Discovering My Trigger Foods, Part I

Someone asked me recently how I discovered my food triggers. This is an insightful question. I will answer it in multiple parts.

At the end of 2019, I knew enough about food addiction to name it in myself. I knew, too, that the processed foods of the standard American diet caused problems for me.

At the time, I thought my understanding of food addiction was the capstone of what I needed to lose weight. In some ways, that was true. In other ways, that was just the beginning.

I know this is true: food addiction plays out in my body in the simplest, most predictable of ways and in the most complex, challenging of ways in today’s food environment.

Discovering My Trigger Foods Was a Process

Processed foods are problematic for me. I could feel their addictive pull and had identified a broad scale cause-effect relationship between the foods and their disruption of my hunger drive.

I had heard Dr. Joel Fuhrman discuss “toxic hunger,” which is a false sense of hunger created from eating unhealthy foods. I knew I experienced that.

So, I knew, too, that I would go through a withdrawal process that had physical components to it. And, I knew the process had emotional elements to work through.

I had started this process countless times but had not been able to see the process through.

My first goal was to avoid processed foods for several weeks to get through that withdrawal process. I went all of January through mid-February without indiscretions.

And, by mid-February, I had found peace, freedom, success, and well-being — feelings that were short-lived. Because failure of some kind always comes.

Losing My Balance Created Important Contrasts

The timeframe is important here. This was February 2020 and whispers of Covid grew louder. I wobbled as this unknown reality encroached on the world.

My indiscretion started small with an intentional detour on a weekend out of town, which turned into test of moderation.

Like always, I failed this test. To say I lost my balance quickly is an understatement. Agitation around food re-consumed my life.

The contrast between peace and agitation was the most potent learning I had done to date.

Without a doubt, moderation for me would be far more difficult than abstaining. And, this learning cut more deeply into me this time — in the long run.

But, in the short run … removing the processed foods yet again proved difficult and it took 3-4 weeks to pull myself out of what was supposed to be a weekend of mild meandering.

I had to change how I was living if I was going to live the life I wanted.

As the world closed down in mid-March, I doubled down and removed all processed foods from my life yet again. And, the pounds came off. Until they didn’t.

Weight Loss Plateaus Led to Self-Discovery of Triggers

When the numbers on the scale stopped moving, I needed to do something different. And, that always meant taking a step toward a cleaner, more pristine way of eating.

Even within my whole foods, plant-based eating life, I have had cleaner times of eating than others. And, I have tightened to become cleaner over time.

It is in these contrasts that I found my trigger foods.

Salt provided more insights into my trigger foods. Plant-based doctors have different recommendations as to the degree which people can consume salt in a whole-foods, plant based lifestyle.

I initially kept small amounts of salt in because of the large number of other changes I was making. But, after spending about a month at a plateau, I eliminated salt.

Not only did I lose water weight, but I also jumpstarted my weight loss. And, I gained a new sense of calm.

Inevitably, I failed to maintain the tightness around this change in eating, and I ate low-salt foods again. And, the agitation consumed me again, and so did the dysregulation of my hunger drive.

The more I bounced between having low-salt and no-salt, the more I gained an awareness of the patterns of agitation or peace.

And, this is how I started to recognize that I had more to learn about food addiction and that trigger foods impacted me more deeply than I imagined.

Failures gave me important feedback to help me name, understand, and face my shadows.