Breaking Free from Fear Foods
You’ve probably heard the advice that you shouldn’t keep foods that you’re likely to overeat in the house.
But I’m guessing you probably avoid certain foods regardless of whether someone told you to or not…because many folks who’ve been dieting for a long time tend to develop “fear foods.”
“Fear foods” or “trigger foods” are foods people avoid because they tend to overeat them when such foods are around. This includes avoiding purchasing certain foods to keep in your house as well as avoiding certain restaurants or social situations.
Food avoidance affects people differently, but it can create stress ranging from a low-level anxiety that hangs in the background of your mind to a crushing sense of restriction and guilt.
If you have fear foods, you might find yourself overthinking your decisions in the grocery store or when deciding where to go out. Or you might feel a creeping sense of shame that you can’t control yourself. Or you might feel disappointed in yourself because you can’t fully trust yourself.
You dream about food freedom, and the sense of peace and ease that comes with feeling fully in control of your eating choices, not having to worry about what’s in front of you.
And the good news is, it’s possible to get there. The first step on the path is understanding how and why this relationship to certain foods has developed.
People tend to fear foods for two main reasons: they believe the foods are unhealthy and/or they believe the foods will make them fat. Their fear becomes exacerbated when they experience a loss of control around these foods despite their negative beliefs toward them.
Ironically, the restriction of select foods itself can be a trigger for overeating them.[1]
Which means despite your best intentions, avoiding certain foods may be the reason you have such a hard time controlling your intake of them when they are around.
This is known as the Forbidden Fruit Effect: when you restrict yourself from consuming a particular food or place it off-limits, it can actually increase your desire for it.
Several factors may contribute to the increased cravings when a food is restricted:
Psychological factors: When you label a food as forbidden or restrict it entirely, it can create a sense of deprivation. This perception of scarcity can make the food more desirable and intensify cravings for it. This effect may be partly driven by the psychological reaction to feeling restricted or denied something.[2]
Cognitive factors: Focusing on avoiding a specific food can increase its salience in your thoughts. The more you think about the food you're restricting, the more likely you are to experience cravings for it.[3]
Physiological factors: Certain foods, particularly those high in sugar, fat, or salt, can trigger pleasure centers in the brain. When you restrict these foods, your brain's reward system may become more sensitive to cues associated with them, leading to increased cravings.[4]
The Forbidden Fruit Effect gives us a great deal of information with which to overcome fear foods. If restriction is increasing desire, we must reduce or eliminate the restriction.
This process comes with its own set of fears—most commonly the worry that even more overeating will occur once the food is no longer restricted. This may sound like, “If this is how I act when I’m restricting myself, I’ll go completely off the rails when I allow myself to have this food again.”
The fear of going overboard is valid. I’ve heard individuals lament that when they released their food restrictions, they couldn’t stop eating (although this has never happened with any of my Food Body Self students).
Facing your food fears is not a step that can be skipped if you want to ultimately achieve a healthy relationship with food, but we can take a calculated approach to food fears so as to avoid exacerbating overeating behaviors.
In order to mitigate the fear of uncontrollable compulsive eating, we can borrow a technique from therapy known as exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a process used to treat various anxiety disorders, from phobias to social anxiety to PTSD.
The psychologist gradually “exposes” the individual to the objects or situations they fear, from least fear-inducing to most fear-inducing. Throughout each step of this process, the individual’s associations with bad outcomes lessen and they learn to manage their feelings of anxiety.
When I work with Food Body Self® students, some of the ways in which we increase feelings of safety and confidence include:
Eating a nutritious, filling meal before eating the fear food
Beginning with a controlled amount of the fear food, e.g. getting a cookie from the bakery rather than an entire package of cookies
Eating the fear food in guided mindful eating sessions
Learning emotional regulation skills to prevent use of the fear food to self-soothe
In addition to gradual exposure, which focuses on emotions and behaviors, we work on the cognitions (thoughts) driving the fear as well. I mentioned earlier that people tend to fear foods when they believe the foods are unhealthy and/or they believe the foods will make them fat—so we address where those beliefs come from and whether they’re factually accurate or not.
For example, when it comes to the healthfulness of a food, a food’s health benefits or lack thereof cannot be determined out of context. For greater accuracy, you must understand the needs of the person ingesting the food and where it fits into their diet as a whole. Additionally, while what you eat contributes to overall health, so do the amounts you eat.
See more: 3 Reframes for Black-and-White Food Thinking
Now, I’m not suggesting overcoming your food fears will be easy. But just knowing what the process entails is a step in the right direction. I know it can be a struggle trying to figure all this stuff out alone, and an even greater struggle to execute it on your own, which is why I created the Food Body Self program.
You CAN achieve food freedom, and gain the ability to keep any food in your house, or go to any restaurant or event with confidence, knowing that you’re in control of your food choices. You can eliminate the anxiety, guilt, and stress associated with eating.
You now know that by addressing not just your behaviors, but your emotions and thoughts that influence your behaviors, you can attend to the root causes of your food fears—and you can do so in a thoughtful, deliberate way.
References
Avena, N. M., Murray, S., & Gold, M. S. (2013). Comparing the effects of food restriction and overeating on brain reward systems. Experimental gerontology, 48(10), 1062–1067. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2013.03.006
Soetens B, Braet C, Van Vlierberghe L, Roets A. Resisting temptation: effects of exposure to a forbidden food on eating behaviour. Appetite. 2008 Jul;51(1):202-5. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2008.01.007. Epub 2008 Feb 7. PMID: 18342989.
Davidson, T. L., Jones, S., Roy, M., & Stevenson, R. J. (2019, January 10). The Cognitive Control of Eating and Body Weight: It’s More Than What You “Think.” Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00062
Hill, A. (2007). The psychology of food craving: Symposium on ‘Molecular mechanisms and psychology of food intake’. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 66(2), 277-285. doi:10.1017/S0029665107005502