Why Do You Eat? Exploring Intention Behind Eating Habits

Have you ever thought about why you eat? Of course you need food to survive, that’s a given. But food can be so much more than that. And if you have any addictive tendencies (and who doesn’t?), food can be a problem. Knowing why you eat helps you control your behavior.

So let’s look at why you eat.

Hunger

Hunger is a universal reason to eat. All animals consume nutrition in some form, from single celled creatures up through the most advanced primates and mammals. Hunger is the signal that your body gives you when you need to replenish your blood sugar. Our bodies run on glucose (and other nutrients), but glucose is what gives us useable energy. Our brain uses about 20% of our glucose intake, so when fuel is running low, you might notice that your thinking is less clear.

Appetite is a sign of health. The weight loss industry is constantly telling you ways to suppress your appetite, as if being too hungry was the problem. Most of the time it’s not. The problem comes with not understanding or listening to the signals the body gives you and what they mean.

There are different types of hunger, only one of which will become sated with food.

Physical Hunger

With this hunger, your body is lacking nutrients and you need to feed yourself. Your body is seeking energy and once you eat, this hunger goes away for a while. Typically this hunger is felt in the stomach region, and sometimes there is growling or a gnawing sensation associated with it. If you pause and notice the sensation, it might direct you toward certain foods that you need to fulfill the nutritional lack.

This is the only type of hunger that becomes sated with food. You eat, and it goes away. You might experience certain cravings for specific foods. I get steak cravings certain times of the month, or I might crave a salad when I haven’t eaten enough vegetables lately.

Other cravings, like sweet or salty cravings, often come from emotional needs, not physical ones. Sometimes you do need quick energy or more salt, but usually these types of cravings are not about food, they are about feelings.

Emotional Hunger

This hunger will not be sated with food, no matter how much you eat. When you are feeling lonely, bored, stressed, anxious, tired, sad, or something else, often you turn to food to feel better. Unfortunately, no amount of food will make this hunger go away. It might change how you feel temporarily (like with a sugar high), but you will still crave.

I have been an emotional eater for much of my life. When my feelings were big and I didn’t want to feel them, I would eat them. Much of the time I didn’t recognize that I was trying to suppress my feelings, I just needed that bag of cookies, or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and kept eating, even when my stomach was full to bursting. I was still hungry, I needed more.

But that’s the point. I wasn’t physically hungry, I was emotionally hungry. I needed my emotional needs met, and food wasn’t going to do that for me. So despite the fact that my stomach was telling me to stop, there was something else telling me I needed more.

Understanding the difference

Listening to your body is key to knowing what type of hunger you are feeling. As I said, physical hunger is often felt in the abdominal region, whereas emotional hunger isn’t. It might be a feeling in your chest, your throat, maybe even your head. There is an internal sensation of unease and discomfort, but it doesn’t feel like physical hunger. How can you tell?

Pause. It’s in the pause that you find power over yourself.

This does not mean to abstain from food when you are physically hungry. It means take a moment to notice the sensations in your body so that you can proceed from a place of knowing.

When you feel physically hungry, eat. When you feel emotionally hungry, eating won’t help, but going for a walk might. Or journaling, meditation, yoga, talking with a friend, snuggling with your pet, or myriad other possibilities.

When you are feeling emotionally hungry, you might need to ask yourself what you need. If you are quiet and still, you give yourself the opportunity to hear the answer.

Eating for pleasure

Pleasure is something that Western culture doesn’t like to talk about. Food can be pleasurable, but society tells you to feel shame about that. I call bullshit. Pleasure is not something to be ashamed of, it’s part of being a human being. Restricting access to pleasure, in my experience, usually leads to binging later. If you’ve ever been on a restrictive diet (no sugar!) you’ll know what I mean.

Giving yourself permission to derive pleasure from food takes the shame out of it. Shame leads to emotional eating because it feels terrible. Permission makes eating intentional so that you can enjoy your food.

Food tastes good! When you allow yourself to taste and savor food, even “unhealthy” food, you will enjoy the food so much more. You will also typically eat less because you are not trying to suppress your feelings. Permission to enjoy delicious food helps you eat less and find more joy. It all comes down to your mindset.

More Support!

Intentional Eating: Finding Peace and Balance with Your Relationship to Food is a 6 week online program that gives you the tools to discern physical hunger from emotional hunger. Through yoga philosophy and brain science, you will learn ways to have more control over your eating behavior without restriction or shame. No diets, only doable, common sense techniques to help you feel less anxious and more empowered with your eating habits. Knowledge is power! Limited to 5 people, next cohort begins April 23. Click here for more information or to sign up!