"But I Deserve a Treat" ~ What's Really Behind that Friday Feeling
“But I deserve a treat!” If this is a too familiar thought, you’re not alone. A pattern of powering through demanding days whilst simultaneously trying to ‘eat well’ - and then, the moment you take a breath, completely giving way to all the things you were trying to avoid, is not uncommon.
Many of us relate to that Friday evening feeling when the wine or takeaway or chocolate or perhaps all of the above and more come out along with the thought that “I've earned this. I deserve a treat.”
For some, it’s not only a Friday evening thing, but a familiar pattern after hard days at work or the churn of dealing with other stressors. And it is often accompanied by a certain weariness and a sense that these small pleasures are among the few you get, and perhaps that depriving yourself of them would feel miserable and unfair.
If this sounds like you, I hope this blog offers you a new perspective on your experiences and a helpful way to explore and navigate your thoughts, feelings and actions (which isn’t about exercising willpower).
The feeling is real - here's what's behind it
Let’s start at the end with the Friday itself, the time by when you feel that a treat is owed to you, and I’ll explain a little about the human reward system.
Whenever you complete something, whether that’s finishing a task, getting through a hard moment or ticking something off your to do list, then your brain is designed to give you a small internal reward in the form of a flicker of satisfaction, pride or pleasure. This is part of our reward system which is driven largely by dopamine and it's what makes accomplishing something actually feel good (rather than neutral).
However, that system doesn't work as well under sustained stress. By sustained stress, I don't even mean crisis - I mean the ordinary, low-grade, always-on load of a full life (the mental to-do list, holding-it-together at work, being available to everyone - this is the kind of background pressure you stop noticing precisely because it never really lets up).
Under this kind of load, the reward system can become blunted which means that high stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, dampen the dopamine response. The uplifting, satisfying feeling that should arrive at the end of a busy week can instead arrive muted or it barely arrives at all.
In this scenario, you’ve been busy doing the work but you don't collect the reward for it in terms of ‘feel good feelings’. And what you feel when you finish isn't so much satisfaction as it is a sense of relief or the brief easing of a pressure. If you stack up enough of those kinds of weeks - the kind which feel like "I got through it" without a "and that felt good" - then you are likely running on a ‘pleasure debt’.
If this all resonates with you so far, your system may be operating on a real deficit - and it’s no surprise if you find yourself craving a reward or a “treat”.
HOW FOOD FEATURES IN THIS
Whilst there are many ways we might stop and reward ourselves, food can feel like the most obvious, easy thing to reach for - particularly as it works fairly quickly and reliably. But if stress has dulled the reward system, why does food still do the trick? It's not that food is uniquely powerful - it's that stress lowers the background hum of dopamine, so the small satisfactions of an ordinary day stop landing, while the dopamine rise from eating, particularly rich, palatable food, stays comparatively strong.
What’s more, if your week hasn't only been depleting but also under-fuelled (this is likely when you’ve been trying too hard at "being good", eating carefully, holding back or following food rules), then you arrive at Friday not only short on pleasure, but short on food.
Restrictive eating is one of the most well-established drivers of overeating there is. The body responds to being under-fed by ramping up the drive to eat, and it does so most forcefully when it's already depleted, under-slept and under strain. Being physically under-fed is also thought to heighten the dopamine hit food delivers when you finally eat - so the eventual reach can feel even more intense. So under-fuelling doesn't just make you hungrier, it makes food more potent.
So if the Friday reach feels particularly urgent and so much bigger than having a simple treat, then it could be that two forces are pulling you in the same direction ie. a reward system running a deficit, and a body pushing hard to be fed. None of this is about greed or weakness - it's about two pretty powerful pressures meeting at the end of a depleting week.
THE ROLE OF A CONTROLLING MINDSET AROUND TREATS
And there’s a further angle to be considered in this. Casting food as a reward to be earned sets up a kind of mental ledger, and this kind of unhelpful framing of food can really contribute to keeping you stuck in unhelpful patterns.
Whether or not you actually physically restrict to the point of under-fuelling, if your mind is constantly sorting food into "good" and "bad" - this one's allowed, that one has to be earned - then even the concept of having a "treat" becomes loaded.
When a food or food group is saved up, held back, or allowed only on special occasions, it tends to gather more psychological charge rather than lose it. The mental restriction makes it feel more special, exciting and harder to be measured around - which is clearly the opposite of what we're hoping for. There can even be a "last supper" quality to it: if this treat is a one-off before I'm "good" again, I'd better make the most of it now. So when you do give yourself the ‘treat’, it can be eaten in a rush of urgency rather than genuine enjoyment and the charge that restriction created makes it both more likely that you’ll eat more than you intended and that guilt and shame will follow.
This can send people right back into a cycle of renewed resolve to be "good" again next week, which is exhausting in its own right.
MOVING FORWARDS
So what can you do differently?
Ease the background stress and rest more where you can. Perhaps the most direct thing you can do to support yourself is reducing the load that's dampening your reward system in the first place. This might mean reaching out for help with tasks where you can, letting your nervous system settle by resisting the urge to fill every gap in your schedule, and protecting small pockets of rest and calm.
Build in more rewards that aren't food. It may help to actively top up the pleasure your system has been missing by making space for light, joyful movement, time outside, connection with people you enjoy, and other small activities and pursuits that genuinely give you a little lift. Doing so can raise dopamine naturally and the point is to engage in simple pleasures day to day, rather than banking everything for a weekend. (I've written more fully about supporting your dopamine and serotonin, and why non-food rewards matter so much, in this blog on emotional eating and brain chemistry.)
Don't compound the depletion with restriction. Eat enough, regularly, across the week. This in itself can be huge shift for many of my clients - so do seek support if you need it.
Let treats be ordinary. This may feel counterintuitive and perhaps scary, but it's a really freeing shift if you can work through it slowly, and with support if needed. When a food is genuinely permissible, it gradually loses its charge. This is a process called habituation where the more regularly and calmly you allow a food, the less power it holds over you and the easier it becomes to eat a normal amount and move on.
Watch the language you use with yourself. "Good," "bad," "earned," "naughty," "allowed" - these words keep the ledger running. Softening them, even a little, takes some of the moral weight off eating and some of the pressure off the treat.
These strategies may sound simple but they are powerful and can take time to implement. It’s not easy to change old patterns so give yourself grace and compassion, and seek support where you need it.
None of this means giving up the idea of a Friday treat completely. It just means your treat no longer has to carry the weight of everything you didn’t receive during the week. When you're no longer arriving at Friday evening on empty - under-rested, under-rewarded and under-fed - a treat can go back to being a genuine pleasure and freely enjoyed, rather than feeling like a debt you're trying to settle.
Please note, experiencing occasional flatness after a long, hard week is not uncommon. But if the loss of pleasure feels persistent and pervasive, for example, if things that used to bring enjoyment have stopped doing so for weeks on end, that can point to something more than everyday depletion. If you find yourself struggling with low mood or depression, this is worth mentioning to your GP. Help is available and you don’t need to push through alone.
Take a nourishing step forward today
If this resonated with you, you don't have to navigate this alone. I offer nutritional therapy and behaviour change support for binge eating disorder, emotional eating, disordered eating and yo-yo dieting patterns, and I'd love to help you find your way back to more ease and trust with food.
Explore my support options or book a confidential, no-obligation enquiry call to see if working together feels right.
