My Favorite Thing About Valentine's Day Was the Day After

When I was in college, my favorite thing about Valentine’s Day was the day after. 

My roommate and I would go to multiple stores and scoop up all the marked-down bags of conversation hearts. 

For days, we’d eat handful after handful of those chalky, pastel hearts until there were no more to be found anywhere in town.

Fat-Free Food Rule
I ate the candy with gusto not only because I enjoyed its taste (unsurprisingly, my favorite childhood candy was Necco Wafers) but also because it was fat-free. 

This was the fat-free era and like many others who were also following this latest diet trend, I had a food rule that my diet should contain as little fat as possible. 

Practically everything I ate was low-fat or fat-free from yogurt, cream cheese and ice cream to salad dressing, rice cakes and cookies (hello, Snackwell's!).

Since the conversation hearts contained zero fat, I was able to enjoy them without my internal Food Police berating me and making me feel guilty like it did when I consumed so-called "bad" foods.

Scarcity Mindset
Looking back at my love affair with conversation hearts, I can now see that another factor was at play: scarcity. 

Because the Valentine’s Day candy was only available for a few weeks a year, it triggered a scarcity mindset. (Unlike today, you couldn’t buy conversation hearts year-round online—internet shopping wasn’t even a thing yet.)

When something we need or desire is scarce or under the threat of scarcity, it’s a natural human response to want to get as much of it as possible as fast as possible before it’s gone. 

We’re simply trying to ensure our needs are met. Doing so feels essential to our safety and survival, even with something as unessential as conversation hearts. 

Understandably, we saw the scarcity mindset big time with many different things during the pandemic, especially in the early days when folks panicked over items like toilet paper. Many of us who never worried much about having enough toilet paper were suddenly frantically buying a ton more than we ever had before.

Spotting Scarcity
It’s helpful to understand when scarcity is playing a role with something you’re eating. 

Otherwise, you may mistakenly believe that you’re out of control, that you lack willpower and self-discipline, that you can’t be trusted with the food and should never have it again. After all, this is what diet culture teaches us to believe. 

The scarcity you’re experiencing may be intentional, such as purposefully restricting certain foods, like bread or sweets. 

It could also be unintentional, such as only having access to a particular food for a limited time perhaps due to supply shortages, budget constraints or a holiday item that only comes around once a year. 

If I had access to conversation hearts year-round and ate them whenever I wanted, my desire to consume bagfuls of them come Valentine’s Day would have been much less. 

By enjoying them on a regular basis, I would have habituated to them. Their novelty would have worn off and they wouldn’t have been such a big deal. 

While I may have still sought out marked-down bags the day after the holiday because I loved a good deal (still do!) and the colorful candy with its cute sayings, I likely wouldn’t have felt the need to buy every last bag since scarcity was no longer a factor.

Permission to Be Human
I encourage you to reflect on the role scarcity plays in your relationship with food. 

Can you recall a time when you experienced a scarcity mindset with a particular food? What was that experience like for you? 

Did you find yourself consuming a lot of it due to a sense of deprivation or out of fear that it was going away soon? If so, how did you respond? Did you feel out of control, guilty, ashamed or compelled to make up for it?

Knowing what you know now—that it’s natural human behavior to desire and eat a lot of something that’s scarce—can you treat yourself with understanding, grace and compassion when you experience scarcity eating in the future? 

Above all, can you give yourself permission to be human?

How to Deal With Your Trigger Foods

Do you have any trigger foods?

Are you afraid to keep certain foods in your house because you feel like you lose control with them every time you eat them?

There is a very valid reason why some foods feel triggering.

Restriction.

If you’re like most people, your trigger foods are triggering because you are restricting them.

Natural Scarcity Response
Potato chips are a common trigger food, so let’s use them as an example.

Let’s say you love potato chips but you rarely let yourself eat them because you consider them to be a “bad” food and every time you do allow yourself to have them, you feel completely out of control with them.

When you do break down and buy a bag, you can’t stop thinking about them sitting in your cupboard and you keep returning to the kitchen all afternoon for more until the last salty crumbs are licked off your fingers. Once the bag is gone and you’re full of chips and guilt, you decide the safest thing to do is to not eat them at all.

“I can’t be trusted to have potato chips in my house! I’m never eating them again!” you proclaim to your friends who can all totally relate because, thanks to diet culture, they have trigger foods too.

But here’s the thing:

When you don’t let yourself eat potato chips on a regular basis, you create a sense of scarcity and deprivation with them.

The natural human response to scarcity and deprivation is to consume as much as possible of your restricted food when you do allow yourself to eat it.

