Terrified Of Trigger Foods? How To Keep Them Around The House Without Losing Control

It’s that moment when you’ve been eating clean. You’ve been sticking to your diet like glue. Maybe you’ve even lost a few pounds. You feel like it’s all finally working…

Then it hits you. There is a bag of your favorite chips lurking in the cabinet, waiting to be opened. Pretty soon, you find yourself elbow-deep in that bag, no clue how you got there.

I’ve been in this situation over and over when I was struggling with food a decade ago.

Those trigger foods struck again, and they always seemed to win over me!

Have you experienced this?

So does this mean you have to keep trigger foods out of your house forever, because having them around always leads to overeating disasters?

The answer is NO. There is a way to keep your favorite treats around the house, without worrying about eating an entire bag in one sitting.

The trick is to use a strategy that not many diet and fitness gurus are talking about–but one that I’m sharing with you here today!

Read on to learn the real solution to trigger food fears. Then you’ll learn how you can finally enjoy your favorite treats (even keep them in your cabinet on the regular) without losing control!

So let me tell you a story about a woman named Sara.

Sara has been struggling for a long time with binge and emotional eating. She knows for sure that dieting is not the answer. But she doesn’t quite know what the answer IS yet. So, she decides to hire an expert coach to help her sort it all out.

This coach definitely means well. She has the best intentions in the world. This coach also knows, like Sara does, that dieting is fuel on the binge eating fire.

The coach’s answer for Sara? “Just stop dieting.”

She tells Sara to stop dieting. Eat whatever she wants. Stop letting those trigger foods have any power over her. That, the coach says, will liberate Sara from trigger foods for good.

Not only does that sound exciting to Sara, but it also sounds logical. After all, the diet didn’t work, and this sounds like the antithesis of a diet. It’s so crazy it just might work, right?

So Sara goes to the store on a quest for forbidden foods, and she buys them all. The chips, the candy, the ice cream, the cookies–all the things that she never allowed herself to eat go directly into her cart.

A few days later, Sara is having an ordinary day, feeling reasonably in control with food. She has a regular dinner. Then she puts her kids to bed, and suddenly, the house is quiet.

What happens next?

Suddenly, all she can think about are the cookies, candy, and chips in the cabinet. Surely, grabbing a bite or two won’t hurt anything, right? So she grabs a handful of chips. Than another. And another. And another…

Before she knows it, she’s at the bottom of the bag. Then she sees that there are cookies, too…

Sara goes to her coach and tells her what happened. But the coach tells her not to worry. Sara is completely confused at this point.

But the coach claims that eventually, her brain will realize that it can have anything it wants. Once it does that, those triggers will go away on their own.

The coach’s advice? Stay with the “eat whatever you want” plan and everything will work out fine.

So Sara keeps going. But then, she starts gaining weight, and she starts to freak out.

Sara has lost control with food. She has lost trust in her body, herself, and her coach. In a desperate attempt to take back control, she goes back to the thing that started this all in the first place…dieting.

So why does this happen? Isn’t letting go of dieting the answer? Well, yes. BUT there is more to it than just going cold-turkey on your diet plan and hoping for the best.

Now, there is some logic in what Sara’s coach is claiming. In general, if your brain knows it can have pizza anytime it wants, over time you’ll have less of an urge to eat the pizza until it’s gone.

But asking your brain to shift from binge eating to food freedom will not end well. Not without the proper steps, anyway!

This is the part that the “anti-diet” movement always misses. There is a massive space between stopping the restriction and being free with food. If you try to jump directly from lifelong dieting to total food freedom, a food free-for-all is likely what you’re going to get.

It could also be the very thing that leads you right back to dieting.

But there is a way to ditch the diet without losing control. Believe it or not, you can eventually have trigger foods around without fear–and even enjoy them once in a while! All it takes is a few simple but crucial in-between steps, the steps that many health coaches and diet gurus overlook.

How do you ditch the diet, defuse the power of trigger foods, AND allow yourself to occasionally enjoy them without overdoing it?

Here are my top 5 tips on how to keep trigger foods in the house without losing control!

1- Get out of survival mode. Maybe we should call this “step zero,” since it’s the foundational step to food freedom. But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll start here.

So what is survival mode? It’s a state that your brain goes into when it feels deprived. It’s what happens when your brain believes that food is scarce (this is exactly what happens when you diet!).

Long story short, your brain and body don’t trust you to properly feed yourself. So they go into a constant state of cravings and triggers to eat. Then you lose control with food, which makes you go right back to the diet to try and get your control back. And on and on the cycle goes.

Getting out of survival mode comes first. The first step is to make sure that you’re eating enough food to support yourself. It’s letting your brain and body know that you’ll take care of them, so they don’t have to trigger you to eat.

Eventually, you build a priceless trust between your body and brain. This is a huge step!

At this point, you might feel ready to bring back some of your trigger foods. If you bring them back in a safe way, you’ll find that enjoying them

2- Try a different time of day. Let’s say that up until now, you’ve been the most triggered to binge at night. If that’s the case, maybe trying a trigger food for an evening dessert might sound a little too scary. So, why not try it at another time of day?

For example, instead of having a cookie after dinner, have it after lunch. The simple time change might let you enjoy a cookie without fearing a nighttime binge.

3- Enjoy treats with friends. Sometimes having someone around helps you shift your focus. This can definitely be true when it comes to enjoying trigger foods!

Instead of being alone, invite a friend or family member to join you for a treat! It sounds crazy simple, I know. But you might be surprised how the act of sharing an experience with a trusted friend can make it a lot less scary.

4- Change up your words. We had a student at Beating Binge Eating who used to regularly binge on fast food. Part of the issue was what she told herself about trigger foods.

She would constantly tell herself that she “couldn’t have fast food.” Yet she’d still frequently end up hitting a drive-thru and binging in her car. Not the results she was looking for!

So, to change her thinking, she did two things.

First, she stopped telling herself that fast food was forever off-limits. Second, instead of eating in her car alone, her husband began joining her. They’d sit together in the car, and enjoy every bit of the dinner experience together.

So, she stopped making fast food forbidden. She allowed herself to have fast food when she truly wanted it. She also enjoyed it with someone she loved.

As a result, she got to have a favorite food, and it didn’t lead to a free-for-all. It was a win-win-win for her!

5- Give yourself full permission to enjoy your food. This is about more than just taking away food restrictions and hoping for the best. When you make a connected choice to enjoy food because you want to, everything shifts. The key is to give yourself full permission from a conscious place.

In other words, it’s not a permissible binge. It’s a connected choice that allows you to appreciate and enjoy favorite foods. Make an empowered choice, one that you can truly enjoy!

So, to recap, first, get out of survival mode. Start building trust between yourself and your body. Then, start to incorporate treats in a way that pushes your comfort zone, but doesn’t terrify you.

The key is to expand your horizons, but also feel reassured that you won’t lose control. The steps in the middle of the process will make this possible for you!

I know that this might sound a LOT easier said than done. So if you’re looking for support in this area, you’re in the right place!

We have helped thousands of women break these kinds of patterns of binging for good. We’d love to help you do the same. And to help you get started, I have an exciting gift for you!

Click the image below where I’ve got a special gift for you! We call them, “Craving Cards”, and they’re one of our most popular tools!

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You’ll learn how to stop cravings in their tracks, feel confident, and get back your power, fast! 

Love,
Brittany

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