Trigger Foods

One of my mom’s concerns about me having this surgery is that I told her that I was going to try to forever stay away from certain kinds of foods.  I told her that I hoped one day I could eat them without having issues, but that I needed to be prepared to avoid them if they became trigger foods.

So what is a trigger food?  A trigger food is a food that makes you want to eat more; it’s any food that you have trouble resisting and leads you to overeating.  Different people have different triggers.  I knew that breads are my downfall--I LOVE bread.  I actually feel pretty confident that I can turn down cake, but bread is altogether different!

I have found that my ideas of trigger foods have changed over time.  I have managed to stay away from bread products for the most part.  I do have a couple of crackers occasionally.  I have been able to turn down cake several times now.

I think my trigger food, unfortunately, is popcorn.  I used to absolutely love SmartFood White Cheddar Popcorn.  I allowed myself to buy a small bag of it over the Christmas holidays, figuring I would limit myself to about ¼ cup of popcorn per day as a snack.  Well let me just say that it went down so easy and tasted so good!  I did not experience any restriction… I could have eaten the whole bag in one sitting.  I read somewhere that they call popcorn and chips “slider foods” because they just slide right through and you can just keep eating.  So obviously after eating almost a cup of popcorn in one sitting, I realized that popcorn was a big danger to me.  Sure--a cup of popcorn isn’t too bad.  My problem is I kept wanting more.  I wanted to eat the whole bag and then buy more.  So I threw away the rest of the bag.  And I haven’t bought any since.

I would like to think that I can eat anything in moderation--and in my ideal world, I can.  But I also understand that I’m flawed when it comes to food.  I just need to be aware of my difficulties.  And it’s okay for me to mess up or make a less healthy choice.  I just don’t want those less healthy choices to become the norm or a common thing in my life.  I’ve lost so much weight and it’s more important to me that I live a healthy lifestyle.  My health and weight loss are more important to me than the transient pleasure of popcorn.