Codependency and Emotional Eating Recovery: Winter Is Where My Patterns Get Loud

Winter always finds me before I’m ready.

Not in a dramatic way. Not with chaos or crisis. It arrives quietly — through slower mornings, heavier eyelids, and an unfamiliar distance between who I want to be and what my body can actually do.

For a long time, I thought this meant I was failing.

I believed healing should look like consistency. Discipline. Momentum. If I was truly recovered, I told myself, winter wouldn’t touch me like this. I wouldn’t feel foggy. I wouldn’t feel less motivated. I wouldn’t crave warmth, sugar, connection, or silence all at once.

But seasonal affective disorder has a way of exposing the stories we tell ourselves about productivity, worth, and control.

It doesn’t shout.It whispers.

And when you’re in long-term recovery — from codependency, emotional eating, people-pleasing, self-abandonment — whispers can be harder to interpret than screams.

When Winter Became a Mirror Instead of an Enemy

There was a season of my life when I tried to outpace winter.

I filled my schedule. I overcommitted. I forced routines that worked beautifully in spring and summer but felt punishing in January. I told myself I was being “strong.”

What I was really doing was refusing to listen.

My body was asking for slower rhythms. My nervous system was craving predictability and warmth. My emotional world was surfacing old grief, unmet needs, and relational tension that I had learned to bury under busyness.

Instead of responding with compassion, I responded with pressure.

And pressure always drove me back to the same place: food.

Not because I was hungry.But because I was tired of holding myself together.

Sugar was my shortcut to relief. Overeating was my quiet rebellion against the impossible standards I placed on myself. Codependency was the emotional equivalent of sugar — overgiving, overexplaining, overstaying conversations that drained me, all in the name of connection.

Winter didn’t create these patterns.It removed the distractions that kept them hidden.

Seasonal Affective Disorder Is Not Just About Light

We talk about seasonal affective disorder like it’s a lighting problem.

Get more sunlight. Buy a lamp. Take vitamin D.

Those things matter. But they don’t tell the full story.

Seasonal affective disorder is also about rhythm.

In winter, the world slows down. Days shorten. Social activity decreases. Nature retreats. Your body senses this shift on a biological level.

But many women in recovery were never taught to slow down safely.

If your nervous system learned that rest equals danger, abandonment, or disapproval, winter feels threatening. Slowness feels like losing ground. Quiet feels like isolation. Stillness feels like being exposed.

So you fight the season instead of flowing with it.

I did that for years.

I treated winter like an obstacle to overcome rather than a language my body was trying to speak.

Codependency Meets Winter

Codependency thrives on activity.

It thrives on being needed, being available, being emotionally present even when you’re depleted. It thrives on the belief that your worth is measured by how much you give.

Winter disrupts that identity.

When your energy drops, you can’t perform the same way. When your motivation fades, you can’t maintain the same pace. When your emotional capacity shrinks, you can’t hold everyone else’s feelings without consequence.

For someone shaped by codependency, this feels like failure.

I remember evenings when I felt physically exhausted but emotionally obligated. Messages waiting. People needing reassurance. Conversations I didn’t have the capacity for but felt guilty declining.

I would respond anyway.

And afterward, I’d feel empty.

That emptiness often led me to the kitchen — not because I wanted food, but because I wanted something to fill the emotional gap I had created by ignoring my limits.

Winter made that cycle impossible to ignore.

Emotional Eating as Winter Survival

Emotional eating gets misunderstood.

It’s often framed as lack of control or addiction to sugar. But in winter, emotional eating is often a form of warmth-seeking.

Your body wants heat. Comfort. Softness. Familiarity.

Sugar and carbohydrates provide quick serotonin boosts. Warm desserts mimic the sensation of being held. Late-night snacks create companionship when the house feels too quiet.

I used to judge myself harshly for these cravings, especially as a trucker's wife managing a long-distance marriage.

But when I started listening more closely, I realized something radical:

My body wasn’t trying to sabotage me.It was trying to soothe me.

The problem wasn’t emotional eating.The problem was that food had become my only safe source of comfort.

Winter revealed that truth without mercy.

The Grief of Slowing Down

There’s grief in slowing down.

We don’t talk about it enough.

When winter forced me to move slower, I felt like I was losing access to the version of myself I admired — the productive one, the energetic one, the always-on one-the overfuncitioning people-pleaser.

I mourned that identity.

But underneath the grief was something deeper: fear.

If I wasn’t productive, who was I?If I wasn’t available, would people still love me?If I wasn’t constantly improving, was I still worthy?

Winter doesn’t answer those questions directly.It simply refuses to cooperate with your illusions.

And that’s what made it such a powerful teacher in my recovery.

