Why You Feel Addicted to Certain Foods
You had a really bad day and went straight to the store on your way home. You promised yourself you wouldn’t cave, because you know exactly what’s about to happen. Your heart beats hard, your stomach rumbling from that missed lunch, but you’re on autopilot and there is no stopping now. Head down, you grab exactly what you came for and make your way home. Twenty minutes later, you’ve proven to yourself exactly why you don’t keep your “guilty pleasure” foods at home.
The vast majority of clients I have worked with have expressed at some point (often in the first session) that they feel out of control around or even “addicted” to certain foods. Sometimes it’s not just a food, but an entire category of foods (typically “sugar”). While pop science may have taught you that certain foods are made to be addictive due to their high palatability (i.e., they taste really good because they’re full of things our bodies like, like sugars and fats), the dopamine hypothesis could be applied to anything that makes you feel good. I suppose you could feel “addicted” to hearing your partner tell you they love you, or to listening to your favorite song (both release dopamine), but most people wouldn’t classify that as addiction. You might absolutely *feel* a strong compulsion to eat that feared food past fullness (and certainly past that troubling serving size suggestion you’ve memorized), but the root of the issue is more likely your relationship to the food, not the food itself.
Enter habituation.
Habituation happens through repeated exposure to things you fear. If you’ve ever gone through treatment for an anxiety disorder or OCD, you’ve likely had to engage in a variety of exposure exercises. Exposure therapy involves facing a fear over and over again, without resorting to a “safety behavior” to cope with or reduce the fear, until the fear dissipates and ultimately disappears. With health anxiety, for example, you might freak out every time you become too aware of your breathing and believe you can’t get a deep enough breath in. This often leads to compulsive google searching. A health anxiety exposure might involve purposely making yourself feel a sensation that terrifies you (in this example, hyperventilating intentionally) while in your therapist’s office (and not googling). By intentionally facing something that feels like it would put you over the edge, you teach your brain that there is actually nothing to fear and over time, the fear disappears.
Food habituation is similar, though thankfully there is no need to hyperventilate here. You have to face the food and face it regularly. Without limiting your portion sizes of it. Without restricting earlier in the day to “make up for it.” Without promising yourself you’ll only do it just this once. (All of these things signal scarcity to your brain, which will then label that food or eating event as extra special.)
You know when that song you love gets played out and you kind of have to take a break before coming back to it? You might find yourself having a similar experience with your former fear foods.
Important note: There is a prerequisite to practicing habituation with fear foods, and that is that you cannot be in a hungry state. Habituation does not work if your brain is already extra primed to seek out food due to deprivation. Those “high stakes” foods are going to feel even more “dangerous” and alluring when you are hungry. Focus on the basics first (eat regularly and adequately).
Tips for practicing habituation:
Build the food into a regular meal or snack. For example, intentionally include it with your lunch for 5 days in a row (and don’t try to be sneaky by saving it for last! Again, that signals to your brain that the food is super special and scarce).
If it’s a food you only allow yourself at a certain time, for example in the evening, intentionally eat that food at a different time. Why not 10am?
In general, save the habituation exercise for days when you are feeling well. For some folks, experiencing difficult feelings (anything from boredom to grief) complicates the habituation process.
Through practice, the foods you fear most can become completely ordinary (though still enjoyable!). When you teach your brain that food is… just food, you stop having the experience of feeling ruled by it.
But what if I’m actually dealing with real food scarcity?
Doing habituation work with fear foods is obviously easier when you have unlimited access to the food. Unfettered food access is a privilege. Some of my clients go through periods of food insecurity, limited access to preferred foods or ingredients, or complete lack of access to regularly consumed foods while away from home. There is still a way to practice habituation during this time but it will be more challenging. Ask your trusted dietitian for support. :)