This eating personality is more likely to indulge in feel-good foods or eat past fullness levels when they're in the presence of others vs when they're alone.

There are a few main factors at play here. The first is that food can act as a bonding activity. As humans, we crave connection. And connecting over the yumminess of food is an enjoyable shared experience with friends, family, or your significant other.

Our society's social construct is deeply rooted around food - grabbing lunch with friends, family dinners... However, if you're a social eater, it's easy to get caught up in the social setting. Perhaps you're so involved in the conversation or excitement of being with others, that you mindlessly eat the whole time without even realizing it. Or if you're someone who struggles with social anxiety, food can act as a way to comfort your nerves and put you at ease.

Sometimes a group setting gives us a false sense of "permission" to do things we normally wouldn't do if we were alone. This is where those thoughts come in of, "Well, if they're eating that, then I can eat that..." or "If they're getting seconds, why shouldn't I?" - rather than thinking about the type of nourishment your body is truly desiring at the moment.

Another factor at play with social eaters is a subconscious fear of being judged for not eating what everyone else is eating. This is when those thoughts pop in of, "Will my friends judge me or think I'm going on a diet if I suddenly start ordering healthier options?" or "Will my aunt be offended if I'm the only one who doesn't eat her famous mashed potatoes?"

Fear can also creep in with a hardcore case of FOMO - fear of missing out on the fun and group bonding experience if you're not enjoying the same food or overindulging together. This is often deeply subconscious. A classic example of this is eating takeout with friends and bonding about "being sooo full" while continuing to eat "just one more piece."

Takeaway: When it comes to our eating behavior, it's important to gain a sense of awareness about factors beyond just the food on your plate

Food for thought for social eaters:

Start getting curious about what's driving your eating choices. Take a look at how your eating behavior changes in social situations compared to when you're alone.

1. What emotions come up for you when you're being social that aren't there when you're alone?

2. What is your intention of being social, and how is your current eating behavior adding to/or diminishing the pleasure of that social experience (hint: it's never fun to go out dancing with friends after dinner when you're so uncomfortably full and just want to go home and sit on the couch).

Try this out: The Bell Curve of Pleasure Game

Next time you’re out to dinner with your friends, picture the pleasure of your overall social experience as a bell curve. You get the restaurant and catch up with your friends. Pleasure increases. You look at the menu and started drooling over what you’re about to order. Pleasure increases again. You start eating the delicious food as you laugh with your friends, smiling and appreciating that you’re all together. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. At this point in the night, you’re going up up up on the pleasure bell curve (Woohoo!! You deserve to have fun and enjoy yourself!). Notice how all of the choices you are making until that point are amplifying the amount of pleasure you are experiencing.

If you’re a social eater, you know that typically what happens next is you’re having a great time, and then all of a sudden, you realize you overate or notice you feel a little lethargic/weighed down from whatever you ate. But that’s before you knew about the pleasure bell curve tip.

This time, try to distinguish at what point your eating choices (quantity or quality) might start to take away from the overall pleasure of that night, rather than amplify your experience. Here are two of my favorite questions you can ask yourself so that you can enjoy your food without overeating, making the night as pleasurable as possible:

1. Would I still want to go out dancing with my friends after dinner? (i.e. it’s no fun to continue on with the night when you're so uncomfortably full and just want to go home and sit on the couch).

2. Would I still want to be intimate with my partner in an hour or so from now? Or would I feel too sluggish/full/bloated to even think about it?

Congrats! You fall into one of the most popular categories! Why? The world is stressful, food makes us feel good, and our brains are wired to seek out ways to experience pleasure and comfort when we're feeling unsettled. Now add in the factor that you're a human who experiences a full range of emotions throughout any given day... and it's a recipe for an emotional eating party.

Emotional eating can oftentimes feel out of our control... like our brain is on auto pilot. But the good thing about being an emotional eater is that the neuropathways in your brain that connect what you do with what's pleasurable to you, are not set in stone. Meaning the key to overcoming emotional eating is shifting the neurological connection between what we do and what's pleasurable to us. It's important to note here that we're not taking away the pleasure from food (because who wants to live in a world without chocolate chip cookies...). Instead, we're simply redirecting our response to emotional triggers.