Basically, your very wise brain is thinking “I never get potato chips therefore I must eat as much as I can right now because I don’t know if I’ll ever have access to them again.”

On top of this, if you’re telling yourself while you’re eating the chips that you shouldn’t be eating them and won’t let yourself eat them again, you are amplifying the threat of scarcity and deprivation, which will further drive you to eat as much as you can right away.

Unconditional Permission to Eat
If you want to stop feeling out of control with potato chips, you need to give yourself unconditional permission to eat all the potato chips you want whenever you want.

This means stocking your kitchen with potato chips and freely eating them with meals, between meals, for breakfast, for dessert, however you desire.

This continuous exposure to your trigger food is called habituation.

The more you eat the potato chips, the more you habituate to them.

In time, their reward value and power over you will diminish and they will become ordinary and neutral—basically, no big deal.

The goal of habituation isn’t to no longer want your trigger foods, but rather to create a trusting and satisfying relationship with them, one that’s free of fear, guilt and shame.

Understandably Feels Scary
Giving yourself unconditional permission to eat your trigger foods can, understandably, feel pretty scary.

It’s so helpful to understand that it’s completely normal to eat a lot of your trigger foods in the beginning of the habituation process because, well, you haven’t habituated to them yet.

This phase of making peace with food freaks a lot of people out, which is why it can be so helpful to get support, whether it’s from an Intuitive Eating counselor, coach, therapist or online community.

When working with my clients, we talk about various strategies that can help them with the habituation process so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming and send them running back to the land of restriction.

Once my clients start habituating to their trigger foods, they start to see that, despite what diet culture wants them to believe, they can trust themselves with any food, regardless of their history with it. And this trust and food freedom is truly profoundly liberating.

Here's what my client Jenny had so say about her experience:

"One of my biggest wins has been being able to have all types of food in my house. Before, I couldn’t have any sweets or baked goods at home otherwise I would just eat them all in one sitting. Having that stuff in my house and not bingeing on it has been a huge positive change. The day I started forgetting it was there was a big day!"

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*It’s important to note that habituation should be approached differently if you have a food-related health condition, such as lactose intolerance. Of course, you should never try to habituate to a food if you have a life-threatening allergy to it or a condition such as Celiac Disease

Emily's Story: It's All Downhill from Here

From time to time, I like to share a client experience to illustrate how Intuitive Eating can help you have a more trusting, peaceful and relaxed relationship with food and your body.

Recently, I was catching up with my former client Emily and she shared how different this holiday season already feels for her. With her permission, I’m sharing her story with you.

Emily’s Story: It’s All Downhill from Here
I remember very clearly my thoughts and fears around food that always surfaced at this time of year and talking to you about them when we were working together.

My October birthday had always triggered the “downhill” part of my year.

Starting with my birthday and continuing through New Year’s Eve, I would be diet-free.  

This meant giving myself special permission to eat without any restrictions for three and a half months before beginning a new diet on January 1.

Since I knew deprivation was just around the corner, I experienced a lot of Last Supper bingeing episodes during this time.

This year, I already feel such a major difference.

It no longer feels like this special time of year where I finally have an excuse to eat cake or candy. These things are always available to me now since I’ve stopped dieting and started giving myself unconditional permission to eat no matter what time of year it is.

It is such a freeing experience.

Unlike Any Birthday Before
On my birthday this year, there wasn’t any part of the day or the following weekend that I felt the need to “go for it” with my eating.

In years past, I would always eat until I was uncomfortably full on my birthday and often for a few days after as I polished off the leftover cake and other “special, rare treats.”

This birthday felt like my first big “test” of the season.

Having this new experience under my belt is so rewarding and it’s a testament to the power of Intuitive Eating, especially when paired with your expertise and gentle guidance. 

Peace with All the Pumpkin Things
Also this month, my roommate and I went to Trader Joe’s and bought a bunch of the fall snacks, all the pumpkin things.

It felt like a fall-treat buffet for the first few days. I was having so much fun trying all the new foods that I ended up eating more sweets than I usually do and felt a little sick.

I certainly wasn’t mad at myself for it. Instead, I viewed it as an informative experience.

I realized eating that amount of sweets didn’t feel very satisfying in my body so I may not want to do it again. And, I understood that since they were all new foods, it was normal for me to eat a lot of them right away.

As the days have gone by, unlike past years, I don’t feel out of control with all the fall treats or preoccupied with them. In fact, I forget we have a lot of the snacks we do!

This feels so completely different than when I was stuck in my restrict-binge cycle and it’s a huge relief to know I will not be starting another diet come New Year’s Day.

Every day, there is something new to learn and observe, but there hasn’t been a time in my life that I felt more at peace and at ease with food and my body.