Do you have a fear of no food? Are you afraid to skip a meal or snack? If so, this is very common. Many people think they will get too hungry, but often the roots of this fear are emotional.

Why might you fear going a little while without food? There are different reasons. Here are some of them.

There’s a sense of security and safety in eating.

You might notice that you feel content and secure when you eat. This might especially be true if your parents grew up poor and this fear of food scarcity got transferred to you. Or perhaps you went through a lean period in your adult life and it left you with bad memories. These memories can make a deep impression, and it will take some self-study to figure out where the fear is coming from.

It takes you out of your .

You might be used to eating at certain times – three meals a day, your afternoon snack, your TV watching snack at night, or whatever else you are accustomed to. This schedule is now part of your daily routine, and it would feel strange if you changed it. What would happen if you skipped breakfast or dinner on a day where you weren’t really hungry? What would happen if you skipped your chocolate at night? It might be too uncomfortable to risk trying it out. Or perhaps you’d surprise yourself and be fine.

Uncomfortable emotions come up.

Often people eat when they are anxious, scared, bored, lonely, or when experiencing other uncomfortable emotions.  When the emotions start to bubble up, your first impulse will be to reach for food. This is often unconscious. There’s a part of you that doesn’t want to experience these emotions. They are too threatening. Therefore you will use food to hide them.

You are conditioned from childhood.

You might have grown up in a family where food was used for comfort, as a reward, or other reason besides sating hunger. You might have been encouraged to eat even when sick and lacking an appetite, when upset and not ready to eat, or because one of your parents was taught to eat no matter what and they passed this habit onto you. As a result, you have a sense of anxiety when you don’t want to eat.

Food equals love.

You might have happy memories of family gatherings with lots of food, eating out with your family, a parent or grandparent making something special for you or taking you out for a treat like ice cream. Food got associated with happy times, love, feeling special, cozy and warm feelings. Going without food can unconsciously make you feel lonely and deprived.

You are conditioned to eat by the clock.

In our society, many things are regulated by the clock. If you work outside the home, there may be definite times when you can break to eat. If you don’t eat at those times, you will miss out on your meal. This might also apply at home, where family meals are served at a definite time.

You fear being drained of energy.

You might fear not having enough energy to get through a work day if you skip a meal. If hungry, you might get low on nerve energy and become irritable with people, or find it hard to think clearly. This possibility can keep you from passing on food, even when you’re really not hungry at all.

You’re afraid of losing weight.

If overweight, the fear of being thinner can trigger anxiety. This is from a variety of reasons including among others: more will be expected of you, you fear drawing attention from someone who might want to date you, you will be noticed more and can’t stay invisible, you will need to buy new clothes, your family members are overweight and they won’t like it if you’re thin, your sense of self will change.

 

When you should not skip eating.

That being said, not everyone should skip meals. Included in the list: being diabetic or hypoglycemic and needing to eat at regular times, when pregnant, when recuperating from an illness, accident or surgery where you have lost a lot of weight and need to gain it back, working a job where you need to take in a lot of calories. However, at these times, it’s good to distinguish the need to eat meals from the desire to snack on some cookies, chips, or a bowl of ice cream. Snacks can be a pleasant pastime, but not necessarily needed for good health.

How to try out skipping eating.

There are many ways you can gently try this out and see what happens. Here are some possibilities.

1. Skip one breakfast or dinner a week and see how you do.
2. Skip one snack that you generally eat at a certain time. This may mean having more food at your meal. For example, some people get ravenously hungry after work, before dinner and have a snack at that time. If that happens to you, you can eat a bigger lunch sp you can comfortably make it to dinner.
3. Try having only liquids for a day. You could have smoothies, fresh juices, blended soups, herbal teas, and cooked plant foods that are blended with a little water.
4. Skip your evening TV snack. Instead, have a hot drink, some water, or nothing. Be sure to have a big enough dinner so you won’t get hungry later at night. You might need to skip TV watching initially, if the association with food is too strong.
5. Skip a snack and keep a journal of the thoughts and emotions that come up. Many people think that they can’t go without snacks. However, snacking is often emotional eating and not at all necessary.

What to do first.

I’d suggest exploring the reasons you fear going without food. Then devise a gentle plan that works to cut back. Make sure your plan is doable, although you might feel uncomfortable with it at first. See how you feel without this food, and then tweak your plan as needed based on your emotional and physiological responses. Most of all, enjoy your exploration!