25 Signs You Have a Terrible Relationship With Food

When it comes to romance, unhealthy relationships can make you feel unappreciated, unloved, unsatisfied, or all of the above.

But your relationship with food can be just as destructive. Look out for these signs that your eating behaviors are unhealthy, according to Sondra Kronberg, M.S., a registered dietitian and a spokesperson for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). (And consider talking to a therapist or doctor if these symptoms seriously affect your quality of life.)

1. You think about food all the time. Assuming you have access to food when you are hungry, food shouldn't permeate your thoughts or interfere with your productivity. (If it does, you may be denying yourself of nutrients your body really needs.)

2. You prefer to eat in private. When your coworkers go out to lunch, you decline, not because you need alone time or because you brought your lunch, but because eating in public makes you feel self-conscious.

3. Food guilt distracts you from normal conversations. You spend an entire meal mentally beating yourself up about going to town on the breadbasket.

4. You're completely inflexible about food — and you'd rather starve than eat something you don't typically eat. When you find out a restaurant is out of fat-free dressing, you'd rather leave than settle for a reduced-fat option. And if there aren't any fat-free hot dogs at a barbecue, you'd rather go hungry.

5. You feel the need to work off food you eat immediately. This isn't about taking a lap around the block to boost digestion after a particularly heavy dinner. It's when you feel like you need to burn off every single calorie you eat, and feel guilty when you don't or can't.

6. Yesterday's lunch makes you hate yourself. The healthiest eaters make the best possible decisions about what to eat, given the options. Then they eat it, and promptly forget about it — they don't perseverate for days and days.

7. You feel ashamed when you eat something you're "not supposed to" eat. You set self-imposed rules to avoid certain foods you deem "bad" and beat yourself up when you cross the line. (Even if the cookie you caved for was particularly delicious.) 

8. You punish yourself for eating something that deviates from your rules. There's no shame in eating pizza for lunch and eating a salad for dinner to compensate, if you want. (It's a smart eating strategy called balance.) But if you eat a piece of pizza, then embark on a guilt-fueled, weeklong juice cleanse, you could be taking things too far.

9. You deny yourself food you really crave. A healthy relationship with food means knowing what you need and want in your diet, and eating to accommodate both — whether that means dessert every day or on special occasions.

10. You worry about having food to eat in social settings. Unless you have a sensitivity to gluten, severe allergies, or other dietary restrictions, freaking out about cocktail hour appetizers three weeks before your friend's wedding just isn't healthy.

11. You cut out entire food groups, like carbs or fat. This rigid perfectionism is a precursor for disordered eating. After all, healthy eating is all about balance, not extremism.

12. You eat foods even though they make you feel bad. If you know that eating dairy gives you terrible stomach pains but throw back a pint of ice cream anyway, your compulsion to eat could be a sign of a larger problem.

13. You're always either on a diet or off a diet — there's no middle ground. People who have healthy relationships with food might eat a salad for lunch and a big-ass cupcake for a coworker's birthday. But they don't wash that down with a double-bacon cheeseburger, half a pizza, an XXL side of fries, and an ice cream sundae just because the cupcake turned the whole day into a bust.

14. You're embarrassed about the amount of food you eat. Food portions shouldn't make you feel shame. (Just satisfied.) Particularly because there are many reasons why you could be hungrier than your friends.

15. You spend hours combing aisles at the grocery store. While it's smart to check labels of foods before you buy them, you shouldn't labor over ingredients long enough to clog the aisles on the regular.

16. You always buy the exact same foods with no variety. Sure, you're an adult and you know what foods you like. But a rigid diet could leave you short on certain nutrients and cultivate food anxieties.

17. You only buy diet foods. This could be a sign you fear non-diet foods or worry they'll make you fat. (In reality, whole foods are vital to a healthy diet, regardless of calorie content.)

18. You spend 15 minutes deciding what food to order. It's not because you're having such a great conversation that you didn't get a chance to read the menu. But when you grapple between the sandwich or the salad, the salad or the sandwich as if it's your last meal? That's when you could have a problem (and a very irritated waiter).

19. You're scared to try new foods. If you generally dislike seafood and turn down a taste of tuna, you're probably in the clear. But if you're terrified of seafood because you worry it will make you sick or contribute to some far-off disease, you could be dealing with larger issues.

20. You binge on food unconsciously. Binging is different from overeating: It's uncontrollably plowing through two family-size bags of chips in one sitting when you didn't plan on eating chips in the first place. Then feeling surprised when you see the empty packages.

21. You decline dessert when you're out to dinner but go straight the chocolate stash the second you get home. Any incongruity between the way you eating public and in private could be a symptom of shame or guilt about your eating habits.

22. You talk about food nonstop. The more you talk about food, your weight, or how you feel about your body, the less healthy your relationship with food is likely to be. "Eating should be like breathing: You don't have to talk about it because it's a natural process," Kronberg explains.

23. You can't keep certain foods in your house without eating them. If you wake up thinking about your roommate's ice cream in the freezer or can't fall asleep without a bite of it, these compulsive tendencies could signal a poor relationship with food.

24. You always clear your plate. You lick your plate clean no matter how much food you're served, even if it means eating well past the point of comfort. But eating shouldn't be a painful experience.

25. You seriously can't stand it when your friends talk about food. Yes, it is annoying to hear people critique their diets ("I was so bad today!") — and it can prevent you from enjoying your food if this talk takes place during a meal. But diet talk shouldn't give you anxiety or make you feel anything besides hungry should the convo veer toward favorite desserts.

If these signs sound familiar, visit NationalEatingDisorders.org for more information.