Do you want to know more about forbidden foods and how to overcome your fear of them? If so, you should check out the two-part series on our YouTube channel where we explain what forbidden foods are and how to heal your relationship with them. In this blog, we will give you a brief overview of part 1, where we describe what they are and how to categorize them into small, medium, and large fear groups.
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When you think about a forbidden food, the word forbidden might make you think that it’s a food you would never consume. If you think about it in that context, you might not think that you have any forbidden foods.
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Forbidden foods are not just foods that you avoid completely, but foods that you feel like you have to monitor in some way, maybe by limiting how much, how often or when you eat them. Usually, if you break a rule around these foods, you might feel uncomfortable emotions like anxiety, guilt, shame or frustration.
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I would invite you to try and identify your forbidden foods in the context of comparing them to a neutral food (such as spinach). You might eat spinach whenever you want and however much you want, without having any emotions about it or feeling like you need to monitor your spinach intake in any way. However, if you think about a bag of chips, maybe you will only allow yourself to consume them on a typical day or at a typical time of day or in a certain context. You might not allow yourself to consume them however many times a day that you want, in whatever quantity you want and you might have uncomfortable emotions if you consume a bag of chips in one sitting.
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Now, consider making a list of your forbidden foods when you compare them to a food you consider to be neutral and try categorizing these foods into small, medium and large forbidden food groups depending on the level of emotional discomfort you experience when you think about consuming them.
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In Part 2, we will explain how to approach forbidden foods in the context of a food exposure and discuss the goal of conducting food exposures in your work with a registered dietitian.
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If you want support in identifying forbidden foods or learning how to develop a more positive relationship with them, please reach out to our team to see how we can help. You can contact us at 514-437-4260 or email us at info@sooma.ca.
Written by
Registered Dietitian
