Challenging Fear Foods In Eating Disorder Recovery

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Last updated on January 4th, 2024 at 05:14 am

What Is A Fear Food?

Fear foods are the foods a person experiences extreme fear, anxiety, shame, or guilt around eating.

You will know a food is a fear food for you if:

• You feel you cannot keep the food in your home
• Stress or anxiety begins to build when you think about the food becoming available (for example going out to eat)
• You start to avoid social situations where a food that causes anxiety might be available
• You create rules about how much, when, and how frequently you can have a food you are afraid of
• You experience extreme shame, guilt, or feel the need to get rid of the food from your body through exercise or purging after you eat it

Which foods become fear foods vary from person to person depending on their culture, gender, socioeconomic status, and so much more.

Most fear foods come from the desire to restrict food to change body weight, shape, or size. Media messages that label certain food or foods as being healthy or unhealthy are a gateway to food aversion.

Even weight stigma in healthcare can trigger developing anxiety around certain foods.

Let’s dig into exactly where fear foods come from, how to challenge a fear food, and ultimately how to create peace with food.

Is It Normal To Have Fear Foods?

No.

While it is common to fear certain foods because food because of food rules and fatphobia dominates American culture it is, fear of foods are NOT normal. Fear of certain foods is learned.

Having a long list of fear foods can cause social isolation, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

None of us were born with a list of good and bad foods engrained into our brains. In fact, all of us were born intuitive eaters, with an innate ability to allow our bodies to dictate when we were hungry and which foods were necessary for appropriate nourishment.

You may notice that a fear of specific foods may be related to:

• Messages from the masses that demonize certain foods, food groups, or food preparation methods
• Food rules prescribed by diet culture
• Distorted body image or body dysmorphia and a fear food will change the body
• Previous experiences feeling out of control with food or having a binge restrict cycle
• The belief that certain foods will lead to chronic disease
• Messages from healthcare that claim certain foods are bad for your health

If you have a medical allergy to or clinical condition that causes a harmful reaction in the body in response to certain foods, this is not a fear food. It is normal and necessary to avoid foods under these circumstances.

What Are Some Common Fear Foods?

Some common fear foods include: 

• Cakes, cookies, candies
• Foods with many ingredients (lasagna, sandwiches, pizza)
• Foods high in fat (Burgers, cakes, avocado, pizza)
• Pasta
• Bananas
• Foods eaten while dining out
• Protein-rich foods (especially for those who have adopted some element of a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle)

Foods that cause fear will be different for everyone. This list will likely change from decade to decade as fad diets change and we get new messages from the media.

Challenging Your Fear Foods

Create A Fear Food Challenge List

To challenge a fear food, we need to know what we’re afraid of and what we’re not. In order to do this, create a fear foods challenge list.

Steps for creating a fear food challenge list:

1. Label a chart 1-100
2. Start at the bottom of the list (the number 1) These should be foods that cause no or very little anxiety.
3. Work your way up the list with foods that cause more or less anxiety. For example a food at 20 is one that would cause more anxiety than a food at 10 but less than a food at 50.

Fear Foods Challenge List Example: 

• 100-cake
• 100-beef
• 85-snickers bar
• 85-pasta
• 80-soda
• 70-tacos
• 70-cookies
• 70-french fries
• 65-tuna sandwiches
• 65-sushi
• 50-restaurant salad
• 50-macaroni and cheese
• 45-potato chips
• 40- Starbucks latte 
• 40-chicken strips
• 35-bacon
• 25-bananas
• 10-broccoli
• 10-carrots
• 10-chicken breast
• 10-diet soda
• 10-cereal
• 10-yogurt
• 5-carrots

Steps to Challenge A Fear Food

1. Start with a food on your challenge list that causes a low level of anxiety. Do not to start off with the fear food that cause the highest anxiety (near level 100)
2. Introduce a new fear food 1 time per week to start.
3. After several weeks, gradually increase fear food challenges to 3-4x per week. Work your way up the fear foods chart from 1-100 (least to most feared).

Support for Challenging Fear Foods

Sometimes it might be helpful to ask your support person to spontaneously provide fear foods. This way we don’t have the anxiety leading up to having the food.

You can choose to challenge a fear food on your own, but it is best to get meal support. Meal support means that someone sit with you while you challenge your fear food. This can help you stay committed to the challenge and reduce anxiety while you’re eating the food.