Winter as a Nervous System Classroom

Long-term recovery is not about perfection.It’s about regulation.

Winter became my classroom for nervous system awareness.

I started noticing how my body reacted to darkness. How my appetite changed after emotionally draining conversations. How my energy dipped when I forced myself into social obligations I didn’t actually want.

Instead of pushing through, I began experimenting with gentleness.

Not discipline.Not restriction.Gentleness.

I allowed myself to end evenings earlier.To choose fewer commitments.To replace frantic scrolling with warm tea and quiet rituals.To eat without shame but also without disappearance.

These weren’t dramatic changes.They were subtle shifts in loyalty.

For the first time, I was choosing my nervous system over my conditioning.

The Quiet Violence of “Doing Better”

Here’s the part no one warns you about in recovery:

You can be doing better and still be exhausted.

I wasn’t bingeing anymore.I wasn’t losing control the way I used to.I had tools. Awareness.

Language.

And yet winter still drained me.

That contradiction felt humiliating at first.

I thought healing should make me immune to seasonal shifts. But healing doesn’t erase biology. It teaches you how to respond to it without self-betrayal.

Winter taught me that recovery isn’t about becoming unaffected.

It’s about becoming responsive.

Learning to Live With Winter Instead of Against It

The turning point came when I stopped asking,“How do I get through winter and Seasonal Affective Disorder?”and started asking,“How do I live with winter and Seasonal Affective Disorder?”

That question changed everything.

Instead of forcing productivity, I redesigned my evenings.Instead of eliminating snacks, I created cozy rituals that made overeating unnecessary.Instead of chasing connection, I chose intimacy with myself.

Winter stopped feeling like punishment.

It started feeling like permission.

Permission to be slower.Permission to be quieter.Permission to be less impressive and more honest.

And in that honesty, something unexpected happened:

My cravings softened.My need to overgive weakened.My relationship with food became less urgent and more intentional.

Not because I tried harder.

But because I stopped fighting the season.

Winter Doesn’t Make You Weak — It Makes You Honest

If winter is exposing your patterns, it doesn’t mean you’re regressing.

It means you’re awake.

Seasonal affective disorder isn’t proof that your recovery is failing. It’s proof that your nervous system is sensitive to rhythm, light, and emotional load.

And sensitivity is not a flaw.It’s information.

Winter simply removes the noise so you can hear that information clearly.

I no longer see winter as a season of less.

It’s a season of truth.

Truth about my energy.Truth about my limits.Truth about how often I used food and overgiving to avoid feeling alone with myself.

And in that truth, I found something far more sustainable than control.

I found companionship with my own body.

Reflection: If Winter Could Speak

If winter could speak, I think it would say:

You don’t need to rush.You don’t need to prove.You don’t need to perform healing.

You just need to stay.

Stay with your hunger.Stay with your fatigue.Stay with your longing for warmth.

Because staying is the opposite of self-abandonment.

And winter, in its quiet way, taught me how to stay.

---

ARE YOU LOOKING TO DIVE DEEPER INTO SELF-CARE?

I Can Help in Developing A Plan For Self Care

 Do you want help developing a self-care plan that works for your own busy schedule? Do you want accountability in implementing a self-care plan? If you or someone you love is struggling to maintain optimal mental and emotional health, consider reaching out to Spiced Life Conversation Art Wellness Studio and Botanica. We are a Metro Atlanta, Conyers Georgia area. We are a coaching and counseling practice with empathetic, skilled counselors and recovery coaches who can help you set goals, develop a self-care routine, and move forward to build a more fulfilling life. Our team would be happy to work with you either just for a couple of sessions to develop and implement a Self-care plan or longer term to work toward overall better mental health within our membership site or other programs.

About The Author:  Dr. Nikki LeToya White MSEd-TL, Ph.D. RHN is the founder, director, and full-time board-certified trauma-informed nutritionist, folk herbalist, and wellness consultant at Spiced Life Conversation Art Wellness Studio and Botanica. She created Spiced Life Conversation, LLC Art Wellness Studio, and Botanica to provide the Metro Atlanta area with counseling and coaching services where clients are carefully matched with the right program for healing abandonment and childhood emotional neglect trauma that cause codependency, emotional eating, financial stress, and imposter syndrome as it relates to the fear of success and being abandon. We help you begin your emotional healing journey with ease. Recently, we have expanded to include an online membership site so we now provide support to people living all over the world. All of our recovery coaches provide at least one evidence-based treatment to assist in your recovery. Dr. White is a big proponent of self-care and helping people live a fulfilling life! She has been in full remission with both codependency and emotional binge eating disorder since 2016. In living a life in recovery from sugar addiction. I love my low-sugar balanced lifestyle.

Best Regards

 Dr. Nikki LeToya White