Food for thought:

Start getting curious about what's driving your eating choices. Take a look at how your eating behavior changes when you're in different emotional states.

1. What emotions are most likely to result in you using food as a coping mechanism? (stress, boredom, anger, sadness, anxiety, depression...)

2. What is your intention behind your eating choices/behavior in these moments?

3. How do you feel before, during, and after a session of emotional eating? Does the food actually make you feel better - mentally, physically emotionally? Does it numb you out? Does it make you feel better at first, but worse 20 minutes later?

Try this out:

Start with small behavioral shifts - rather than trying to go cold turkey, start off by choosing healthier options in response to emotional situations, rather than choosing nothing at all. Craving ice cream or cookies after a long, stressful day? Make yourself a thickkk chocolate smoothie bowl or a quick chocolate chip power mug cake to satisfy your craving and make your body feel good at the same time. You will begin to associate feeling better with nourishing activities rather than depleting ones.

Craving something savory? Instead of diving into a bag of chips, try some air popped popcorn with avocado oil, pink himalayan salt, and any other spices you like. You can also make a dessert popcorn option by adding in some dark chocolate! (try out this collapsible microwave popcorn maker… it’s a game changer).

You are what some refer to as an intuitive eater. You listen to your hunger and fullness levels and make food choices based off of what gives you energy vs what takes away. You are allll about the nourishment without sacrificing taste.

Food for thought for harmonious eaters:

Ask yourself what's next for you. You are extremely intuitive and know your body very well...

1. In what other areas of life can you expand upon your intuition muscle?

2. In what ways can you tap into your body's creative expression and innate desire to move and explore?

Try this out:

My favorite way to explore this is through what I like to call "The Wheel of Life" exercise because it helps you zone in on which areas in your life are craving to be more fully expressed or nourished. It takes about 2-5 minutes and really helps give you some insight on where you get to continue to raise your baseline. Check it out!

When the sun goes down, the food comes out. Although this eating personality definitely has some emotional eating components, it is distinct in that most of your food consumption throughout the day happens at night. You are more likely to indulge late at night, with a "I'm going to bed right after this and can almost pretend like it didn't happen when I wake up tomorrow!"

As a night-owl eater, food is a reliable way for you to wind down at the end of the day. If you've been go-go-go all day, this may be the first time your body has had a moment to breathe, and your mind is trying to find a way to relax and escape from all the chaos in your day. With night owls, food can sometimes be viewed as an award for making it through the day. This is the "I deserve this because I just worked my ass off all day" mentality. Or the "Omg, I finally put the kids to bed and have a moment to myself... bring on the ice cream" mentality.

The tricky part for night owls is that feeling of never feeling satisfied. You could eat a bowl of cereal, ice cream, chips, a banana, chocolate, and still feel unsatisfied. Why? Because at that point, regardless of how full you are, your brain's desire for pleasure overrides it, and reaching for that 9 pm snack acts as a quick dopamine boost to do just that.

Food for thought for night owl eaters:

If you find that you're consuming most of your daily food intake at night, it's time to get curious about what's driving your eating choices.

1. How do your cravings change throughout the day?

2. Are you physically hungry when you start eating at night? If so, get curious about when this physical hunger gradually dissipates and is no longer the driving force behind your eating behavior.

3. If you're not physically hungry, but you still have that sweet tooth craving, what are some other food options you can explore that will satisfy your sweet tooth without sabotaging your health goals?

PS - eating after dinner IS NOT BAD. If you are hungry, eat. If you have a craving, satisfy it. The key here is being able to identify WHAT your body is truly craving and exploring different WAYS to fulfill that craving, rather than trying to completely ignore it.

Repeat after me, YOU GET TO EAT AFTER DINNER and still reach your health goals.

