The Day I Stopped Sorting Food Into 'Good' and 'Bad'
For years I split every food into two piles: allowed and forbidden. Here's how dropping that one habit did more for my eating than any rule ever did.
Hannah Caldwell 3 min read For most of the years covered in this diary, I quietly ran a filing system in my head. Every food got sorted into one of two folders the second I looked at it: good or bad. Allowed or forbidden. Virtuous or shameful. I didn’t decide to do this; I’d absorbed it so thoroughly it felt like just… how food worked.
Looking back, that one habit caused me more grief than any actual food ever did. Letting go of it was probably the single most important thing in this whole diary, and it wasn’t a diet or a rule — it was just dropping a way of thinking. (Not a dietitian, as ever. Just a regular person who finally put the filing system down.)
What the two folders actually did to me
The “good and bad” system sounds harmless, even responsible. It wasn’t, at least not for me. Here’s the cycle it created: I’d be “good” for a while, white-knuckling past the forbidden foods. The restriction would build. Eventually I’d crack, eat a pile of the forbidden stuff, feel like a failure, and start again on Monday. Over and over.
The forbidden foods had so much power because they were forbidden. A biscuit isn’t inherently thrilling. A biscuit you’ve banned yourself from is electric. I’d built a system that made the very foods I was trying to avoid into the most tempting things in the house.
What changed when I dropped it
When I finally stopped sorting — when a biscuit became just a biscuit, neither a treat I’d earned nor a sin I’d committed — the strangest thing happened. The drama drained out of it. With nothing forbidden, nothing was electric anymore. I could have one biscuit and genuinely not want a second, because there was no scarcity, no “last chance before Monday.”
This had quietly been the thread running through everything that actually worked for me. Letting go of fearing carbs, making peace with fat, realising fruit sugar wasn’t out to get me — each one was a smaller version of this same lesson. Stop treating a food as the enemy and the obsession with it tends to fade.
So what guides me now, if not rules?
Dropping “good and bad” didn’t leave a void. I still make choices, they’re just based on something kinder and frankly more useful: what does this food do for me?
- Most of the time I lean toward foods that fill me up and leave me feeling well — vegetables, protein, whole grains, the filling stuff.
- Some of the time I eat purely for joy, on purpose, without a side of guilt. Cake at a birthday. Chips on a Friday.
- No food sends me into a shame spiral, which means no food triggers the binge that the shame used to cause.
It’s a softer way of eating, and it’s worked better than every rigid system I tried before it. “Most of the time, foods that do me good; some of the time, foods that just bring joy” — that’s the entire philosophy now, and it doesn’t require a single forbidden list.
The freedom in it
The thing I didn’t expect was how much mental quiet I’d get back. I used to spend a genuinely embarrassing amount of energy judging food — and, by extension, judging myself for eating it. Putting down the two folders gave that energy back.
Food stopped being a daily moral exam. It went back to being food: fuel, pleasure, something I share at a table with people I love. Six years of keeping this diary and that’s the lesson I’d carve over the door if I could. No food is good or bad. It’s just food, and you are allowed to eat it.
A few questions I get asked
If no food is 'bad,' does that mean everything's fine to eat all the time?
Not quite what I mean. It's less 'everything's equal' and more 'no single food is a moral failing.' Some foods do more for me than others, and I lean toward those most of the time. But dropping the guilt around the rest is what made the whole thing sustainable instead of a constant fight.
Won't I just eat junk all day without strict rules?
That's what I feared, and the opposite happened. When foods stopped being forbidden, they stopped being thrilling. The cycle of restrict-then-binge that the 'bad food' list created in me actually faded once nothing was off-limits. Less drama, less overeating.