My Recipe for Life
Understanding · Balance · Coping · Compassion · Support
Everyone's relationship with food is shaped by different experiences. This interactive activity helps you explore the emotions, habits, pressures and needs that may influence eating.
You can choose ingredients for your personal recipe, reflect on what matters to you and create a supportive reminder to take away. There are no food rules, calorie targets or requirements to change what you eat.
Understanding disordered eating and emotional eating
Disordered eating describes patterns of eating-related thoughts or behaviours that may cause distress or interfere with everyday life. These can include rigid food rules, restriction, guilt, anxiety around eating, or feeling disconnected from hunger and fullness.
Emotional eating means eating in response to feelings or emotional needs. This can be a normal part of human experience and is not automatically a problem. Food can provide comfort, connection, pleasure and familiarity.
Difficulties may arise when eating becomes a person's only way of coping, when food is followed by intense shame, or when attempts to compensate create cycles of restriction and distress.
Stress, sensory experiences, trauma, neurodivergence, exhaustion, food insecurity and past experiences can all influence a person's relationship with eating.
The aim of this activity is not to remove comfort from food. It is to build understanding, reduce shame and explore additional ways of supporting yourself.
Step 1 — Choose Your Ingredients
Select the ingredients you would like to add to your personal recovery bowl. Choose one, several or all five.
0 of 5 ingredients added
Step 2 — Make It Your Own
Each ingredient can mean something different to different people. Use these questions to explore what feels helpful to you. You can leave any question blank.
Step 3 — My Personal Recipe
You can add your own ingredients too. There is no perfect recipe and nothing has to be completed in a particular order.
My Recovery Recipe
My Recipe for Life — Disordered Eating & Emotional Eating
My chosen ingredients
Understanding
Balance
Coping
Compassion
Support
My extra ingredients
My next gentle step
My reminder
This is a personal reflection activity, not a diagnosis or treatment plan.
Recovery and professional support
Emotional eating does not automatically indicate an eating disorder. However, persistent distress around eating, rigid food rules, recurrent loss of control, restriction, purging or compulsive compensation can be signs that additional support is needed.
A GP, appropriately qualified therapist, registered dietitian or specialist eating-disorder service can help assess individual needs.
Recovery does not require avoiding food for comfort, earning food through exercise or making up for eating by skipping meals. Restrictive rules can intensify distress and make eating patterns more difficult.
If eating difficulties are affecting your physical health, emotional wellbeing or daily functioning, seeking support is a worthwhile step. Seek urgent medical advice if you experience fainting, severe weakness, dehydration or other concerning physical symptoms.
You deserve a relationship with food that allows room for nourishment, pleasure, flexibility and compassion.
Your reflections are saved locally in this browser on this device where storage is available. They are not sent to Space to Breathe Therapy by this activity. Browser data can be cleared, so download a copy if you wish to keep it. Avoid entering sensitive personal information on shared devices.
