Evaluating Your Eating Style

Our eating style very much influences the way we relate to food. Identifying our specific eating style helps us to better understand what drives or motivates us to eat. Are we motivated by emotions, an insatiable need to limit or restrict our intake or are we purely responding to hunger and satiety cues?


Three (3) main eating styles can be identified. They are Attuned Eating, Deprivation Driven Eating (aka Dieting) and Emotional Eating. Attuned Eating basically means that you recognize and listen to your natural, internal hunger/fullness cues allowing them to guide your eating. Unlike the other eating styles, attuned eating has no other agenda. There is no using food to compensate for anything else, the pressure to label food as "good" or "bad", the need to try to surpress hunger etc.. You don't ignore hunger, you eat what you want, and stop when full without emotional pain, guilt or stress.

It is important to recognize that food is just one component of a healthy, fulfilling life. Healthy living is about body, mind and soul including everything from our relationships, how we care for ourselves, our level of self-confidence, our social interactions and recreational activities etc. Therefore, it is important that we become aware of what eating style we are practicing daily, so that we can better address the factors which may be negatively impacting our relationship with our food.

To better understand Attuned Eating and how all the three eating styles compare to each other please refer to this table from Nourishing Connections explaining everything in much more detail. Nourishing Connections is a non-diet intervention approach to weight management, nutrition and well being.



To Your Enjoyable and Guilt-Free Food Experiences,




NOTE: Next time I will discuss recognizing the difference between physical activity and regimented exercise aimed at achieving a defined weight, and also incorporating effortless activity into daily living. Also, remember to sign up for the 10-Part E-course on How Non-Diet Weight Management Can Work for You to gain more insight on making eating guilt free and enjoyable.