When the term fear food feels wrong

Throughout most of my ED the term “fear food” just did not resonate. Not only did I not experience fear as the stereotypical trembling knees and scared feeling, but I could eat anything. It was the conditions and compensations attached to eating certain things that kept me trapped for so long.

I’ve always been able to eat the burger and chips but for so long there was a litany of behind the scenes work that went on to make it “okay”. It influenced what I would eat before, and after, sometimes for weeks! And the exercise that I had to do to allow for the foods. However, the food itself was definitely not entirely off the table.

This increasingly specific and demanding list of conditions would apply to almost anything I ate. I was constantly calculating and balancing and micromanaging my intake to make things okay. This is why the concept of “fear foods” never felt right to me. There weren’t things that were off limits - just things that I had to put in extra work to allow them to “fit”. It took recognising that any foods that I had conditions attached to were in some way not approved by my eating disorder. Which is why for me, instead of “fear food” I resonated much more with the idea of ED disapproved foods. This didn’t come with the same connotations of fear but much more accurately encapsulated my experience of not quite feeling like I could eat these things in abundance. When I really got honest with myself there were a lot of foods on this list. There were very few foods that my ED had zero opinions about.

I think so many people shortchange themselves with a half life in quasi recovery because they’ve tackled many so-called “fear foods”, but not the conditions around them. My list of ED disapproved foods came with so much detail around the context in which these foods were disapproved. I had to work my way through that list each and every day to challenge all of the rules, all of the conditions that were attached, until eventually I could eat these things in abundance and without managing my day around it. That meant changing the things I was eating before, and after, the number of times per week and per day, the people I was eating them with, the time of day, the cafe / restaurant / bakery I was eating at - all of it had to be consistently and proactively to ensure that any shred of restriction had been rooted out.

So if you don’t quite resonate with the term “fear food” then I encourage you to get really honest with yourself and take a look at where you might be micromanaging and compensating. These are all signs that restriction is at play and there are conditions attached to the particular foods you are eating. That gives you awareness with which you can then challenge these things head on and walk straight into that storm.