You may have seen the recent Parents article, "The Rise of the Revenge Meal: Why Parents Are Sneaking Off to Secretly Snack", and hoo boy… I felt seen. And a little called out.
I didn’t even know it had a name.
But apparently, I’ve been a card-carrying member of the Revenge Eating Club — that elite group of parents quietly snacking on Chick-fil-A in the car as a survival tactic. For the ten minutes of quiet. Of control. Of something for me.
How Did We Get Here?
Working from home offers a rare luxury: having a little more time to take breakfast with my family in the morning. But here’s what they don’t tell you about feeding kids — they never stop eating.
There’s breakfast.
Second breakfast.
First snack.
Elevensies.
Lunch.
Second snack.
Third snack.
Dinner.
Dessert snack.
And the watermelon they begged for… then forgot about.
Raising a tiny, sugar-dusted hobbit is exhausting.
And as the one planning, prepping, serving, and cleaning up all those meals, I started nibbling just to keep up. First it was about efficiency. Then it became habit. Then it spiraled into something much more complicated.
As Parents explains:
“Revenge meals offer a sense of control. For many parents, they represent one of the few moments in a day not dictated by their children’s routines, needs, or preferences.”
Yep. That part. Felt.
Dr. Charles Sweet, a psychiatrist quoted in the article, calls it reactive self-care — a subconscious attempt to reclaim control or pleasure through food, even if it’s fast, furtive, and eaten with the windows cracked and Beyoncé blasting.
I thought I was just being practical.
Getting it in.
Taking a moment.
Doing what moms do.
But the truth?
It wasn’t serving me — not nutritionally, and definitely not emotionally.
The Generational Weight of It All
This didn’t start with motherhood. I’ve been circling food guilt for decades.
In college, I’d skip meals to save money — then overeat when food became available. Sometimes I felt in control; mostly, I felt ashamed.
Even when I had supportive people around me, the patterns stuck. I snacked my way through life and called it sustenance.
Then I became a parent and told myself I was “doing better.”
I made the meals.
I chopped the fruit.
I packed the snacks.
But I wasn’t eating intentionally.
I wasn’t sitting down.
I wasn’t nourishing me.
I once heard that humans have 50,000 thoughts a day — and 40,000 of them are about food.
Honestly? I believe it.
That stat lives rent-free in my brain.
When I heard it, I thought: “Whew, not just me.”
Then: “Damn. No wonder we can’t fix climate change or childcare — we’re all just thinking about food.”
When “Self-Care” Is Actually Self-Neglect
What I mistook for self-care — finishing the bag of Trader Joe’s snacks at 3 p.m., scarfing scraps in the dark, skipping lunch then binging on kid leftovers — was actually self-neglect.
Therapist Alyson Curtis puts it plainly:
“The body doesn’t recognize if a famine is self-induced or not. It just knows when it’s getting less food than normal, and it freaks out.”
Bingeing after a day of restriction isn’t indulgence.
It’s survival mode.
It mirrors the same cycles seen in disordered eating: ignore your body, push through, then respond when it screams.
I wasn’t listening to my hunger cues.
I was letting everyone else’s needs run my schedule — and “treating myself” with scraps.
And I definitely wasn’t modeling the kind of relationship with food I want for my child.
The cycle I swore I’d break?
I was still in it.
Rewriting the Script: My “Food Hero” Era
So, I stopped.
Not overnight. Not perfectly. But I started noticing.
I made some changes — small, doable ones that helped me feel more human:
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I started making snacks for me. If I’m slicing apples and cheese for a toddler charcuterie board, I deserve a real plate too. With a napkin. Like an adult.
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I brought lunch back. I used to tell myself sitting down to eat was a luxury I didn’t have time for. Turns out, it’s not a luxury — it’s fuel. It’s maintenance. It’s medicine.
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I quit eating in the car. Or in the dark. Or hunched over like Gollum in the pantry. If I wouldn’t serve it like that to a guest, why was I feeding it to myself that way?
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I drank water. Often it wasn’t hunger — it was stress, thirst, or a cue to take a damn break.
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I moved. Just a short walk or a kitchen dance party — anything to remind my body it’s not just a delivery system for snacks.
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I wrote things down. Journaling helped me offload the mental clutter so food didn’t have to do all the emotional heavy lifting.
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I meditated. Not perfectly, not daily, but enough to notice what I was actually feeling instead of eating through it.
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And most importantly: I gave myself grace. I wasn’t failing. I was adapting. I was coping. I was learning how to choose care over chaos.
So… What About You?
You’re not alone. And to be clear: Jillian Douglas sitting in her car savoring a Diet Coke with the windows down is not the problem. Her quote in Parents actually hit me hard:
“There is something so basic but healing about sitting in the parking lot, putting the windows down on a nice day, turning on some Beyoncé, savoring a fountain Diet Coke, and slowly eating my meal. No sticky hands, fights, spills, or asking for ‘just a bite.’”
YES. That moment? Valid.
But if over time, that’s the only way we get to eat in peace?
If we always have to escape to our cars just to feed ourselves?
That’s not healing.
That’s a warning light.
You deserve to eat in a healthy environment.
Without hiding.
Without shame.
Without sacrifice.
And that starts by getting to the root — not just the routine.
Drop your story or your meal strategy in the comments below.
What’s helped you break the cycle?
What’s your “food hero” moment?
And if you haven’t read the article that inspired this spiral, you can find it here. It’s worth the read.
Let’s rewrite this narrative — one meal at a time.