4 Reasons Why We Eat
THIS MAY SEEM like a simple question, but I’ll ask it anyway: Why do you eat? In other words, what triggers you to put food in your mouth? List your answers in your journal. ACTIVITY: Take 24 hours and write down everything you eat. No need to focus on amounts or even what the food is. Just focus on the WHY. If you are unsure pause and dig deeper. The answer may be as simple as “it’s in front of me.”
If physical hunger is not driving your eating, then you are eating for some other reason. If you aren’t even hungry, then saying no to food should be easy, right? Wrong! Why is that? It’s because we’ve programmed ourselves to eat for all kinds of reasons other than hunger and the need for physical nourishment. We normally don’t even think about why we are eating. I call this eating on autopilot. We eat when we are offered food so that we don’t offend the person offering it to us. We eat because the food smells or looks delicious. We eat because the clock says it’s time to eat. We overeat because the plate still has food on it. Most of our reasons for eating can be put into one or two of the following four categories.
Physical hunger feeds the body. The other three feed the mind.
Food was never intended to feed the mind.
If keeping a food log for one day was eye opening to you I recommend you continue this for several more days. What do you notice? Journal your insight.
When you are ready move on to the next step.
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