Managing Your Food Cues

One of the keys to weight loss success is to learn to manage how much you eat and what you eat. Ideally, we only take in as many calories as our bodies need to stay energized and healthy. Unfortunately, most of us often find ourselves eating far more than we actually need and gaining or failing to lose weight as a result.

Why do we eat?

In a perfect world, we would only eat when we’re physically hungry. Our bodies are designed to tell us when we need food by triggering signs of physical hunger, such as a growling stomach or feeling of light-headedness. However, many of us find ourselves being triggered to eat by other cues that are psychological, social, or environmental.

Psychological cues to eat may include feeling sad, lonely, or bored. It can be difficult to tell the difference between a psychological cue and a physical cue to eat because eating in response to psychological cues is often a deeply ingrained habit that we’ve formed over time. Try keeping a journal of when you eat and how you’re feeling when you eat. You may be able to recognize a pattern and identify what your specific psychological food cues are, which will make it easier for you to break your emotional eating habits.

Social cues to eat occur when the people you surround yourself with affect what, when, and how much you eat. For example, you may tend to overeat whenever you’re at a party. Perhaps you’ve developed a habit of having a big lunch with your co-workers and splurging on French fries together. Again, keeping a food journal can help you recognize if social factors, rather than physical hunger, are causing you to eat. If you find that you’re susceptible to social cues, try doing activities with your friends that don’t revolve around food.

External cues include triggers found in your environment. If you’re keeping a food journal, you may notice that you always overeat at a certain time of day or that certain activities, like cooking dinner or watching TV, tend to make you feel hungry. Maybe you notice that the simple act of driving by a fast food restaurant makes you crave a burger and fries. You may find that you can avoid certain external cues or that simply becoming more aware of their effect on you makes it easier to resist the urge to eat.