What’s your eating style? Have you even considered whether you have one?
Eating mindfully is a powerful practice that can potentially change your life and your health. It’s a way of being present with your food and cultivating awareness about the why, when, what, how, where, and how much you eat.
When I coach my clients and workshops in mindful eating, I start by helping them to identify their eating style.
3 Common Eating Styles
Before we explore these three common styles of eating, I want to reiterate that this is not about labelling or shaming. You can find yourself in different cycles of eating throughout your life. These cycles do not define you. You may or may not have a desire to change them!
Mindful eating is all about bringing awareness to food habits that you may not realize are driving the why, how, when, where, what and how much of your food intake. If you’d like to be more conscious around eating, identifying what’s happening now is the most powerful place to begin.
Instinctive Eating
Instinctive eaters manage their eating effortlessly, like young children. The good news is that we all started out this way!
You may be in an instinctive eating cycle if you:
- Eat when you’re hungry (you just know when your body needs food)
- Stop when you’re satisfied (even if there is food left on your plate)
- Eat whatever you want (hopefully making healthy choices)
- Live an active lifestyle (this may or may not involve a regular exercise program).
Overeating
Overeating means eating more food than what your body needs. This cycle can occur when you’re eating in response to physical, environmental, or emotional cues.
You may be in an overeating cycle if you:
- Eat due to external and emotional triggers
- Are food-focused
- Eat to excess
- View exercise as punishment for overeating.
Restrictive Eating
Restrictive eating means that you control your eating and exercise with great rigidity. This type of eating is often seen in dieting.
You may be in a restrictive eating cycle if you:
- Are preoccupied with food and your weight
- See food as good or bad
- See yourself as good or bad depending on what you ate or what you weigh
- Exercise very rigidly, or even excessively.
Become Aware of your Eating Style Using Mindful Eating Principles
Did you identify aspects of yourself in any of the 3 eating styles above?
The next step is to examine your eating habits using the Mindful Eating Cycle. This is a method for examining the why, when, what, how, where, and how much you eat.
I would love to guide you through this process:
Join me for a FREE online masterclass to learn the basics of mindful eating, how it can radically transform your health, and even help you to lose weight.
REGISTER NOW: EAT MINDFULLY AND LOSE WEIGHT – THURSDAY 26TH MAY 2022 – ONLINE VIA ZOOM
Places are strictly limited, so save your spot now!
Prefer 1:1 personalized wellness support? Schedule a free health breakthrough session with me now so we can look at your current approaches to food and nutrition.
I’d also love for you to join my mailing list so I can invite you to my next mindful eating workshop.
You can read more of my blogs on mindful eating here.
