This didn't start with food...It started in childhood
- Sonia McIndoe
- Apr 2
- 6 min read
How our childhood experiences shape food behaviours - and our weight.
You don’t end up in cycles with food by accident.
The bingeing, the “starting again Monday,” the feeling of being in control… and then completely out of it.
Those patterns are shaped much earlier than most people realise. For many people, their relationship with food - and weight - begins in childhood, long before dieting ever enters the picture.
And more often than not, it didn’t start with food at all. It started with what food meant ...
My childhood
I’m the eldest of four, a child of the 70s. I grew up in a home where being a “good girl” mattered, but there was also tension. Yelling, unpredictability, and learning to tread carefully.
At social events, the adults drank, and the kids fended for themselves around the food.
It felt like freedom, but it also felt like survival. You grabbed what you could before it was gone.
Wired for scarcity
Even though I never went without, something in me was wired for scarcity early on. At home, food came with rules. You had to finish everything on your plate, you couldn’t leave the table until it was gone, and if you did it well, you were rewarded.
So I learned to eat fast, finish first, and get more.
It didn’t feel wrong. It felt necessary.
And without realising it, I was learning something that would follow me into adulthood: There might not be enough, I can’t trust my body, and being “good” means controlling myself.
Die-with a T…
Dieting came next. Not as a choice, just as something women did.
I went to Weight Watchers at age 11.
The message was everywhere: eat less, move more, fat is the enemy. I tried everything - shakes, detoxes, meal plans, replacement diets. Each one worked for a while, until it didn’t.
And every time it stopped working, I blamed myself. I told myself I lacked discipline, needed more willpower, and just had to try harder.
"You were either being good and on a diet, or being bad and off one."
There was no middle ground, no sustainability, and no self-trust. Just rules, restriction, and the constant feeling of getting it wrong.
In my late teens and early twenties, I went all in on trying to fix myself. The gym, strict plans, more control. I hated most of it, but I forced myself to do it anyway. I cycled through programs, bought full weeks of food I couldn’t stick to, and kept starting over.
Wedding dreams and diet extremes
Before my wedding, I lost 30 kilos through extreme dieting and Duromine. I barely slept, lived on salad and oranges, and pushed my body hard.
By the time I came back from our honeymoon, I had already gained weight again. And I was heading straight back to where I started.
Diet plans didn't do it
There was one moment I’ll never forget. I was at Weight Watchers (again) and asked why I could eat and still feel like I needed more? Why the urge didn’t go away? Why it felt so loud?
(that was what I now understand as "head hunger").
I was told I needed psychiatric help… and not to come back.
And I remember thinking something must be seriously wrong with me.
But now I can see it clearly. There was never anything wrong with me. There was something missing in the approach.
No one was talking about the mind, the nervous system, or the emotional drivers behind our behaviours with food. They were handing out diet plans to people who needed something much deeper.
Alcohol
Alcohol became my way of coping. It numbed everything and made it easier not to feel.
I immersed myself in alcohol so deeply that I became a winemaker, but behind the scenes everything was unravelling.
My self-critic was loud, my behaviours were escalating, and I spiralled into depression.
After years of trying to manage it, I went to rehab. Three months later, I was sober. That was 22 years ago. I changed everything - my career, my friendships, and my lifestyle. And it’s one of the things I’m most grateful for.
But when alcohol left, food stepped in.
Pregnancy and being a Mum
Pregnancy became another chapter, and each time I gained significant weight. After my first, I lost it all. But by my third and fourth, I was already starting heavier and ended up heavier again.
Life felt foggy, with a constant mental load and very little capacity. There were moments of joy, but underneath, there was shame, exhaustion, and emotional weight.
Food - my great escape
Food became my comfort, relief, and escape.
And the cycle continued - being good and on a diet, or being bad and off it. Exercise stayed too, even though I didn’t enjoy it. Because I believed I had to, and because the message was always the same: eat less, move more, and try harder.
For years, I believed that the answer was more discipline, more control, and more willpower. But none of it worked. Because none of this was actually about food. It was about patterns.
Wiring shaped from early experiences, scarcity, reward and restriction, and learning to override my body instead of listening to it.
I had a nervous system that didn’t feel safe, a mind that was trying to protect me, and behaviours that made complete sense when you understood where they came from.
Real change
The bingeing, the restricting, and the all-or-nothing cycles weren’t failures. They were adaptations.
And once I began to understand that, everything started to change. Not overnight, but in a way that finally felt possible.
If you’ve ever felt like you can’t trust yourself around food, like you’ve tried everything and still end up back in the same patterns, or like you’re the problem…You’re not.
You’ve just never been shown another way.
Because real change doesn’t come from more rules.
It comes from understanding what’s actually driving your behaviour and learning how to work with yourself, instead of against yourself.
...That’s the work I do with people now.
In my next blog, I’ll walk you through what that shift actually looked like - and where to start.
⸻
You don’t have to walk this journey alone.
If you’re tired of battling food noise, feeling on edge about regain, or doubting your ability to trust yourself long-term, this is exactly the work I support people with.
You’re very welcome to reach out and have a conversation to see whether the way I work might be a good fit for you and where you’re at right now. No pressure, no fixing - just a supportive space to explore what you need.
Sometimes the first step isn’t changing anything… It’s being supported while you learn to feel safe again.
It would be a privilege to hold space for you to learn how to quiet your inner critic and overcome food noise and emotional eating once and for all.
Book a free 15 minute chat with me and let's get started.
Join me for a free webinar!
So, I’ll leave you with a warm invitation to my 8 Fundamentals FREE webinar where I share my daily to-do list and how I actually manage my bariatric journey day by day. It’s in an ‘hour of power’ where I squeeze a lot of valuable information for you into the 60 minutes on Zoom - totally for free. Ready for more? Let's do the groundwork together in small group coaching via Zoom, so you can join from anywhere in New Zealand.
About Sonia McIndoe
Hi! I'm Sonia, a NZ Bariatric Life Coach, who has had weight loss surgery and maintained a 70kg weight loss for over a decade.I walk the walk and have dealt with my own regain by continuing to use and hone my own fundamentals and strategies, which I share with you. Like you, I struggled with my weight...
I actually struggled with my weight my entire life. At 5 years of age my ballet teacher told me “I danced like a baby elephant”. I yo-yo dieted my way to a body I loathed and had given up on. Food was my friend - but it was a love/hate relationship. In many ways it saved me, but it was also slowly killing me.
I wasn’t convinced even Weight Loss Surgery would work for me … why would it when nothing else had!
More than 10 years post Weight Loss Surgery later and still several dress sizes smaller, I am the happiest I have ever been.
You can have the success you dream of too. I am so passionate about sharing how, that I work full time as a Bariatric Coach.
I credit my Weight Loss Surgery with my 70kg weight loss, but keeping it off, I credit to doing the mind work. It’s this mind work that I teach in my Mind Empowerment coaching programmes.
