Like many females, I have a love-guilt relationship with food. I have recently become aware of one of my food-related behaviours. I use food as a reward. Whenever I hand in homework, get through a tough day, or even do exercise, I reward myself with food that I would otherwise feel bad about eating.

I don’t know if this behaviour is unhealthy or unhelpful. Maybe I reward myself too much or maybe the concept of ‘food as reward’ reinforces the guilt I feel when I eat food normally.

It leads me to think I need to find alternative ways to reward myself. I read somewhere the suggestion that you could buy a magazine or clothes as a reward. That wouldn’t do it for me, really. I haven’t yet thought of something that I enjoy as much as food.

Yesterday, I did something that made me happy. I had just handed in an essay. It was only 1000 words long but was very, very difficult and frustrating to write. Instead of buying a food reward, I went spent an hour at Borders. I was very happy and didn’t even buy anything.