Embracing Fear Foods

Bad food.  I'm not talking about moldy or spoiled produce but instead, foods that bring on intense anxiety or guilt.  In eating disorder treatment, "fear food" is the terminology used to identify foods that are avoided in the diet due to fear. The reason why a certain food (or food group) becomes forbidden can be developed for many reasons. These "bad" foods are typically associated with loss of control or weight gain. These foods are typically high in calories, fat, carbs or sugar. If you've ever been on a diet, you understand the use of food rules for a sense of control.  Whereas safe or "good" foods can be comfortably consumed anytime, forbidden foods bring on anxiety or distress and if consumed, may cause restriction, bingeing, purging or excessive exercising.  With the holiday season quickly approaching, this can be a difficult time if you are struggling with your relationship with food and/or your body. Different types (and excessive amounts) of food can bring on a variety of concerns.  Before learning the strategies to overcome forbidden foods, it's important to understand why you've developed fear of specific foods.  Diet culture has distorted nutrition information. Nutrition misinformation adds fuel to forbidden foods. Although forbidden foods are highly individual, they are heavily influenced by diet culture. There's no reason to develop a fear around pasta unless you have celiac or a gluten intolerance.  Foods such as breads, cookies and potatoes are feared due to their carbohydrate or sugar content. Butter, dressings, dips and oil are feared due to their fat and calorie content. While it's ok not to enjoy certain foods and to say "no thank you", if you find yourself canceling plans to avoid certain foods, needing to compulsively exercise to "make up" for foods eaten, or the presence of certain foods trigger extreme anxiety, judgement or guilt, these are signs that forbidden foods are negatively impacting your emotional and physical health.  Forbidden foods often cause a vicious cycle or restriction, cravings, giving in/binging, guilt/anxiety/shame and then restriction. This is why embracing a wide variety of foods (yep - even those you consider "bad" for you) is a critical step in fostering a healthier relationship with food.  Here are a few tips to help make peace with forbidden foods.  Gradual exposure - pair one of your forbidden foods (ex. Reese's Cup or cookie) with a "good" food, like apple slices. This allows you to desensitize yourself to the anxiety with your "bad" food as you learn to eat all foods in a controlled and mindful manner.  Practice eating more mindfully. Try this exercise to help you become more present around forbidden foods.  Address your emotions - make space for feelings of anxiety, uneasiness or fear. Understand where the feelings are coming from and address why they are so strong right now. If the thought of having ice cream or chips in the house fills you with anxiety, learn to recognize those feelings so that certain foods don't hold power over you.  Create a structured, well-balanced diet - if you are undereating in the morning, your body/brain will crave sugar in the afternoon. If you skip lunch, you will likely overeat at dinner. If you are constantly avoiding carbohydrates throughout the day, high-carb foods will become irresistible in the evening. Set yourself up for success with a well-planned diet so that you are eating balanced meals and snacks (and not restricting on any key macronutrients) throughout the day.

Is your weight (too much) on your mind?

A common focus (or struggle) for athletes is losing weight (or changing body composition) while trying to improve fitness.

It may seem effortless for an athlete to lose weight while training for an endurance event because of the extreme energy expenditure experienced on a day-to-day basis but in truth, many athletes struggle to lose weight despite exercising 8-20+ hours a week.

In my opinion, there's no shortage of proper education on how to nourish and fuel the athlete. The problem lies in application. Athletes often fail to properly time nutrition with training and plan out a well balanced diet and thus, there's always a struggle to maximize fitness, health and body composition throughout a training/racing season. In other words, most athletes don't eat enough of the right foods at the right times. I also blame the lack of time, focus and energy that athletes give to the daily diet relative to the time, focus and energy that is given to training. Most athletes fail to create sustainable healthy eating habits because well, nutrition is just not a priority until it really needs to become one.

Like many things in life, healthy eating habits require education but also a lot of trial and error, planning ahead, commitment, organization and flexibility. If you are willing to work for your performance goals, you should also be willing to work on your diet - in a healthy, non-extreme manner. The key word here is "work" - it's not a quick fix or elimination diet but instead, a constant work in progress.

With so much nutritional advice available at your fingertips and ears these days, not to mention a lot of overly confident food gurus, I recommend to not get your nutrition tips from non-credible blogs, forums, podcasts, interviews, magazines and experts. Thanks to social media, anyone can claim to be an 'expert'. Year after year, I see a common trend of athletes trying to adhere of extreme methods of eating and fueling in order to change body composition while trying to train for an athletic event because they read about it somewhere on the internet.

When an athlete has weight (too much) on his/her mind, there's a good chance that an extreme approach will be taken. Restrictive eating has issues; it may cause food obsessions, social isolation, fatigue, weakness, hormonal issues, bone loss, irritability, anxiety, depression, low blood sugar, sleep disturbances and low energy to name a few. Many negative physical and psychological issues develop when weight loss methods are taken to the extreme yet athletes continue to seek a quick fix/extreme approach.

If you are currently abiding by food laws, adhering to a good food/bad food list eliminating whole food groups, avoiding anything with sugar in it, not using sport nutrition to become more fat adapted or considering going keto, ask yourself why you are choosing the extreme approach? Is this style of eating/fueling sustainable for the rest of your life? Your diet does not have to be (and should not be) all or nothing. 

