I Can't Keep Chips in My House. I Always Lose Control.

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.

This was certainly the case for me when I was restricting food and following a bunch of food rules.

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, at breakfast, for dessert, however you desire.

This continuous exposure to your trigger food leads to habituation. 

The more you eat 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, satisfying and peaceful 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 your brain is still operating in scarcity mode. It will take time for it to calm down and trust that it will have regular access to previously restricted foods.

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. Feeling this sense of trust and freedom with food is profoundly liberating.

Here's what my client Jenny had to 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!"

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?

My Last Last Supper. It Involved A Lot of Bread.

Many years ago, I went to see a naturopath about some health challenges I was having. As part of my treatment, she asked me to eliminate some foods from my diet, including gluten. Desperate to feel better, I agreed to do so.

I gave myself one last week to eat all my favorite gluten-containing foods.

During those last few days, I vividly recall feasting on artisanal sourdough loaves from my beloved local bread maker. 

I also raided all my favorite bakeries loading up on blueberry scones, chocolate chip cookies, veggie focaccia, chocolate fudge cake, and yes, more bread.

The idea of future deprivation drove this intense phase of one-last-shot, now-or-never eating. I happily gorged on gluten while simultaneously grieving the end of our relationship.

Can you relate to this behavior?

It’s called Last Supper Eating.

Farewell-to-Food Feast
Before embarking on a new diet, plan or program, have you ever found yourself eating everything in sight, especially the foods that will soon be forbidden?

Or perhaps you planned one last elaborate meal featuring all the dishes that would be off-limits starting tomorrow.

If you’re a yo-yo dieter, you’re likely very familiar with this pre-dieting ritual. Maybe it occurs every Sunday night before you get back on track on Monday.

Like many of my clients, you may view this period of intense, frantic consumption—which is often followed by overwhelming guilt—as “proof” that you need to restrict your eating because you simply can’t control yourself around food.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The threat of food restriction can naturally trigger a Last Supper, farewell-to-food feast. It’s human nature to respond this way when deprivation and scarcity are just around the corner.

Yet, it’s so easy to go into self-blame and shame.

How to End Last Supper Eating
Intuitive Eating puts an end to Last Supper Eating.

With Intuitive Eating, there is no deprivation. You have unconditional permission to eat whatever looks good, tastes good, and feels good in your body.

Instead of depriving yourself and eating according to a set of rules, you ask yourself questions such as: What will hit the spot? What will satisfy my needs and desires? Is this satisfying? Do I like how it tastes and how it makes my body feel? Would I do anything differently next time?

In the Driver's Seat
When I started reclaiming my ability to eat intuitively, I asked myself if I actually liked the gluten-free foods I was eating.

The gluten-free bread, for example, was tolerable. It wasn’t delicious. It was simply an expensive vehicle for nut butter.

Since it wasn’t medically necessary for me to eliminate gluten (i.e., I don’t have celiac disease), I experimented with eating my beloved breads again, along with other gluten-containing foods—and my body felt just fine.

Although well-intentioned, the diet the naturopath put me on didn’t improve my health. It only caused a lot of unnecessary stress and left me feeling deprived and unsatisfied, which always backfires.

As an Intuitive Eater, I'm in the driver's seat. 

I determine what works best for me by staying attuned to the messages my body sends and focusing on what's satisfying.

If I skip a particular food because I don’t like how it tastes or feels in my body, I don’t view it as deprivation as I know I can have it if I truly want it, now or in the future.

It's such a relief to know I’ve had my last Last Supper.