Trigger Foods

Everyone has trigger foods. Foods that you could just eat a thousand pounds of if you really felt like it. Foods that you absolutely love and will scarf down faster than the fork can rise to your lips. One aspect of bulimia is that trigger foods make me want to eat them and then everything else. If possible when I go home I want to get rid of the trigger foods at my house, but there’s a reason they’re trigger foods. My family loves to eat them, so they were around when the illness started and I could gorge on them.

My trigger foods:

1.     Pasta- any kind

2.     Chocolate, especially chocolate cake

3.     Icing- on chocolate cake usually

4.     Dessert items of any kind

5.     Starchy foods like potatoes with cheese

So I developed (unintentionally) a menu of counter-trigger foods, which include:

1.     Yoplait light

2.     Cereal

3.     Oatmeal

4.     Fiber-y things

5.     Vegetables

The counter-trigger foods allowed me to eat a lot without feeling like I was taking in a lot of calories. This in turn quelled my anxiety enough to make me not want to throw up. However, at my house, dessert seems like a constant presence. Starches are often the main features of the meal, with vegetables on the side. Whenever I go home this meal structure makes me feel like I’ve eaten entirely too much. I inevitably throw it up as often as I can.

My goal is to not let that happen when I go home this time, because this time I’m there to stay for 4 months.