You live in a society surrounded by food and advertisements driving you to eat. Life is not as simple as in the caveman days where you would need to hunt and gather for food and go for period of famine.
Triggers for eating can be classified into two main categories. First is the physiological hunger and the other is the psychological hunger. Physiological hunger is when you have gone a period of a few hours without eating and you feel your stomach sending you signals to eat. If you continue to prolong this period of fasting, you may have noticed this feeling can become quite strong.
The other type of hunger is the psychological drive to eat. This drive can happen even though you are not actually hungry. Psychological drives to eat can be triggered by emotional triggers like happiness, sadness, or anger. The reason behind this is that food is a natural mood enhancer.
Another trigger can be social triggers such as being offered a cake at a birthday celebration at your workplace, and it can seem rude to turn down the food. This can make it a difficult trigger to avoid. The third is environmental triggers like seeing food being cooked and smelling the aromas of food.
Other triggers could be always making sure you finish all the food on your plate or always having dessert after dinner because that is what you have always done.
Take home message: It is important to structure your eating to help you manage your physical hunger in the healthiest way possible. Secondly, creating strategies to help reduce the likelihood of falling victim to the psychological hunger. If you are not sure on what you need in your diet to create a balanced diet, or how to work around your psychological hunger then reach out to the Dietitian at Feed Your Future Dietetics.
