What's your eating style?

Editorial written by Jenny Craig

Eating style

Food means different things to different people

Food nourishes the body, pleases the taste buds, and comforts the soul. Experiences throughout your life have been shaping your relationship with food from your childhood mealtime rituals, to your school nutrition class, to your past dieting attempts. All of these things can influence your food choices today.

You also eat for a variety of reasons. It may be in response to internal cues, like

  • physical hunger
  • emotions.

It may be in response to external cues such as

  • time
  • place
  • social activities
  • specific events.

Your eating style reflects some of your individual experiences, eating cues and habits, and can help you identify the strategies that will work for you.

Take the quiz...

Take the quiz and see what your eating style is:

  1. You think of certain foods as "bad" and try to cut them out to lose weight:
    Yes No
     
  2. When dining out, you know you need to control portions, but you have no idea what normal looks like:
    Yes No
     
  3. You need some ideas for healthy recipes:
    Yes No
     
  4. You often crave certain foods in response to feeling excited, anxious, bored or upset:
    Yes No
     
  5. After a tiring day or a stressful situation, you feel like you deserve a treat even if you're not actually hungry:
    Yes No
     
  6. If you have had an argument with someone, you're more likely to binge eat than take a walk or confide in a friend:
    Yes No
     
  7. On a busy day, you may eat lunch in the car or at your desk and later can't remember what you actually ate:
    Yes No
     
  8. You usually eat everything on your plate regardless of how much is served:
    Yes No
     
  9. You usually have something to eat or drink while watching TV or while at the movies:
    Yes No
     
  10. When dining out, your meal choice is influenced by the choices of your companions:
    Yes No
     
  11. When dining with friends, you find it difficult to say "no" to the host's offer of food:
    Yes No
     
  12. You tend to overindulge when celebrating a holiday, birthday or other special event:
    Yes No
     
Question If you answered Your eating style is
1- 3 Yes to at least 2 out of 3 Uninformed eater
4 - 6 Yes to at least 2 out of 3 Emotional eater
7- 9 Yes to at least 2 out of 3 Unconscious eater
10 -12 Yes to at least 2 out of 3 Social eater

Note: It's possible to have up to 4 eating styles. If your answers did not indicate one of the above styles, it means you are a Balanced Eater.

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Uninformed eater

Goal: Learn about healthy food choices.

Focus on a healthy, non-diet approach

When it comes to healthy eating for weight loss, you have the best of intentions. You're up on the latest diets, in fact, you've tried a lot of them. You may be very interested in nutrition and motivated to eat healthier.

Or, you may have a set of "dieting" habits that you think support weight loss, but you're not getting any closer to your goal. These habits may include cutting out carbs, counting fat grams or eliminating your favourite foods. In fact, your efforts to restrict "bad" foods may backfire on you, as it's tough to follow restrictive plans for very long, and the "rebound" overeating that often occurs leaves you weighing more than before.

Mastering uninformed eating

The good news is you don't have to do anything extreme to reach your goals. Experts say that successful weight loss is a matter of kilojoule control, and the key to kilojoule control is portion control.

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Unconscious eater

Goal: Develop self-awareness.

Ask yourself: Do I need...

  • food to nourish me?
  • physical activity to reenergise me?
  • rest to rejuvenate me?
  • to talk to express my emotions?
  • relaxation to soothe my tension?
  • a deep breath to restore calm?
  • food to satisfy me or is there an alternative?

Focus on self-awareness

In a busy, stressful world, it's easy to see how you might develop the habit of unconscious eating, where you're not truly aware of how much or even what you're eating over the course of the day. As an unconscious eater, you typically miss meals, eat meals while doing other things, or just graze your way throughout the day. You might even find yourself eating something just because "it's there," or because you grew up in a family where everyone just naturally "cleaned their plate". If so, know that you're not alone. The first step to a new relationship with food is self-awareness, understanding your current patterns, so that you can make healthy changes and actually enjoy the pleasure of eating more.

Mastering unconscious eating

Begin to notice your hunger and satisfaction signals, be aware of portion size and the mix of foods on your menu, and truly be present to enjoy the experience of eating. Over time, you'll be amazed at the difference it makes in both the quantity and the quality of what you choose to eat.

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Emotional eater

Goal: Learn to eat in response to your hunger cues.

Focus on breaking the cycle

One of the most difficult challenges many weight managers face is trying to eat healthier when experiencing strong emotions. Like many emotional eaters, you may resort to food to calm, soothe, or even quash your feelings. In the moment, you may not respond to your physical hunger cues, or even care as much about your healthy eating goal. Instead, you may feel driven by the emotional need to feel comforted. If you do have a slip, you might feel upset and guilty about it, and those negative feelings might lead to a binge or giving up on your plan. In fact, one reason you may overeat in response to emotions is that you're overly restrictive with what you eat. Establishing a regular pattern of eating and avoiding depriving yourself of your favourite foods can be helpful.

Mastering emotional eating

To break the cycle, it's important to understand the link between your emotions, thoughts and actions. For example if you feel yourself being swept away in a sea of emotions and heading straight for food, re-gain control by mentally telling yourself to "STOP!" and ask yourself what you really need.

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Social eater

Goal: Balance the pleasure of eating with healthy choices.

Focus on planning for social situations

If you're a social eater, you struggle with a variety of people, places and events that tempt you to eat. Most likely, you find it difficult to say "no" when offered a favourite dish, both because the food is so appetising and you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. You love to dine out.

In the moment, when everyone else is so spontaneous in their choices, you follow their lead, and you end up eating not what you'd planned on. Additionally no matter where you go, it seems like portions are huge, but everyone else is eating the same portion, so you do too. You are committed to your weight loss goals, but you also don't want to deprive yourself of the pleasure of dining out, entertaining and spending time with others.

Not to worry, you can do both. It just takes some skills, strategies and information to navigate your way past the super-size portions and hidden kilojoules you'll find in many restaurant offerings.

Mastering social eating

You'll have to learn strategies for making smart restaurant selections, as well as secrets to enjoying social situations without feeling left out. The Jenny Craig Dining Out Success Guide is filled with information on how/what to eat in a variety of fast food/sit-down restaurants, even if all the nutrition facts are not available.

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