The Stories You Keep Telling Yourself About Your Eating Habits (& How to Change Them)

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The Stories You Keep Telling Yourself About Your Eating Habits (& How to Change Them)

The stories you tell yourself about your eating habits are not facts — they are thoughts, and thoughts can be changed. Changing those thoughts is what actually changes the eating habit, because your brain will always behave in line with the story it believes is true.

“I’m an emotional eater.”

“Food has always been my weakness.”

“I’ve tried everything and nothing works for me.”

“I’ve just always been like this.”

Sound familiar? If you’ve been carrying one of those thoughts around for years, I want you to hear something important: that’s not who you are. That’s a story your brain has been repeating. And there’s a big difference.

I’m Kate Johnston, an eating habits and weight loss coach and former Physician Assistant with 15 years of clinical experience. I carried my own stories for years — about food, about my body, about my eating habits, about my job and the stress it created. I know what it’s like to feel like the story is just the truth. And I know what changes when you start questioning it.

That’s what this post is about.

What Are the Stories You Tell Yourself About Your Eating Habits?

Every thought you have about food, your body, or your eating habits is a story.

Not a fact. A story.

Stories are opinions. Judgments. Interpretations built from past experiences. Your brain has nothing else to go by except the past, so it keeps replaying those old narratives and treating them like current truth.

The problem is that your brain will then behave in line with whatever story it believes. If you keep telling yourself you’re an overeater, your brain will organize your actions around that identity. You won’t become someone who doesn’t overeat because you’re not telling yourself that story yet.

This is why trying to change your actions without changing your thoughts is so hard. You’re fighting the story with behavior while the story keeps winning.

How Do These Stories Show Up in Real Life?

Let me share a few examples from my own clients, because I think this is where it really clicks.

One of my clients, a nurse and mom with a very full life, had a story that she always wanted a cheeseburger over a salad. When I simply asked her “is that actually true?”…. she paused. She thought about it. And she realized no, not really.

She listed all the reasons she actually liked salads and how good she felt after eating one. The story had just never been questioned before.

Once she started catching that story and others like it, things shifted quickly. She went from someone who regularly ate fast food and overdid it with sugar to someone who genuinely prefers a filling salad, chooses water over soda, turns down candy way more often than she used to, and often doesn’t overeat. We’re not even done working together yet.

Another client, a Physician Assistant, had a story that she was an unhealthy person.

That story was showing up everywhere… in her eating choices, in skipping hydration during busy patient days, in dropping the exercise classes she used to love.

When we started looking at all the ways she was actually healthy and what was really behind the choices that didn’t feel healthy, the story started falling apart. She reconnected with who she actually was. The dance classes came back. The nourishing meals came back. She started feeling genuinely healthy even on the days she had dessert.

And a personal one: I had a story that I loved Cheez-Its and could never give them up. When I started questioning it… “Do I actually love them, or do I just love the flavor while not loving what they do to my body?” the story shifted.

I stopped telling myself I loved them. And without restriction, without willpower, without portion control, I just naturally started wanting them less. I genuinely can’t remember the last time I had one and that’s been well over a decade.

The story changed. The behavior followed.

Why Can’t You Just Change the Eating Behavior Without Changing the Story?

This is the question I know you’re thinking or you’ve wondered. And you’ve probably thought, “I know what I should do. Why can’t I just do it?”

Because knowing and doing live in different parts of your brain. And your brain will always default to the story it’s been running, especially when you’re tired, stressed, or depleted…which for women in healthcare is most of the time.

Willpower runs out. Rules create resistance. (Think about little kids who don’t want to follow rules. Totally natural, right?)

But a genuinely changed story doesn’t require either of those things because you’re not fighting yourself anymore. You’re just being who you now believe you are.

How Do You Actually Change the Story You’re Telling Yourself About Your Eating Habits?

Here are the questions to work through. You can do this right now.

Find where it’s already true. This is the most powerful step. If you want to believe you’re not an emotional eater, where is that already real?

Maybe you don’t emotionally eat at breakfast. Maybe there are three days a week where it doesn’t happen. That’s evidence. Collect it. “I don’t emotionally eat in the mornings” feels completely different in your body than “I’m an emotional eater.” Notice that difference.

Notice the story. What are you actually telling yourself? “I’m an emotional eater.” “I can’t control myself around food.” “Healthy food doesn’t satisfy me.” Write it down if that helps.

Decide if you want to keep it. This sounds obvious but it matters. It’s a choice. Do you actually want this story to keep running your life?

Get clear on why you want to change it. What would be different if this story weren’t true? How would you eat differently? How would you feel?

Ask yourself if you’re willing to think something different. Not force it. Not fake it. Just be open to it.

Decide what story you’d rather believe. If the current story is “I’m an emotional eater,” what would you rather believe? “I’m not an emotional eater” is a start. Or something that feels more reachable right now.

Ask yourself if that new story could possibly be true. Not whether it’s fully true right now. Whether it’s possible. Can you see a version of yourself who isn’t driven by emotional eating? Even a future version?

Does Changing Your Eating Habits Story Mean Ignoring Reality?

No. It means questioning whether the story you’ve been telling is actually as true as it feels.

Most of the stories my clients carry are generalizations built from hard moments. They took a real experience and turned it into an identity. And identities are sticky.

But here’s what’s also true: you are not your worst eating day. You are not the sum of every time you overate or reached for food when you were stressed. Those were moments. The story you built around them is optional.

Why Is Consistency So Important When Changing Your Eating Habit Stories?

Your brain didn’t build the old story overnight. It won’t unwind overnight either.

Consistency is everything here. Not perfection. Consistency.

Catching the story once is a good start. Catching it regularly, questioning it regularly, and choosing the new thought regularly is what actually rewires the pattern. That’s how the new story starts to feel true rather than just aspirational.

This is also where most people get stuck on their own. They catch the story occasionally, feel good about it, and then life gets busy and the old narrative creeps back in. That’s not failure. That’s just how habit change works without structured support.

Why Is This Work Hard to Do Alone?

Because in real life the stories don’t show up when you’re calm and reflective. They show up at 9pm when you’re exhausted. They show up in the break room after a hard case. They show up at your mom’s house surrounded by food you’ve always associated with comfort.

In those moments, catching and questioning a thought that’s been running for years takes a skill that most people haven’t built yet. That’s not a personal failing. It’s just the reality of trying to change something deeply ingrained without support.

This is exactly what coaching is for. Not to just teach you more stuff. To help you actually apply this in your real life, in those real moments, consistently enough that the new story starts to become automatic.

Ready to Change the Story That’s Been Running Your Eating Habits?

Is it possible to be someone who has the eating habits you actually want to have?

I know it is. And I think somewhere in you, you know it too.

The longer the current story keeps running, the stronger it gets and the harder the habit becomes to break. The negative effects compound over time. I don’t want that for you and I know you don’t either.

Take the next step to break free from these eating habits, lose weight, and keep it off by booking your free consult with me.

You’ll feel lighter in every sense of the word. A lighter relationship with food, a lighter emotional load and mental burden, a lighter body, and just a lighter way of living.

See exactly how this would be made possible for you with my coaching program, Lighter. Book your free consult with the button below.

Kate Johnston is an Eating Habits and Weight Loss Coach, host of the Eating Habits for Life podcast, and a former Physician Assistant with 15 years of clinical experience. She specializes in helping women in healthcare break overeating and emotional eating habits for good through mindset and strategy coaching in her 1:1 program, Lighter.