In Defense of Joy (and...Cereal)
On the power of nostalgia, sneaky food rules, and the missing piece in what it means to feel satisfied.
A few years ago, I started something in my Instagram stories that I thought would be light and silly: food brackets, March Madness style. And recently, I brought it back, starting with cereal.
The best part has never been about the outcome, it’s how much people care.
The debates were immediate, passionate, and almost…ferocious? People campaigning in my DMs, declaring lifelong allegiances, and expressing outrage over early eliminations. It’s the kind of energy usually reserved for sports teams or hometown pride…but directed at bowls of cereal.
And honestly, it doesn’t surprise me.
Because cereal, for so many of us, is not just cereal. It’s Saturday mornings in pajamas, the sound of milk hitting a bowl, cartoons humming in the background. It’s sleepovers, late-night snacks, or the quiet comfort of something easy and familiar. It’s a food many of us knew long before we learned to question what we were eating—before we started calculating, negotiating, or trying to get it “right.” Before the protein hysteria, “clean eating” crusaders, and “real food” recipes hit our social media feeds.
Cereal, at least for me, lives in a part of the brain that predates all of that. Which is why watching people light up over it feels like something more than preference. It feels like recognition. Like remembering.
Yet what struck me most wasn’t just how much people cared—it was how quickly the joy got tangled, thorny, and complicated.
Yes, there was excitement and nostalgia and strong opinions—but woven through it were the disclaimers. The justifications and quiet confessions in my DMs about how cereal seems…loaded. People telling me they love it, but don’t really “let” themselves have it. That they’re worried they won’t be able to stop eating it. That they’re concerned it’s not filling enough. That someone once shamed them for “all the sugar.”
Basically, it turns into a whole thing.
This kind of tension—a sort of push and pull between it’s is my favorite and I don’t know if I should be eating it—is so familiar. Because for many of us, our relationship with food didn’t stay simple. At some point (whenever diet culture entered the picture), enjoyment started to feel like something that needed to be managed, explained, or earned. What once felt easy became something we analyze and negotiate with—questioning whether we could make it “better,” whether we should be eating it at all, whether it will be enough, or somehow too much. It’s a shift that changes the experience entirely. When eating is layered with that kind of mental noise, it’s much harder to feel satisfied—not just physically, but in a deeper, more settled way.
And that’s what I kept thinking about as the bracket unfolded. Not just which cereal would win, but what it revealed about how many of us are still trying to find our way back to a relationship with food that actually feels satisfying.
The Science of Satisfaction
There’s a version of this conversation that diet culture has trained us to default to—the one that asks whether something is filling enough, nutritious enough, or balanced enough. Because most of us were never taught how to recognize satisfaction, let alone build meals that truly support it. We were taught to focus on rules, or nutrients, or on getting it “right.”
But satisfaction doesn’t come from getting it right. And when we don’t understand what actually creates it, it’s easy to blame ourselves—or the food—when something doesn’t feel like enough. Or worse, to conclude that our hunger is “too much” (and therefore our body is also too much).
What if the issue isn’t just what you’re eating—but how satisfaction actually works?
I think this is a significant and suspiciously absent part of the conversation around “food noise” in the age of Ozempic…
Inside the full piece, I’m breaking down:
Why foods like cereal can leave us feeling physically full but still mentally unsatisfied—and what’s actually missing in that experience.
What’s happening when eating feels “out of control” (it might not be what you think).
The science of satisfaction, including how restriction—physical or mental—changes your relationship with food.
Real life examples from the past few weeks of how I build a bowl of cereal (or a meal around it) that actually keeps me full, steady, and content.
Finding your own version of “enough,” even if it’s been a long time since you’ve trusted it.