Sadly, there are far too many misinformed athletes and unqualified professionals following and prescribing extreme styles of eating (or not eating) in an effort to help athletes lose weight without considering the health implications of extreme dietary recommendations.

If you feel unhappy with your body shape, size or weight and worry all day about what to or not to eat all in an effort to look differently, remind yourself that when you restrict yourself from food, you don't become a better athlete. Instead, you become weak, tired and withdrawn. Food is your fuel. Food is your medicine.

Seeing that there are safe, responsible and healthy ways to change body composition and many unsafe, irresponsible and unhealthy ways to change body composition, I encourage you to ask yourself the following YES or NO questions to see if your weight is too much on your mind as it relates to your current eating habits? 

• You have drastically cut out a significant amount of calories in an effort to lose weight?
• You have recently cut out specific food groups or macronutrients from your diet?
• You are constantly comparing your current body image to a leaner version of yourself (or another athlete), assuming that if you weighed less, you would be faster/better?
• You are intentionally avoiding consuming calories before and during workouts in order to become fat adapted? 
• You don't want to properly refuel post workout because you want to keep your body in a calorie deficit?
• Your weight loss goal is often a primary motivator to start and finish workouts, no matter how exhausted, tired or fatigued you feel?
• You are finding yourself overeating on the weekends because you "deserve it" yet restricting during the week?
• You find yourself irritable, moody, low in energy and sometimes have difficulty focusing/concentrating?
• You are almost positive that you can't maintain your current style of eating for the rest of your life but you are determined to reach your weight loss goal at any cost?

As you embark on another year/season of exercising/training with weight loss on your mind, remind yourself that you can not maintain good health and optimize your performance with a rigid and restrictive style of eating.  

If you feel you could benefit from a change in body composition/weight for health and/or performance, don't use forums and the internet for advice. Reach out to a Board Certified Sport Dietitian for help. 

When passion turns obsession

As athletes, we often following a rigid schedule of working out, balanced with a preoccupation with food and body image as it relates to physical performance and overall health. 

For many athletes, patterns of exercise obsession and disordered eating coincide with the race season with a heightened awareness of how workouts, food and body composition positively (or negatively) affect performance.

When your passion turns into an obsession, see this as a wake-up call that you may be taking your health to an unhealthy place. Sense of worth or ability to succeed should not be tied with a fixed number of hours/miles completed per week or a specific body composition or number on the scale. 

If you feel frustrated, anxious or overwhelmed if you miss a workout or find yourself constantly criticizing your body composition, you may be putting yourself into situations where your life is controlled by workout, food and body perfection rather than being focused on development. 

The perfect training and eating regime is the one where you can experience performances gains without compromising overall health.

There is a big difference between eating for performance/health and training for performance gains and living an unmanageable life because of the compulsive drive to maintain a high level of fitness and specific body image. 

Whereas it may look as if you or an athlete you know is trying to achieve optimal performance through his/her actions to be competitive at his/her upcoming races and he/she is being extremely dedicated and committed to training and eating, this passion could be turning into an obsession. 

There is no simple solution to disordered eating and exercise obsession. 

Left untreated there is a high risk of serious health consequences and performances declines.  

Warning signs for a passion turned obsession

-Frequently commenting (out loud or internal dialogue) about your body weight/image or comparing to another athlete's body image
-Feeling extreme pressure to perform/look a certain way from your coach/teammate or yourself

-Loss of a significant amount of body weight

-Difficulty maintaining a healthy weight

-Ritualistic habits and preoccupation with food, calories, cooking and eating

-Sacrificing sleep, relationships and/or work for workouts
-Inability to be flexible with workout intensity/volume

-Training through injury, sickness or fatigue

-Compulsive need to workout or anxiety that you are never doing enough training to feel physically ready for your upcoming race.

-Refusal to fuel before, during and after workouts for fear of gaining weight (or feeling uncomfortable ingesting calories when burning calories) 

-Sporadic or constant episodes of binge eating, purging, emotional eating or food restriction

-Severe mood shifts often tied with exercise or meal times. 

-Chronic fatigue, injuries or sickness

-Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat. Constant obsession of losing weight or becoming lean

-Loss of menstrual cycle (amenorrhea) which can come from not meeting energy needs, not necessarily from being "underweight" relative to height. 

-Hormonal issues and loss of sexual drive

-Changes in hair/skin health

-Altered labs (calcium, thyroid, iron/ferritin, estrogen, testosterone, vitamin D, etc.)
-Constipation and GI issues

-Dehydration, bonking, fatigue, headache and other underfueling symptoms that may be dismissed as "normal" associated with training

It's important to note that body weight and fitness level are not directly correlated with eating disorders/disordered eating or exercise obsession. 

Do not assume that just because you are a beginner athlete or if you are over your healthy weight that you are not at risk for health issues related to exercise obsession and disordered eating.
Additionally, some experienced and lean athletes do an exceptional job of staying healthy with eating and are able to train hard but rest/recover harder. 

As an athlete, you likely have your own standards and expectations as to how you want to look, how much you want to train and how you want to perform on race day all in an effort to discover personal physical success. 

There is nothing wrong with being passionate and dedicated to your sport and eating regime. 

But if your intentional "performance boosting" actions are negatively affecting your health, energy and physical performance as well as quality of life and interactions with others, it's important that you reach out to a professional sport dietitian or clinical sport psychologist who specializes in disordered eating and exercise obsession to get the help that you need to ensure that you can continue to train and compete to your full potential.