What is your eating personality?

Do you ever feel frustrated or confused about food, eating, diets or health? Would you like to better understand your eating habits, and how you could open up to a new way of thinking, feeling or being around food? Well then you might be surprised to learn that the dietary choices you make are more often than not totally unconscious decisions, and that your personality type is in fact the number one driver for your behaviour around food.

As a nutritional therapist, I've observed my fair share of yo-yo dieters and I've come to realise that each of us has a different food personality, individual ways of thinking, feeling and acting around food, for a whole host of varied reasons -- reasons which may not always serve our best interests.

There are countless books written on the subject but it seems that most psychologists agree that the majority of us fall into three main eating personality types. Here is our guide on how to identify your eating style and the common pitfalls associated with it:

The Careful Eater rarely eats anything without a thorough examination of the nutrition label first. Painfully prolonged supermarket trips, waiter interrogation at restaurants and specialised orders are inevitable. Careful eaters tend to be 'perfect eaters', systematically planning each meal and will get stressed if their meal plan gets disrupted.

They are highly nutrition-conscious and will spend most of their waking hours planning out their next meal or snack, often worrying about what to eat. Sometimes careful eaters are guided by time or events.

For example, they are meticulously good all week in order to 'allow' themselves to splurge at the weekend. However, sometimes these splurges can backfire and lead to weight gain.

Common Pitfalls

Careful eaters may not be on a diet but they scrutinise every food situation. The careful eater can run a fine line between being genuinely interested in health and nutrition and eating carefully for the sake of body image. Potential problems occur when healthy eating becomes militant and rigid and eradicates the joy out of various eating situations.

The Professional Dieter is always on some sort of diet. They are well-versed in portion control and calorie counting and will be able to tell you the carbohydrate and fat content of most foods. Unlike careful eaters, professional dieters make it known that every food choice they make is based on weight loss as opposed to nutrition. They're constantly on the hunt for new diet tricks or weight loss gimmicks and are perpetually 'starting' a 'new diet' because the previous one 'didn't work'.

It's not unusual for professional dieters to end up bingeing on 'forbidden' foods because there is always 'tomorrow' to get back on track.

Common Pitfalls

These eaters can often fall into the trap of yo-yo dieting, and their weight tends to go up and down accordingly. Not surprisingly, they tend to feel very frustrated with themselves as they're stuck in a vicious cycle and ultimately don't get results.

This can sometimes lead to use of laxatives, diet pills or diuretics. In the long run, this is not an effective weight management strategy and professional dieters are typically not very healthy. They often fall for misleading diet food labels, choosing foods according to fat content, not nutritional value.

The Unconscious Eater often eats mindlessly and whilst doing another activity at the same time such as watching television or working on their computer. It can be somewhat difficult to identify yourself as this eating type as most of your eating is done unconsciously. There are also many sub types of unconscious eaters as listed below:

>Emotional Unconscious Eater: These eaters turn to food for comfort. Whether happy, stressed, excited, bored or lonely, food is the first thing they will turn to.

Binge eating and emotional eating are not caused by lack of willpower. Instead, they are caused by and unconscious reaction to emotion.

Emotional eaters use food to avoid uncomfortable emotions, because, for many, it was what they learned during childhood.

> Chaotic Unconscious Eater: Maybe due to an overly busy schedule or refusal to plan, this person is constantly making eating decisions based on what is available to them at the time be it fast food, vending machines or leftover snacks. Planning meals is not a priority in their busy schedules so they end up eating haphazardly in a grab and go fashion. They're not tuned into feelings of hunger and often go for long periods of time without eating, so are ravenous when they finally decide to eat.

> Waste-Not Unconscious Eater: Meals deals and buffets were created with this type of eater in mind. Desiring to eat the most they can for the least amount of money is the biggest concern for this eating personality. Fear of discarding food, even when full, will drive this eater to eat all of the food served to them, including other people's leftovers.

Refuse-Not Unconscious Eater: These eaters live a grazing lifestyle, simply not refusing food whenever it's available. They may grab a biscuit unknowingly from the biscuit tin every single time they walk past the office kitchenette.

Hunger doesn't matter. If food is there, they will eat it, it's almost like a knee-jerk reaction.

Common Pitfalls

Unconscious eating in its various forms can be a real problem if it results in chronic overeating and subsequent weight gain. Many unconscious overeaters even report going into a trance-like state when they are overeating.

In other words, they are disassociated or not fully present when they are overeating. This is evident by the fact that they cannot truly feel, in the moment, what they are doing to themselves and to their bodies. What's more, many have trouble even remembering what they ate during such periods.

No matter which category you fall into, identifying your own eating style will allow you to anticipate and counteract potential pitfalls according to your needs. Whether you want to lose weight, gain energy or improve your overall wellbeing, learning moræe about your food personality type can certainly give you a real head start.

Elsa Jones is a qualified nutritional therapist. She offers one-to-one consultations to treat your individual health concerns. www.elsajonesnutrition.ie

Source: http://goo.gl/n4N77