Hunger Wounds

Part I
On food, shame, sexual insecurity, and the body that remembers.

I don’t have the healthiest relationship with food. Intellectually, I understand that food is medicine. It fuels the body. It sustains energy. It determines longevity.

But understanding something and living it are different negotiations. Food has often been comfort.

When people say, “Enjoy your food,” I feel a quiet contradiction. Yes, food can be delicious. Yes, good food is a gift. But there is a difference between what the body needs and what feels hollow but comforting.

Sometimes the food that truly nourishes you is not the food that excites you. And sometimes the food that excites you is the last thing your body needs. That tension is real.

I struggle with emotional and compulsive eating when stressed. Not always. But predictably. When I’m overwhelmed, I don’t reach for clarity. I reach for something to chew. Boredom? Eat. Social pressure? Eat. Food smells good, but I’m not hungry. Eat. Even healthy food becomes excessive if eaten without hunger.

The hardest moment is this: My wife asks, “What are we eating today?” And if I’ve already drifted off track, that simple question feels like an accusation. Not because she means it that way. But because I know I’ve been negotiating poorly.

There were periods when I found clarity. Fasting changed something in me. At first, it felt like punishment. Then it felt like control. Then it felt like freedom. Skipping breakfast. Drinking water. Waiting until real hunger — not boredom — arrived.

Real hunger is different. It is quiet. It doesn’t panic. It doesn’t demand. Extending that space between meals felt powerful. My energy sharpened. My stomach flattened. My mind felt clearer.

For a while, I could say no — even to the healthiest food — if I wasn’t truly hungry. That felt like maturity. But discipline has seasons. Stress returns. Work intensifies. Ambition creeps back in. Sleep shortens. And when stress rises, the body stores. At least mine does.

The small pad on my stomach grows faster than my willpower. And then the cycle begins again: Work harder. Eat more. Feel shame. Try again.

I suspect this began long before adulthood. As a child, I hated bus rides. Crowded. Fuel-smelling. No air. No control.

I often threw up.

My grandmother would hand me black bread to smell. Bread became grounding. Bread became a distraction. Bread became safety.

When we had little, a dessert was a celebration. A cake meant comfort. Food meant relief. Somewhere in that small boy, food became more than fuel. It became stability. Add to that a dose of teasing. Kindergarten jokes. Schoolyard comments. A strict physical education teacher who confused discipline with humiliation.

I wasn’t overweight. But shame doesn’t need facts. It needs a wound. And in the locker room, that wound echoed. I had absorbed an image of what a “real man” looked like. Lean. Muscular. Athletic. Sexually impressive beyond biology.

No one explicitly taught me this. Movies did. Television did. Porn did. If your early sexual education comes from performance, you will measure yourself against fiction. That leaves marks.

So yes, Food has been comfort. Fasting has been control. Shame has been fuel. Desire has been complicated. And my body has carried all of it.

But here is what I’m learning: The body is not the enemy. It is the historian. It remembers: The bus. The teasing. The hunger. The stress. The ambition. The loneliness. The desire.

If I fight it, it resists. If I listen, it softens. I don’t want to starve myself into worth. I don’t want to binge myself into numbness. I don’t want to measure masculinity by abdominal definition or performance metrics.

I want something simpler. To eat when hungry. To stop when full. To desire without shame. To train because strength feels good. To rest without guilt.
That feels like adulthood.

There is another layer beneath food. Sexuality. If food was comfort, sex became measurement. As a teenager, I didn’t learn about intimacy. I learned about performance. I learned that a man must be: confident, dominant, endless, and impressive.

I learned that desire must be strong. That the body must respond instantly. That masculinity must be visible.

Porn doesn’t teach connection. It teaches spectacle. And if you are young and already unsure of yourself, spectacle becomes standard.

It creates quiet comparisons. Am I enough? Do I look right? Do I last long enough? Do I measure up?

No one asks these questions out loud. But many men carry them. Shame and desire make a complicated pair.

If I feel shame about my body, desire becomes tense. If desire feels tense, performance anxiety grows. If performance anxiety grows, shame grows again. It’s a loop.

And like eating, sometimes desire becomes soothing. Not connection. Not intimacy. Relief. Relief from stress. Relief from inadequacy. Relief from loneliness. That’s harder to admit.

I don’t have this figured out. Some weeks, I eat clean. Some weeks, I negotiate badly. Some seasons, I fast. Some seasons, I comfort myself. Some days I feel confident in my body. Some days, I remember the locker room.

The fog has not disappeared. But I see it now. And seeing it is different from being inside it.

Some hunger is biological. Some hunger is emotional. Some hunger is memory. The bus ride. The teasing. The locker room. The screen. The comparison. The small boy who wanted relief. The young man who wanted to measure up. The adult who wants control.

I am still learning to tell the difference between hunger and wound. Sometimes I eat when I need comfort. Sometimes I fast when I need control. Sometimes I desire when I need reassurance. And sometimes I simply sit with the discomfort.

That is new. The wounds are not gone. But I see them now. And when you can see a wound, you stop feeding it blindly.

***

This is No-Mad Max. I write about the things men carry but rarely say out loud. You can also find me on Substack and Medium.

The negotiation continues…
Hunger Wounds (Part II) – men's inner work