Understanding Why You Eat

Understanding why you eat is a key component to successful weight management.  Once you understand why you eat, you can work to make the appropriate changes.  This will allow you to transition from mindless eating to mindful eating.  Take a minute to answer the following questions:

• Do you eat if you are not hungry, and if so, do you eat as a result of stress, social issues, boredom, habit, emotional issues, or possibly an eating disorder? 
• Could some outside influence or something from within be changing your relationship with food?
•  Do you seek food as comfort because it is familiar, easily available, reliable, and always there for you?
• Do you feel that eating is something that is out of your control?

For weight conscious people, mindless overeating is like rubbing salt into a wound.  You may already feel stressed, hurt and angry.  Eating mindlessly only brings on more of what you don't want, added pounds. The problem still exists, but now you have added bad eating choices and the burden of a guilt.  While eating for comfort may provide instant gratification, it does not provide lasting satisfaction, and it often brings on more feelings of guilt, frustration, and anger.

Hunger Can Be Physical or Emotional

Hunger can be either physical or emotional.  It is important that you to tune into the physiological cues of hunger and eat only when a growling stomach signals true hunger.  Physical hunger is identified by the following:

• It comes on gradually and not suddenly.
• It strikes below your shoulders as a growling stomach.
• It occurs a few hours after you have eaten a meal.
• It goes away when you are full.
• After eating you feel satisfied and not guilty.

Emotional hunger is typically identified by:

• It develops very quickly and often out of nowhere.
• It strikes above your shoulders via a craving for some type of food, like chocolate or ice cream.
• It occurs in a random manner.
• You still feel hungry after eating.
• After eating you feel guilty instead of satisfied.

Use a Food Journal to Evaluate Your Relationship With Food

A food journal is a valuable tool that can help you evaluate your relationship with food, by providing an understanding as to WHY you are really eating.  Prior to eating anything, you should ask yourself:

• Are you eating because you are really hungry?
• Or as a result of boredom, tiredness,  some type of emotional issue, or as a response to a food craving that you just cannot resist?  

By keeping a food journal you will gain a thorough understanding of your eating habits, which will allow you to identify where you need to make changes and improvements.  A food journal should record the following information:

• Date and time that you eat
• Food eaten
• Amount that you eat (for example 1/2 cup ice cream, 10 Oreo's)
• Where you eat (home, work, car, restaurant)
• Hunger rating (0-5)
• Mood/feelings (why am I eating now?)
• Could I have made a better choice?
• How did you feel after you ate? Did you have any negative side effects (headache, bloating, fatigue, stomach ache, weight gain etc.)?

In order to heighten your awareness, record in your journal throughout the day, instead of waiting until the end of the day.  At the end of a week, you will be able to see exactly what you ate, when you ate, and why you ate.  You will also begin to notice how you felt after eating certain foods. 

• Did you feel sluggish or have a headache after eating a particular food? 
• Did your stomach hurt? Were you bloated? Did you have diarrhea?
• Did you notice that you gained weight after you ate a certain food?

In the future, given similar circumstances, you can make different choices if that is what is needed.  Or, you may be able to look back at your journal and feel a sense of accomplishment for the progress that you have made.  It may also be helpful to look back on previous diet efforts to note what was successful and what was not.

Never Sabotage Your Efforts

Always be positive and do not sabotage your efforts.  There is an old Irish Proverb that says, "It is a wedge of itself that splits the oak tree".  In other words, beware of the enemy within.  If you make a bad food choice, accept it and move on.  Forget about it!  We are all human and no one on earth is perfect!  If you give in to the big, gooey cinnamon roll at breakfast, don't blow it for the whole day.  This type of thinking can easily snowball into: " I messed up at breakfast, so I might as well mess up at lunch.  Since the whole day is shot, I might as well mess up for dinner."  This is a long way from one cinnamon roll at breakfast. 

Bad Eating Habits Are Often A Symptom of Other Problems

Remember that making a mindful choice isn't just about making the best food choice.  It is about being in touch with your feelings so that you know why you are making the choices that you make.  The key is to get to the point where you can step back and look at the situation, and choose not to choose.  Your eating habits are probably only the symptoms of other problems.  If you learn to recognise and solve those issues, then the rest will fall into place more easily.  So, don't struggle with the wrong factors.

Should you find that you are in fact eating when you are not hungry, you could be suffering from a Food Addiction Disorder.  If this is the case, you should seek out a doctor who understands and successfully treats those with food obsessions and addictions.  There is still so much to learn about how the brain affects our desire to eat and over-eat.  More and more studies are being conducted that show that some people need medical intervention in the form of medication and counseling in order to achieve long-term recovery from obesity.