I am a chaotic unconscious eater.
Here is a picture of my day with food. I have no plan for breakfast and I don’t wake up hungry. I guzzle two cups of coffee and then try to go exercise or clean up my house or do some work and then boom it is 10:00 and I am about to eat my own hand. I’ll eat vending machine food at the gym or run through Starbucks or head into the grocery store for pretzels and hummus. It is hard for me to recall what I ate in the last 24 hours. Did I have a granola bar when I was reading that Berenstain Bears book to my four year old at 2 pm? I honestly can’t remember. My days are chaotic by nature because of my stage of life, but my eating does not have to be…
How did I address this issue with my eating?
1. Recognize it! I read through the different types of eaters in Intuitive Eating.
2. I identified the types that resonated with me (it was pretty obvious).
3. I decided I didn’t really give myself the chance to enjoy food and I was sad about that.
4. I experimented with eating without chaos. I tried to eat one unchaotic meal a day.
5. I did NOT, I repeat, DID NOT make a goal around this. This was about getting curious., not about fixing myself in 6 weeks and never eating chaotically again. I will never be a perfect eater. For perfectionists, goals with rules aren't always a good thing!
So what about you?
Here are other types of eaters as outlined in the book Intuitive Eating.
The Careful Clean Eater
You are a particular eater and spend a lot of time carefully planning out your meals, worrying about what you should eat or shouldn’t eat.
The Professional Dieter
You are frequently using a different eating plan in order to lose weight. This motivates most of your choices. You often wake up hoping today is going to be a “good eating day.”
The Unconscious Eater
Type 1: The Chaotic Unconscious Eater- see a day in my eating above
Type 2: The Refuse- Not Unconscious Eater You just eat the food that is around. Anything and everything. You eat without thinking about eating as another thing to do. If there are donuts out at work, you eat them because they are there and it doesn’t always match up with being hungry.
Type 3: The Waste-Not Unconscious Eater You eat your kid’s leftovers and your leftovers and you finish all that food until it is gone. Food costs money! We shouldn’t waste it. You eat it because you should eat it, not necessarily because you are hungry.
Type 4: The Emotional Unconscious Eater You had a bad day at work so you stop by fast food for comfort at the end of the day even though you are not hungry and you have not identified why you want to eat that fast food.
The Intuitive Eater
Ta Da! Let’s get curious about this eater. Here is a great definition straight from the book. I can’t say it better than Evelyn Tribole or Elyse Resch.
“Intuitive Eaters march to their inner hunger signals and eat whatever they choose in a satisfying way, without experiencing guilt or an ethical dilemma.”
Once you figure out what type of eater you are, you may want to ask yourself if the way you are eating is working for you. If it isn't, let's get curious about what might be driving you to eat in this way.
Thanks for thinking about this with me.
Comments