If Eating 'Junk Food' Triggers You To Binge, Try This Food Habituation Trick

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'If eating 'junk food' triggers you to binge, try this'.

This is the title of a video from an online friend of mine (Lauren Cadillac aka 'feelgooddietitian'), so let me use it to talk about the concept of food habituation.

Food habituation is a tenet of intuitive eating and stems from the idea that dietary restriction (or restraint) can cause people to eat more food as a compensatory response.

So, for some people, strictly avoiding certain foods almost feels like they shoot themselves in the foot because they crave that food more than ever, and find themselves eating more of it when they finally eat it again.

In which case, there is a very important case to be made whether telling people to strictly avoid certain foods is actually helpful or whether it has the capacity to backfire. There is no black and white on this, everyone of you is different, but it's a concept to be aware of.

Please note, I don't like using the word 'binge' willy nilly. Eating more food and describing it as a 'binge' is one thing, but binge eating disorder is clearly topic, and I do not make recommendations based on eating disorders. This is very simply to discuss the common concept within intuitive eating circles that is food habituation.

P.S. My new book ‘Everything Fat Loss’ is currently on sale at Amazon.com with an additional 10% discount. Feel free to grab it before the price goes up.

http://geni.us/EverythingFatLoss

References:
Attentional bias for craving-related (chocolate) food cues
Decreasing the Consumption of Foods with Sugar Increases Their Reinforcing Value: A Potential Barrier for Dietary Behavior Change
Food reinforcement
Long-term habituation to food in obese and nonobese women
Cognitive and weight-related correlates of flexible and rigid restrained eating behaviour
How does thinking in Black and White terms relate to eating behavior and weight regain?
The reliability and validity of the dichotomous thinking in eating disorders scale