Have you ever thought about what triggers your eating? Hunger isn’t the only reason people eat. Efforts to make healthy eating choices can be sabotaged by eating due to other reasons, such as emotions or thinking patterns.
Try this quiz and see if it helps in identifying your eating habits.
Each number represents the degree each situation is more likely to make you start eating 1-10, 1 being Very Unlikely to 10 being Very Likely
- SOCIAL
- 1.) Being Around Others While Eating.
- 2 .) Arguing or Being in Conflict With Someone
- 3.) Being Urged to Eat by Someone Else
- 4.) The Feeling of Inadequacy Around Others.
- EMOTIONAL
- 5.) Feeling Badly, Such as Anxious or Depressed.
- 6.) Feeling Good, Happy, or Relaxed.
- 7). Having Time on Your Hands or Being Bored.
- 8.) Feeling Stressed or Excited
- SITUATIONAL
- 9.) Seeing an Advertisement for Food or Eating.
- 10.) Passing by a Bakery, Cookie Shop, or Fast Food.
- 11.) Being Involved in a Party, Special Occasion or Celebration.
- 12.) Eating Out.
- THINKING
- 13.) Making Excuses to Myself That it is Ok to Eat.
- 14.) Berating Myself for Being So Fat or Unable to Control My Eating.
- 15.) Worrying About Others or the Difficulty I am having.
- 16.) Thinking About How Things Should be Different.
- PHYSIOLOGICAL
- 17.) Experiencing Discomfort or Pain.
- 18.) Experiencing Trembling, Lightheadedness, Headache Associated With Not Eating or Too Much Caffeine.
- 19.) Feeling Fatigued or Overtired.
- 20.) Experiencing Urges to Eat or Hunger Pains, Eventho I’ve Already Eaten.
- SCORING - Total your numbers for each category and mark each category with “1″ next to the highest score and “2″ and so on. Focus on the highest-ranked areas first, but any score above 24 is high and shows that you need to work on that area.
- CATEGORIES
- SOCIAL (Items 1-4) _______________,
- EMOTIONAL (Items 5-8) ________________,
- SITUATIONAL (Items 13-16) _______________,
- THINKING (Items 13-16) ______________
- PHYSIOLOGICAL (Items 17-20) _________________.
- Social: Try reducing your tendency to the influence of others by communicating more assertively and rethinking about the obligations you feel you must fulfill.
- Emotional: Develop stress-management skills and practice positive self-talk to cope with emotions in ways that do not involve food.
- Situational: Work on controlling your environment and have a plan for handling external cues.
- Thinking: Change your thinking – be less self-critical and be more flexible – to recognize rationalizations and excuses about eating behaviors..
- Physiological: Look at the way you eat, what you eat and medications to find ways these factors may be affecting your eating behaviors.
~ It is easier to fix a problem, once we are able to identify there is a problem. Identifying that there is a problem is one step closer to getting to where we want to be.~
