying the food in the way he used to, that he wasn’t hungry and that he didn’t really want more. He was aware that it didn’t make him feel good.

This awareness didn’t stop him eating, but the important bit for me was that the old, familiar sense of compulsion wasn’t the same.

Afterwards, he didn’t feel the need to compensate or get himself “back on track”. He wasn’t hard on himself and he didn’t even entertain the thought that he’d undone all the progress he’d made. Whoo hoo! That’s a huge win in my books.

In fact, he put the whole thing into perspective himself. When he looked at the last couple of months as a whole, most of his eating had felt positive and normal. A few days that were less than great didn’t change that. He was completely okay with the fact that sometimes eating doesn’t go particularly well. The idea that it should all be perfect didn’t seem relevant to him anymore.

I thought that was really interesting.

When awareness starts to do the work

What I find particularly interesting is how this change seems to have happened without him having to consciously make it happen.

He set out to change his relationship with food – very much so. But he wasn’t trying to make himself eat less when this particular episode happened. He was paying attention to his experience as it unfolded, noticing that he wasn’t hungry, that the food wasn’t tasting as good as it used to and that he wasn’t really enjoying it. That awareness seemed to change something.

He ate much less than he would have done a few months ago, but without deliberately trying to eat less. There wasn’t the same internal struggle about what he should do. His awareness seemed to be doing some of the work.

I think this is easy to miss when we’re trying to change our relationship with food. We’re used to thinking that change requires effort – setting rules, exercising restraint, finding the right strategy and then making ourselves stick to it.

But sometimes, when you become genuinely aware of what’s happening, something starts to shift without you having to force it.

You notice you’re not hungry. You notice you’re not enjoying the food. You notice that eating more isn’t actually giving you what you thought it would.

And sometimes that changes what happens next.

Not always, and not necessarily immediately. But there doesn’t have to be a battle with yourself.

The pressure to get food “right”

And this is where I think the wider culture comes in.

We’re living in a time when everything seems to be getting maxxed – protein, fibre, gut health, blood sugar, inflammation, longevity. There always seems to be another food choice to optimise, another ingredient to avoid, another reason why what you’re currently doing might not be quite right.

You can end up feeling as though every decision about food needs to be the best possible decision.

Did I get enough protein? Was there enough fibre? Should I have eaten that? Would something else have been better? Is this food good for my gut? Was that too processed?

And underneath all of this is often the assumption that there is a correct way to eat, and that if we can just gather enough information and make enough good choices, we’ll finally get it right.

But there is no perfect way to eat.

There isn’t one way of eating that’s right for everyone, and there certainly isn’t good evidence to support the huge number of specific food rules and warnings we’re now encouraged to worry about.

Sometimes you can eat something and realise afterwards that it wasn’t particularly satisfying. Sometimes you eat past the point where it feels good. Sometimes you eat something simply because you wanted it. Sometimes you don’t make the choice you would have made if you’d been completely attuned to yourself.

That’s part of being human. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed at eating.

You don’t have to fix it

I think this is one of the biggest differences between attunement and dieting.

With dieting, there is usually a sense that when you’ve gone “off plan”, you need to do something to put it right. You need to compensate, start again, be more disciplined tomorrow or get back on track.

But eating with attunement isn’t about getting every eating experience right. It’s about developing the ability to notice what’s happening and respond to yourself.

And sometimes the response might simply be to carry on.

That’s what I found so interesting about my client’s recent experience. He’d had a few days where things weren’t going as well as usual. He’d eaten past the point where it was enjoyable and had felt physically uncomfortable afterwards.

He didn’t turn that into another problem to solve.

His body settled, his eating settled, and he got on with his life.

A few weeks earlier, he’d had a period of bloating and discomfort and had also decided not to immediately start changing his food in an attempt to find the cause. He gave it some time, and it settled.

I’m not suggesting we should ignore persistent physical symptoms. But I think there’s something useful in being able to tolerate not knowing and allowing your body some space to respond, rather than assuming you need to intervene every time something doesn’t feel quite right.

Maybe you can relax a little

I wonder what would happen if we took some of the pressure off food.

We don’t need to decide that food doesn’t matter, and we don’t need to stop paying attention to how we feel. But perhaps we could accept that there is no way to eat perfectly.

You don’t have to optimise every choice. You don’t have to get every meal right. You don’t have to work out the perfect explanation when something doesn’t go well.

You can notice what’s happening, learn from it and make a different choice next time if you want to.

And sometimes you can simply let it be what it was and carry on.

Perhaps a peaceful relationship with food isn’t about getting to the point where every eating experience feels good.

Perhaps it’s about being able to have an eating experience that doesn’t feel great without deciding that something has gone terribly wrong.

You can notice it.

You can let your body settle.

And you can carry on.