Celebrating Equals Food

You can’t make everyone happy. You’re not ice-cream!

Celebrating Equals Food. (And usually cake and champagne.)

It was Marcus’s birthday this week. Which meant I had to make a cake, right. And then I had to eat the cake, obviously. (Thankfully not all by myself!) I love celebrating a birthday with a cake. I genuinely do not want to take that away.

On the same day, it also happened to be my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday. Exact same date as Marcus’s. Can you believe it!  While talking about it, Linley and I laughed about something we rarely question: Celebrating almost automatically means food. Cake. Drinks. Something special to eat.

Birthdays need cake. (My belief.) Achievements need a meal out. (And a drink to cheers!) Hard weeks deserve treats. Good news calls for another “Cheers!”. None of this is wrong. In fact, it is deeply human.

Food has always been part of celebration because food is survival, connection, safety, and abundance. Historically, having extra food meant you were doing well. Sharing it meant community. Sitting together meant belonging. Long before supermarkets and packaged snacks, food took effort. So when there was enough to share, that itself was worth celebrating.

Across most cultures, celebration and food are inseparable. Weddings, funerals, harvests, religious festivals, births, coming of age rituals. All marked with shared meals. Even in cultures where fasting is practiced, the breaking of the fast is often the most celebratory moment.

There are very few cultures that celebrate without food entirely. Some traditions focus more on ritual, music, prayer, dance, storytelling, or silence, but food almost always appears somewhere in the process. It is one of our oldest languages of care.

So this is not a post about stopping cake. Or changing birthdays. Or moralising or demoralising food.

What I find interesting is not that we celebrate with food, but how many other beliefs quietly sit underneath our eating without us noticing.

If I have had a stressful week, I am allowed to reward myself with food over the weekend.
If I am stressed right now, a packet of chips will help.
If I feel flat or sad, ice cream will make it better.
If I have been eating “good”, I deserve a treat. If I have been eating “bad”…. well, then I might as well keep eating.

None of these thoughts are strange. Most of us learned them early, often lovingly, often unconsciously. Food as comfort. Food as reward. Food as relief. Food as celebration. Food as coping.

The problem is not the food. (Although food has changed quite a bit in the last 50 years!) The problem is that we often live on autopilot, never pausing to notice the story we are telling ourselves when we reach for it.

While exploring my own Sugar Story, I started noticing how I spoke to myself around food. What I believed food was doing for me. What it was meant to fix. What it symbolised. Once I became aware of that, things became a bit easier. Not because I suddenly ate perfectly, but because I understood myself better.

I am not saying I will not eat the cake. I will. But now I know why I want the cake. And sometimes, once that “why” is named, I realise I am actually wanting rest, connection, reassurance, or celebration in a different form.

That curiosity has opened space to ask gentler questions. Are there other ways to celebrate as well? Music. A walk. A moment of gratitude. A day off. Laughter. Being seen. Being acknowledged.

None of these replace food. They just expand the picture.

My sister and I have been exploring this together and it led us to create a course called Rewrite Your Sugar Story, which we will be launching soon. It is light hearted, kind, and a little playful. There are no diets. No rules. No food shaming. It is simply about slowing down and getting to know yourself and your relationship with food a bit better.

Because awareness changes things. And understanding yourself is often far more powerful than willpower.(And gentler.)

Celebration can still mean cake. It can also mean choice. And choice begins with noticing the story you are telling yourself and living inside.

That, for me, has been the most interesting, and helpful part of all.

Rewrite your sugar story! Follow the link to find our course on Udemy.