Bring curious awareness to your eating experience (before, during, and after) to enable your brain to learn the true reward value of the behavior and effectively change habits. This is the critical behavior change method, as awareness is necessary for your brain to register positive or negative prediction errors.
Identify the trigger, behavior (eating), and the temporary reward (e.g., distraction, numbing) for your habitual eating patterns. Understanding these three components is the first step to working with and changing your habits.
During a meal, pay attention to each bite and notice when the pleasure or reward of eating tapers off. Stop eating when you reach this ‘pleasure plateau’ where your brain indicates you’ve had enough, which is more rewarding than overindulging.
Pay attention to how content (not just satisfied) you feel after eating, especially after overeating. Discontentment helps your brain shift the reward value of that behavior, leading to a natural reduction in the habit over time.
Integrate informal awareness practices into your daily eating, starting with curiosity about why, what, and how you are eating. These informal practices can be highly effective and can even inspire a more formal meditation practice.
Compare the felt experience of old, unrewarding habits (e.g., overeating) with new, more rewarding behaviors (e.g., stopping when full, eating healthy food). Your brain will naturally gravitate towards options that are genuinely more rewarding.
Use a checklist of symptoms and consider when you last ate to differentiate between physiological hunger and emotional triggers (stress, boredom) before eating. This helps calibrate your awareness to understand why you are reaching for food.
Remove distractions, put down your fork between bites, and pay full attention to the taste and experience of your food. This enhances enjoyment and helps you differentiate between healthy foods and ‘chemical craveogenic materials’ like highly processed snacks.
Be aware of emotions like hunger, anger, loneliness, and tiredness (HALT) as they make you less likely to resist cravings and can trigger habitual emotional eating. These emotional states can lead to ‘hedonic hunger’ where you eat for soothing rather than physiological need.
Recognize that anxiety can trigger stress eating, where eating provides a temporary distraction or numbing, reinforcing the habit loop. Understanding this mechanism allows you to address the habit directly rather than just the emotion.
Do not rely on willpower or external diet rules (e.g., calorie counting, specific food restrictions) for long-term eating habit change. Willpower is often more myth than muscle, and such approaches frequently lead to yo-yo dieting and eventual failure.
Shift your focus from intentional weight loss to changing your relationship with food. By paying attention and stopping when full, natural weight normalization may occur without the toxic enterprise of obsessively trying to wrench your body into a certain shape.
Listen to your body’s internal cues to eat what you want, when you want, while tuning into how your body feels and applying gentle nutrition principles. This approach allows your body’s innate wisdom to guide your food choices.
If you eat mindlessly, later recall the emotional or physical consequences (e.g., guilt, a ‘gut bomb’) of that eating episode. This retrospective awareness still counts for learning and helps build your ‘disenchantment database’ with unhealthy behaviors.
Recognize that self-judgment and self-loathing are unpleasant emotions that can trigger or exacerbate unhealthy eating habits, sometimes leading to a cycle of binging. Practice self-kindness and self-compassion instead, as shame blocks learning.
Understand whether you are feeding a ‘want’ (e.g., temporary distraction from an emotion) or a genuine ’need’ (e.g., emotional support). Food only provides temporary relief for wants and cannot fulfill deeper emotional needs.
Cultivate awareness to develop an ‘unforced freedom of choice’ in your eating, allowing your body’s wisdom to guide you toward more rewarding and healthier options. This contrasts with the ‘food jail’ created by external rules.
If you choose to eat typically ‘unhealthy’ foods, do so mindfully, paying attention to the experience. You may find that a small amount is satisfying, or that you become disenchanted with them, rather than needing to follow strict food rules.
Recognize that ‘failing’ to pay attention is normal and not a reason for self-judgment. Use these instances as opportunities to learn from the subsequent physical and emotional feelings, reinforcing healthier preferences over time.
In social situations, pause eating during conversations, take mindful bites during lulls, or invite others to a shared exploration of the food to maintain awareness. This allows you to stay present with your eating even amidst distractions.
To change an eating habit, focus on the habit itself in the present moment, rather than solely on past traumas or childhood history. Habits are reinforced and un-reinforced based on what happens in the present.
Recognize and resist manipulation by food companies that engineer foods to be irresistible, and by cultural messages promoting unrealistic aesthetic standards. Empower yourself through awareness and by listening to your own body’s signals.
If past trauma leads to dissociation from your body and makes awareness difficult, consider trauma-informed therapy to help release its effects. This can be a crucial step in being able to fully engage with awareness-based eating practices.
Recognize that individual habit change is impacted by social determinants of health, such as access to healthy food. Advocate for policy-level changes that promote healthier food options and reduce the prevalence of cheap, unhealthy alternatives.