When Food is Your Only Pleasure in Life
September 10, 2026
If food is one of the main ways you experience joy, comfort, or excitement in your life right now, it’s no wonder you feel deprived when you try to give it up.
Today we're talking about…
The signs you need more fun in your life that don’t involve food
Why you feel guilty taking time for yourself
How to structure your life to get pleasure without eating that actually leave you feeling good
I thought of this topic after a client call I had the other day where he'd just had a huge insight on how he runs on adrenaline throughout the day. He's constantly doing things and closing deals, and that's kind of like his source of fun. He also has a very busy family life, so he's always on the move, always doing stuff.
As we were scheduling our next session, I told him, "Oh, I couldn't do that day at that time because I have ice skating lessons." He replied, "Man, I wish I did more fun things like that." It made me realize I have a really fun life. But my fun life didn't happen on accident — it was a choice I actively made over a long period of time to create the life I have now. This is one of the biggest reasons food just isn't a big deal to me anymore. I still love a good meal, but it's a much smaller piece of my pleasure pie.
Whereas my client was starting to realize, "I don't have a lot of fun things in my life, so of course I am running off the high of the day and just trying to continue it on with food instead of finding activities that I really enjoy that feel restful and rejuvenating so that food loses its appeal a bit."
Signs You Need More Fun in Your Life
If you feel like you are living Groundhog Day over and over again with no variety, that's a sign that food is going to be of a higher appeal. Think about your average Tuesday. What does it look like? Do you just wake up, go to work, come home, eat, scroll, sleep, and then do it all again? Maybe somewhere in that loop, food starts to become the only thing you look forward to.
Or maybe you have a life that's filled with doing things for other people and very little for yourself. I see this all the time with moms, where the only moment of the day that feels like it was just for you is when you're alone when the kids are in bed, it's 9:00 PM, and you finally have some peace and quiet. You might not even realize how little you're doing for yourself until you try to answer the question of, what do I do for fun? And if you just kind of blank, that's your sign to start answering it.
You need more fun if you feel bored or resentful of your own life, and that might show up as snapping at people who don't deserve it, fantasizing about a totally different life, or just feeling this low-grade heaviness that you can't quite name. You're grateful for your life, and you know that you have a lot going on for you, but you just feel depleted, and you've been managing that depletion with food because nothing else has been filling that gap.
Without having other pleasures in your day, food becomes your only pleasure. When your day starts to feel like obligation after obligation, your brain is going to start hunting for a dopamine hit somewhere, and food's right there. It's legal, it's available everywhere, and it works, at least for a few minutes. So of course, that's where you're going to go.
But the frustrating part of all of this is that the more you try to tighten down on your food and your eating habits, the more you feel like you're taking away the one thing that makes your day feel just a little bit better. This is why binge eating is so hard to break if you never address what the food is doing for you in the first place.
Why Do I Feel Guilty for Taking Time for Myself?
We are taught, especially as women, to always put others before ourself and that we're being kind, we're being nurturing, we're being giving, and this is not necessarily a bad message. I love giving to other people. I love supporting my friends and my family and being the rock for them.
But it can be taken too far, where our health and wellbeing starts to suffer because the one person fully in charge of taking care of us — ourself — isn't showing up. We are leaving ourself in the dust while giving everyone else 110%, and this is when burnout starts to happen.
Burned out people eat in ways that don't reflect their values. When you're running on empty, you're not going to make thoughtful, intentional choices about food. You're just going to feel like you're managing and surviving through the day. And survival mode often looks a lot like eating whatever's fast and easy, because you have nothing left.
So when I say prioritizing yourself is important, I'm not talking about being selfish. I'm talking about being functional, so you can be the type of person who actually has energy to give to others because you filled up your cup first.
How to Stop Making Food Your Only Pleasure
I'll make the disclaimer first that I don't have kids. I coach full-time in my business, and my schedule is flexible, so I don't have any major time responsibilities like taking care of aging parents or an infant. That does make it easier. But I am still a busy human who is running a business, who has friendships and a dating life, appointments throughout my week, and just the everyday things of being alive that I need to take care of. And I still need to make a conscious choice to make time for things that are important to me.
