No matter what point you are at in your intuitive eating journey, recognizing your current eating habits is a good starting point so that you can determine where you want to go from here. Exploring how you eat, when you eat, and what you eat can help you decide whether you are adequately fueling your body or if there is still some restriction at play.
Within the intuitive eating realm, there are four broad categories of different eating personalities: (1) the unconscious eater, (2) the professional dieter, (3) the careful eater, and (4) the intuitive eater. In this blog post, I will break down each of these eating patterns so that you can decide which one(s) resonates with you.
The Unconscious Eater
Unconscious eaters – aka mindless eaters – are those eaters that often find themselves distracted by other tasks while snacking. If you find it a habit to reach for a bag of chips while watching a television show – you are probably an unconscious eater. There are four subcategories of unconscious eaters:
- The Chaotic Unconscious Eater
Picture this: you’re a busy mom on the move, or perhaps you have a hectic work schedule and are constantly jumping from one task to another. If this sounds like you, you may be a chaotic unconscious eater. Chaotic unconscious eats are the types of eaters who realize they haven’t eaten in six hours and will grab whatever is readily available without thinking about their food choices. The longer you go without eating, the more your blood sugar levels will drop – causing increased cravings for those simple carbohydrates (i.e., cookies, chips, or crackers).
- The Emotional Unconscious Eater
Emotional eaters use food as a coping mechanism to distract from feelings of stress or discomfort. Maybe you are going through hard times and are using food as a source of comfort. This is totally normal because food has always provided some sort of comfort to us – all the way back to when we were babies crying for milk! Food will always be there to provide comfort for us, but it is good to identify other coping mechanisms to turn to during times of emotional stress. If you want to learn more about emotional eating, check out our blog post entitled Coping with Emotional Eating!
- The Refuse-Not Unconscious Eater
If you find it difficult to say “no” to foods placed before you, you might be a refuse-not unconscious eater. These eaters will indulge in foods because they are in their presence, not because they are physically hungry.
- The Waste-Not Unconscious Eater
If you grew up in the “clean your plate” club, this might pertain to you. These eaters often overeat at a restaurant for the sake of getting their money’s worth while ignoring their hunger signals. Disregarding your fullness cues can leave you feeling unwell, uncomfortable, and unfulfilled.
The Professional Dieter
From the Cabbage Soup Diet and the Atkins diet to Weight Watchers and Noom – there has been an overwhelming amount of fad diets over the years. The professional dieter is constantly hopping from one diet to the next, usually becoming stuck in that endless cycle of weight loss followed by weight gain, aka yo-yo dieting. Remember, if a diet sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
The Careful Eater
Careful eaters may not follow a specific diet but are quick to analyze nutrition labels, obsess over the sugar content of snacks, and are all around very careful about what they put in their bodies. If you only eat certain foods in the name of health or eliminate certain food groups from your diet, you may be a careful eater. This may begin as a simple interest in healthy eating, but can evolve into a food preoccupation, all under the guise of “clean” eating. Some careful eaters develop an obsession with only eating the foods they deem as healthy; this may be indicative of orthorexia nervosa.
The Intuitive Eater
Intuitive eaters remove the mortality tied to foods and grant themselves unconditional permission to eat all foods. They respect and honor their cravings by listening to their hunger and fullness cues. Intuitive eaters recognize that they know what’s best for their bodies – not their great aunt, a fitness influencer on TikTok, or the new trendy fad diet.
With all of that being said, what type of eater are you? You may resonate with one of these personalities, none of them, or even ALL of them at one point or another. No matter where your eating habits fall right now, you can make peace with food and relearn how to trust your body.
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