This support person could be:

• A haes dietitian
• A therapist
• A family member
• A close friend
• A spouse

Make sure you are in an environment that helps you to feel peaceful. This might be a quiet environment. This might involve soft music.

For some, especially those with eating disorders where their eating disorder voice is loud, a distraction such as television or a game might be critical for reducing anxiety enough to eat a fear food.

Safe Foods and Fear Foods

Safe foods are foods that a person feels they can eat freely without anxiety, guilt, or shame. For many, safe foods tend to align with diet cultures list of “good or healthy” foods such as vegetables.

Foods high on your fear food list can be combined with safe foods to reduce anxiety. Starting with safe food and adding in a fear food can be a powerful way to challenge the food causing you grief.

For example: 

• Safe food: oatmeal and fruit
• Fear food: Store-bought baked goods 

Try this to challenge the fear food listed above:

1. Make breakfast bakes with fruit and oats. 
2. Make breakfast bake as a cobbler at home
3. Buy store-bought baked goods (fear food) and take a bite

You did it! Now give yourself a high five!

Identify Food Rules

When you have fear foods, most of the time its hard to put into language exactly why these foods sound scary. Reclaim your power by figuring out what exactly it is that causes you to experience anxiety around a certain food.

You’ve probably developed a set of completely subconscious rules and on repeat day in and day out.

These food rules might look like:

• Lower-calorie foods are okay
• I must eat clean
• I can’t keep peanut butter in the house
• I can only eat brownies if I run for an hour afterward
• I can only have potatoes once a week

Identifying and writing down food rules takes away their power, and lets you choose whether you want to accept or challenge the rule. It gives the rule a voice of its own instead of having them be part of our identity.

The ED Voice and Fear Foods

Some important things to remember when incorporating challenging foods into eating disorders include

• Recognizing it is not a linear path. Foods on the hierarchy may change as you progress in recovery. 
• Safe foods can easily become fear foods when consumed in excess
• The more challenging foods we add into our diet, the louder our eating disorder will likely get
• Finding alternative restrictive practices when incorporating challenging foods does not mean you have failed in recovery just means we need to alter the recovery trajectory. 

Remember if you have an eating disorder, the eating disorder will do anything to try to survive! This might include:

• Trying out fear foods but only in certain amounts or certain amounts.  
• Allowing fear foods, but only under certain conditions (e.g. at a birthday party).  
• Attempts to change the eating disorder recovery meal plan as a negotiating tool for the fear food being consumed  

ARFID Food Aversions

ARFID fear foods are different than those that come from diet culture and body dissatisfaction.

Eating disorders such as ARFID (avoidant restrictive food intake disorder) have more to do with sensory issues around food.

ARFID fear foods are more commonly associated with:

• Difficulty tolerating certain tastes or textures of foods
• Temperature aversions with food (not accepting foods above or below a certain temperature)
• Avoiding certain food colors
• Difficulty tolerating mixed meals (lots of food items in one entree)
• Disliking food touching
• Avoiding certain food preparation styles (for example fried foods)
• Fear of choking
• Only eating food with certain utensils or with their hands

ARFID fear foods may develop from,  sensory processing issues or trauma. People on the autism spectrum have a higher risk of having symptoms of ARFID.

The way that we deal with fear foods with ARFID will be different than dealing with other types of fear foods.

Challenging fear foods in ARFID looks like:

• Creating a Fear Foods Challenge list
• Grouping food likes/dislikes to look for patterns of accepted foods (for example crunchy versus soft foods)
• Practicing food chaining
• Repetition of food introduction and food exploration

Motivation for Fear Food Challenges

Challenging a food that feels scary can be filled with sadness, grief, depression, or anger. You might even feel like you are losing part of your identity.

Be kind to yourself on this difficult journey.

As you challenge a certain food, it may also be helpful to have a mantra you state along with eating the food. Here are some good examples:

• I deserve to be nourished
• There is nothing more powerful than my ability to have freedom with food
• My body is more valuable than my eating disorder voice
• I have the strength to deal with this
• No food holds moral or nutritional superiority over others.

If you are struggling with finding the motivation to continue to heal your relationship with food check out these eating disorder recovery quotes.

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