Why are you eating?

It's a simple question that's often difficult to answer. The next time you move to eat, pause for a moment to ask yourself:

What's really driving this choice?

Is this action serving a need, a want, or a should?

For example:

• A need to eat satisfies biological hunger

• A want to eat satisfies a psychological craving or appetite (e.g., an emotional desire for food)

• A should eat follows an external guideline (e.g., meal times, specific macro or calorie targets, or other social expectations)

It can be difficult to separate need from want or should. Often, the physical hunger and fullness signals of needing to eat can get drowned out by "noise".

For example, noise can be in the form of:

1. What we think.

   "It's 1 PM. I guess I should eat, even though I'm not hungry. After all, it's lunch time."

2. What we feel.

   "What an awful day. I deserve a treat!"

3. What's around us.

   "Mmmm, that bakery smells soooo good!"

4. What other people think or want.

   "Grandma will be mad at me if I don't have some of her fruitcake!"

It's not your fault—that "eat now!" noise can be loud and demanding.

When you can't turn off the noise, often the best you can do is tune in to something else.

To dial down the noise, focus on tuning in to the meaningful signals.

Pause to notice and name. Try to get specific about the situation.

What messages are telling you that you need to, want to, or should eat? Are they thoughts or felt body sensations?

Studying the difference between need, want, and should

The clues to understanding what's driving you are in the form of a felt sense of body signals: physical, emotional, and thought sensations.

What's your experience made of right now?

• What are you feeling physically? (e.g., shaky, lightheaded, tense, etc., especially through hormonal shifts)

• What are you feeling emotionally? (e.g., happy, cranky, rushed)

• What and how are you thinking? (e.g., thinking on a continuum, with self-compassion, settled vs racing thoughts)

Why?

What are the circumstances that are creating that experience for you?

• What are you doing with your body? (e.g., your posture, movement and breath)

• What's in your immediate environment? (e.g., visuals, sounds, smells, foods, people, or lights; are you outdoors or indoors?)

• Who's in your environment? (e.g., how do certain people change your experience?)

• What time pressures are you feeling?

• What relationship pressures are you feeling?

• What responsibility pressures are you feeling?

First, try to observe objectively without changing or fixing anything.

These are reactions that happen primarily outside of conscious awareness. The sooner you become aware of the sensations, the more sense they'll start to make. As you dial-in to the source of those sensations, the clearer you'll understand deeper motivations and the differences between need, want, and should. Each has different sets of sensations.

Awareness leads to understanding, leads to changing.

A story of how it works

Below is a client story of how this method can work.

My biggest lesson has been the art of the pause, or noticing and naming. I had been following healthy habits, eating well, working out. Then I went to the movie theatre. Despite my pre-movie pep talk, I found myself in the concession line. Even as I was standing there, I kept repeating "You don't want this, you don't want this."

Fast forward 20 minutes, and I'm eating the popcorn. I felt lousy, physically and mentally. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what drove the entire experience. Chalk it up to habituated response.

A few months later, I went to another movie. I had the same feelings of apprehension going into the theatre. I told myself to just enjoy the smell of the popcorn in the lobby. Let it sink in. So I did.

As I breathed the stuff in, I noticed a strange feeling in the pit of my belly. I can only describe it as the feeling of need—the need to be loved, the need to be comforted, the need to feel secure.

Hmmm... all this from the smell of popcorn?

By pausing and really noticing what was going on in my head, in my body and in my emotions I was able to see the need behind the need. I was able to sit with that weird mix of emotions and I was able to see clearly that this was a need that movie popcorn could truly never fulfill.

Today, pay attention to all the internal and external cues you notice.

What signals tell you that you need to eat today?

What signals tell you that you want to eat today?

What signals tell you that you should eat today?

Are you hungry right now?

How do you know?

Take a moment. Check in.

Put your hand on your stomach. What do you feel?

Do you need to eat right now?

Do you want to eat right now?

Do you feel like you should eat right now?

If you’re not sure, you're not alone. In a modern world, it’s easy to forget what it's like to feel truly physically hungry (or satisfied).

What's hunger?

Hunger can be uncomfortable, or scary even.

Hunger can bring worries, like …

What if I'm going to die? What if I can't tolerate this empty feeling?

You can tolerate the feeling.

If you're under 2-3 weeks without food, you won't die.

Hunger comes and goes in waves. Discomfort is temporary.

Breathe to relax through it.

Pause, observe it for a few minutes. Ask yourself,

• Right now, are you physically hungry or satisfied? What are the body cues that would tell you?

Then move on accordingly.

Like this...

"Man, I could totally go for a cheeseburger right now! This is a serious craving! Huh. That's interesting. Am I really hungry? [waiting] Kind of. OK, I'll wait a little while longer and see how it goes."

Practice patience

At first, pausing may feel weird or unsettling.

Be patient with yourself.

Eventually using your physical appetite cues to get to just satisfied will start to feel awesome. You'll finish every meal feeling leaner and lighter, instead of bogged down, burpy, and bloated.

