ARFID Recovery: Becoming More Flexible

It will come as no surprise for those with ARFID, their family members or their treatment team, that there is a certain amount of inflexibility that co-exists with ARFID, and makes ARFID recovery more challenging. When faced with a new food—or even just a variation of a familiar one—the first reaction is often an instant “NO!!!!! I can’t do that!” Once a food, or a thought of a food is rejected, it is very hard to make yourself, or help a loved one, to try that food.

This blog explores one important recovery skill: increasing flexibility. Flexibility is what helps us move from that instant “no” to “maybe there’s another way.” Learning to adjust foods instead of rejecting them outright can make a world of difference in recovery.

Adjusting Foods

When I was a kid, I loved my mom’s homemade spaghetti sauce. I loved the first night, pasta with the fresh sauce poured over it. It was even amazing as left overs. BUT what completely grossed me out was lasagna. So, what was different about lasagna? For me it was the cheese... the squishy, yucky cheese glopped into the layers between the lasagna noodles and the sauce. Big time NO!!!!!!

But my parents weren’t the type to make a completely different “lasagna” for me, so the choice was to eat it or just fill up on other things at the table, like bread and butter. Over time a new choice emerged, which was to take the piece of lasagna I had been given and eat the parts that I could. Did it look pretty? No. Because my plate would have glops of cheese left on it. But I could salvage some of the pasta, with some of the sauce, and force it down. Ironically, being exposed to some of the taste of the cheese that couldn’t be scraped off, while unpleasant initially, made it more tolerable over time and eventually it was manageable to eat a piece of lasagna without dismantling it.

That experience taught me an important lesson: sometimes the path forward isn’t about eating the food exactly as it’s served—it’s about finding ways to adjust it.

Let’s consider some different ideas of how we can ADJUST a food to be able to eat it:

• Add something: a sauce, dip, or condiment to change the flavor.

• Remove something: scrape off toppings, sauces, or layers you don’t like.

• Separate parts: pull apart a sandwich and try just the bread, just the cheese, or just the meat.

• Modify toppings: remove pepperoni from a pizza and try it as cheese pizza instead.

• Simplify soups: skip the mix of ingredients and just sip the broth—or try one component, like noodles or carrots.

• Change texture: crisp food up in the air fryer, or soften it in the microwave.

• Season it: add a familiar spice, salt, or flavor you already enjoy.

• Experiment: think creatively and come up with your own adjustments!

  
  

The goal isn’t to love every food. The goal is to find tolerable ways to eat new things, opening the door to greater flexibility over time.

Beyond the Automatic NO

We often call ARFID “Fred”—the part of the brain that shouts “NO!” at the first sign of an unfamiliar food. But there’s another part of us—our Not-Fred self—that can whisper:

“Maybe I don’t have to reject this completely. Maybe I can try part of it. Maybe I can adjust it.”

Maybe first we need to accept the idea of eating something TOLERABLE, even if it isn’t something that we would prefer. And maybe we need to put on our scientist hat, break down a food into its parts, jot notes or draw pictures, and then run small “experiments” to see what adjustments make it more tolerable.

In our Bridge the Food Gap: An ARFID Recovery Workbook, we include a Food Experiment Worksheet to help guide this process. (You can check it out here.) 

Takeaways to Becoming More Flexible

For those with ARFID, “no” is often the default response to unfamiliar foods—sometimes even just the thought of them. But learning to adjust foods, rather than reject them outright, is a powerful step forward.

Recovery isn’t about eating every food exactly as it comes. It’s about building the willingness and flexibility to experiment, tolerate, and adapt. That shift—from an automatic “no” to a thoughtful “maybe”—is where real progress begins.