Self-compassion is approaching one's own difficult situations with kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity. Although defined without references to behaviours, self-compassion has been linked to many positive health behaviours. However, when people try to enact self-compassion, it is unclear if this is the definition they use. It is also unknown whether or how their personal interpretations of self-compassion or self-care affect their behaviours. In Study 1, I surveyed 219 university students online, asking them to first reflect on a difficult experience and report their state self-compassion, then to indicate eating behaviours they considered as self-compassionate and self-caring from a list of both adaptive and maladaptive behaviours. The eating behaviours participants labeled as self-compassionate and self-caring were mostly adaptive. Participants who were higher in state self-compassion also associated more adaptive behaviours with self-compassion and self-care. In Study 2, after inducing state self-compassion in half of 219 participants, I observed their eating behaviours in a bogus taste test, in which they were provided with both healthy and unhealthy foods to freely eat for 10 minutes. I found that participants interpreted self-compassion as eating more healthy foods than unhealthy foods. The results also showed that participants' own self-compassion interpretations and food preferences, but not their state self-compassion, predicted their eating behaviours in this situation. Altogether, the results suggest four main conclusions about the relationship between self-compassion and eating: (1) Self-compassionate feelings correlate with adaptive eating and interpretations; (2) They might instill motivations and subsequent actions to be self-caring rather than self-compassionate; (3) These feelings lead to eating more of what one likes (which tends to be healthy and adaptive choices); and (4) A person's state self-compassion is highly insufficient to predict their actions, without also taking into account their behavioural interpretations of self-compassion and self-care.