That awareness and understanding is powerful. It feels like freedom.

It feels like you know your body, and that you're in a comfortable, agreeable partnership together.

You won't need a food scale, measuring cups, calculator, calorie counter, or any strict "food rules". You'll have your body and your own awareness.

The self-regulation skills of eating are:

• eating slowly and mindfully

• eating to satisfied

Practicing and knowing those is fundamental to every other external guideline and food rule.

What body cues tell you that you're physically hungry?

What body cues tell you that you're NOT physically hungry?

What does it mean to "know why you're eating?"

The practice is about:

1. pausing before you eat, to be present with your actions and motivations.

2. observing your intentions for eating.

   Asking yourself:

   • Are you eating for biological needs?

   • Are you eating for psychological needs?

   • Is this choice bringing you more joy and ease?

3. accepting the motivation, whatever it is.

Awareness-building is the main goal of this practice. After you check in with yourself honestly, whatever next choice you make is ok.

Why and how to practice

Eating is primal.

In the life of a human, eating is one of the few non-negotiables.

We move, socialize, sleep, and eat. The rest is details.

We eat for the obvious (awesome) reasons. Obviously, food is fuel. Eating is comforting, settling, energizing, engaging and fun.

And we sometimes eat for less obvious, more subconscious reasons. Like fear, anxiety, stress, boredom or procrastination.

No matter what the underlying motivation is, the key point is: there's a reason. If you understand the deeper reasoning, every action makes sense.

Every action is an attempt to solve a problem.

And understanding the underlying rationale makes changing that action easier.

We have both biological and psychological appetites.

Humans eat for two primary reasons:

1. biological needs (such as maintaining or physical functioning)

2. psychological needs (such as after an exciting or stressful event)

Both are legitimate and necessary needs.

Rather than diminishing or restricting any particular reason for eating, this practice is about simply becoming more aware.

Without a right or wrong answer, what's driving you to eat?

Whether biologically or psychologically driven, what problem are your actions solving for you?

Are you eating for biological needs?

Eating for biological needs means eating according to hunger and appetite signals.

For example, physical hunger can feel like:

• physical emptiness in your stomach

• low energy or fatigue

• feeling cold or unclear thinking

• feeling emotionally anxious or irritable from hunger (hangry)

Being clued in to the details of what biological hunger feels like requires listening to your body.

It's a complex art to learn to listen.

It’s not always clear and easy. The same signals that feel like hunger could actually be something else.

The same signals that feel like hunger could actually be something else.

For example, hunger can feel very similar to signals of stress, exercise, or fatigue from lack of sleep.

In those cases, eating may not be the best action to satisfy those needs (In those cases, maybe you could use a different type of R&R.)

How do you know?

To deepen your skills at reading body signals and identifying hunger, you can practice asking yourself questions.

Do your hunger signals persist and intensify, or fade away?

Try to wait and notice what happens. Then decide what to do next.

Would you expect to be feeling hunger right now?

If the feeling seems to be out of whack with what you would normally expect, assess your bigger picture of deep health.

• Have you been eating appropriate nutrients, at appropriate times for you?

• Are you hydrated?

• Have you been moving regularly?

• Have you been sleeping regularly?

• How are your relationships?

• Have you made any major changes in your environment or routine lately?

There's a lot to consider.

You have a lot of tools within reach to change the way you feel. Food is only one of those tools (a powerful one). It takes time, practice, and persistence to learn to use it wisely as the best response for your body's needs.

A sustainable food relationship is in balance.

Feeling settled and at peace with whatever food choices you make is less about right and wrong, and more about awareness and balance.

As you become more aware of motivations, you can be better at creating the eating experiences that are positive and energizing for you, rather than being left feeling regretful or shameful.

As you become more aware, you can intentionally build the relationship with food that’s right for you: your lifestyle and your goals.

Balance means the opposite of all-or-nothing extremes.

For example, extreme motivations may show up as:

• Food is purely nutrient fuel, with no emotional comfort.

If you strive to eat for exclusively biological reasons and erase a psychological component, you’ll likely have a struggle.

Food has deeply inherent connections with emotional feelings of comfort and pleasure. You’ll have to make a conscious effort to curb those comforting feelings. That’s probably a recipe for stress, restriction, and confusion.

• Food is purely comfort, without an intellectual understanding of nutritional essentials.

The other extreme end of the spectrum is if reasons for eating are always more psychologically-based and emotionally-driven.

Nutrition science knows that specific types and quantities of nutrients have specific effects on thinking, mood, and performance. Those effects aren’t always felt or obvious immediately. If you’re driven entirely by feelings in the moment, you may miss the longer-term effects that certain ways of eating are having in your life.

A healthy relationship is in your unique balance of both biological and psychological reasons for eating.

Being extreme in any one of those factors will likely lead to set-backs.

There’s no right prescription for eating.

The right answer is the one that works for you.

If you’re clear on the why behind your actions in every moment, there are never any wagons to fall off of, nothing to make up for, and no regrets. While you're aware and choosing purposefully, you always have a clean slate.