Having a flexible schedule or a life like mine does not automatically mean a fun life. I coach a lot of retired women too, who, I swear, are some of the most stressed out people. You'd think, "If I'm retired, if the kids have moved out, if I fully had my time for myself, I'd be having fun." But that's not always the case — you can still fill your day with an endless to-do list and things that don't really matter. I've had plenty of stretches where I filled every hour with work and looked up to realize I hadn't done anything purely for joy in weeks. So including fun has to be intentional, no matter what your life looks like.
The Number One Shift That Has to Happen
You need to believe that yourself and your joy are the number one priority. I know this might sound extreme, but I'm serious. When you have more fun, so does everyone else in your life, because no one wants to be around someone who's burned out, on a sugar crash, didn't sleep well, and is just always on edge.
So if you have kids, bring them into your fun. I take ice skating lessons about once or twice a week, and I know a couple of moms in my adult classes whose kids take hockey or ice skating lessons at the same time. Or if your daughter goes to dance class, they make adult dance classes too — see if you can do something fun at that same time with them. When your kids see you doing something just for the joy of it, not for productivity or to lose weight or to check something off a to-do list, that's a lesson they carry with them.
And even if you don't have kids, you can be a positive influence on your friends. Studies have really, truly proven that we are the average of the five people we hang out with the most. So you can be someone that elevates your friend group by having more fun and enjoying life yourself.
Fun Doesn't Have to Cost a Lot of Time or Money
I think where people run into an obstacle is they think fun has to take a lot of time or money — that it has to look like getting a massage or a fancy pottery class. Those can be part of it, but it can also be small: a 10-minute walk outside just because the air feels amazing, putting on a show you actually want to watch instead of one you're half-watching while you scroll, cooking a meal where you're genuinely experimenting instead of just feeding yourself. All of these count.
That said, you'll probably have an easier time having fun if you set aside a little more time or are willing to spend a little money on it.
How Much Should You Be Spending on Hobbies?
It's pretty subjective. I spend a lot on my hobbies. Every month, I spend $100 to $200 on my pole studio membership, and I take ice skating lessons that run around $100 a month. I go to concerts every month or two, and I travel a lot — that's definitely fun to me too. So I spend a couple hundred dollars and at least a couple hours a week on things that are just fun. I also go to the gym, which I consider fun, though some of what I do there is just because I enjoy it — like stretching or ice skating — not because it's the hardest workout in the world.
And if you're like, "Amber, I cannot give any more of my time, my schedule is packed" — what's the point of life if you can't find five minutes a day, or one hour a week, for fun? If your schedule has zero room for anything that feeds your soul, that's not a schedule problem, that's a values problem. I say that with compassion, because I've been there, and I get that life happens sometimes. But most of the time, you have way more control over your schedule than you believe you do.
So what can you shift? What are you prioritizing that doesn't need to be a priority? What are you saying yes to out of guilt? Those are the places where time hides.
You might need to set aside a little more time or money for fun and pleasure, but I don't see these as costs, I see them as an investment in my health and happiness. Because if I'm not healthy and happy, what's the point of thousands in a savings account or a checked-off to-do list if I'm sick and sad?
This is ultimately what makes people take the leap to work with me and stop binge eating: they realize a coaching program or a new class is an investment, but struggling with their health physically and mentally costs so much more. You don't need a strict meal plan or to try harder, and you don't even need more time — food is already taking up so much of your time right now, between thinking about it, planning what you'll eat next, recovering from a binge, and googling things that don't work. You'll get that time back once you solve it.
What you really need is support and accountability from someone who's been in your shoes and come out the other side. That's what you get inside The Confident Eater Program: weekly coaching calls using the latest techniques to change your brain fast, including hypnosis (I recently spoke at a hypnosis conference and loved it) to reach the part of you that says, "I know what to do, I'm just not doing it." You also get unlimited text support and research-backed lessons on exactly how normal eaters eat.
I have a few spots open right now for a free consultation call, where we'll dig into your history with food and figure out what's keeping you stuck. I'd love to chat, click here to book your call.