As your eating disorder has evolved, you may have stopped eating foods that you thought were fattening or that contained sugar. Or maybe you went starch- or gluten-free or decided to “eat clean.” Maybe you became vegetarian or vegan. Or maybe you shun vegetables because you are anxious about choking on them, or you don’t allow yourself to eat desserts because you don’t believe you can limit yourself to a normal portion. If any of these restrictions is a symptom of your eating disorder, recovery will require you to increase your food variety. Consequences of a restricted range of food intake can include nutritional deficits, maintenance of weight too low for your body, and getting stuck in a cycle of binging or purging. Each of these, in turn, could cause serious medical complications. Increasing the range of foods eaten is a primary goal for patients of any eating disorder diagnosis, whether anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED), or avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID).
Increasing Food Variety During Eating Disorder Recovery
There are many good reasons for any eater to broaden his or her diet, and this applies especially to individuals in recovery: In summary, while a restricted dietary range might serve to decrease one’s anxiety in the short term, this comfort it is not without costs. When it comes to food, variety not only is the spice of life but may hold the key to recovery.
How to Approach Increasing Food Flexibility
Increasing food flexibility is not usually one of the immediate goals of recovery unless the range of foods is extremely restricted, weight gain is important, and weight gain is not possible without at least some increase in flexibility. Most often, increasing flexibility is addressed a little further along in treatment once the patient is consuming meals more regularly. Once the patient is ready to begin addressing food flexibility, it is common to begin by making a list of forbidden foods. These are typically food items the patient refuses to consume (or only consumes in the course of binges). The next step is to slowly introduce these foods into the diet in moderation. This is an example of exposure therapy. In exposure therapy, patients face situations and things that make them anxious. Relaxation techniques are typically coupled with exposure to help decrease the anxiety of facing the feared food. Over the course of repeated exposures to the feared thing, they learn that nothing bad happens and their fear lessens.
Tips for Caregivers of People With Eating Disorders
If you are caring for a child with an eating disorder, you will also want to help increase the flexibility of their diet. The goal for your child should be to return them to eating all the foods that they used to eat about two years before there were any signs of an eating disorder. In retrospect, many parents realize that their children slowly eliminated foods from their repertoire for sometimes up to two or three years before the eating disorder was actually diagnosed. For this reason, it is recommended that you go back this far or farther to form a baseline for your child’s eating behavior. Do not allow your minor child to stop short of full reincorporation of fear foods. Helping your child to enjoy the broadest range of foods will help ensure their full recovery and a life of freedom.
A Word From Verywell
Recovery from an eating disorder takes time and courage. Once you successfully incorporate your fear foods you will be able to enjoy a more relaxed relationship with food. doi:10.1080/10640266.2019.1688008