Try this out:

If you're physically hungry and craving sweets, try making yourself this chocolate “milkshake” recipe or my reese’s peanut butter toast creation to satisfy your craving for something sweet while simultaneously providing a nourishing, protein-packed option. If you're not physically hungry but still craving something, go grab a few pieces of dark chocolate and savor the goodness of it as it melts in your mouth.

If you're a careful eater, you're likely to overanalyze your food choices, and view foods as "good" or "bad." Although you genuinely care about your health, your body image is the main motivating factor here. Careful eaters oftentimes attach morality to food and feel guilty if they don't feel like they're making healthy enough choices. This constant planning, portioning, and questioning of what they should be eating is mentally exhausting and can lead to bingeing and anxiety in social eating situations.

Many women in this category also fall into the "Professional Dieter" sub-category. This is you if you've tried almost every weight loss program/diet out there and are always looking for the next "best thing." You're very dedicated to doing anything and everything you can to be healthy and lose weight, but the main reason you're always on a diet is that the last one didn't work or didn't last. While professional dieters also care about their body image, their driving force is typically weight loss.

Food for thought for careful eaters:

I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to be in this category. You want to get healthy, and you’re trying to do all the right things, but either it’s not working or it’s not enjoyable. It’s truly a mind-f*. For me, I remember feeling a sense of control & reward, where I’d get this boost of, “Woohoo! You’re disciplined! Keep it up” whenever I had a “good” day food-wise. That little dopamine boost at the end of the day felt really good. It was almost like a reward for having a “good food day”… which only amplified my desire to keep going. And when I would have what I considered a “bad” food day, the shame I felt also acted as fuel to “do better” and be extra careful, so that I didn’t have to feel that way again. It was almost like this mentality of, “You’ve been bad, now you need to suffer the consequences by being even more careful than you were before… or else… ” Yea, it was exhausting.

So what’s it like for you?

• What fuels your motivation to be a careful eater?

• Are your current choices and behaviors around food enjoyable?(i.e. what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat etc.)

• If the answer is no, or you think it could possibly be more enjoyable, ask yourself: At what point did I learn that I had to struggle in order to succeed and get what I want?

Try this:

Detach from the good food/bad food mindset with this fun (and yummy) exercise.

Step 1) Repeat after me and copy and paste this statement to your notes on your phone: “I do not have to restrict myself or be constantly disciplined in order to reach my goals. I do not have to give something up or sacrifice my current pleasure in order to experience a pleasurable future result.”

Step 2) CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE something to eat that you wouldn’t typically consider “healthy”… What you’re going to do here is try to create a neutral attitude toward this food. Instead of thinking of it as a cheat meal, or something you “shouldn’t” be eating, try to view it as simply one of many avenues you can choose to experience pleasure. That’s it. It’s simply one option out of an endless amount of options available to you. It’s not bad, it’s not good - it just is.

Step 3) Take a bite of whatever it is (for me, it would for sure be Do-Rite Donut’s gluten-free birthday cake donut, my fav) and savor allll of the yumminess. As you continue with each bite, truly engage in the experience. The flavors, the texture, the peace and stillness you feel of being in that moment. Remind yourself that you are just as worthy of experiencing pleasure from this (insert food item you chose here) as you are of experiencing any other pleasure life has to offer. Don’t rush yourself. Eat slowly and really chew your food. If you find yourself having trouble eating it without feeling guilty or thinking of it as a cheat meal, try reminding yourself that nourishment comes in many different forms and that you get to enjoy this donut, or whatever it is for you, the same as you would enjoy the flavors and yumminess of (insert your favorite nutrient-dense food/meal that you enjoy eating here).

Takeaway: As humans, when someone tells us not to do something, it makes us want to do it even more. So if we take away the shame and negative connotation of not-so-healthy foods, they begin to lose their appeal. We’re not as drawn to them anymore because it’s no longer something that’s off-limits to us. It’s just another choice in our bucket of choices. Human psychology is crazy, right?!

If you're an unconscious eater, chances are you don't have much of a routine when it comes to eating. You're often eating either while multi-tasking or engaging with something else. It's hard for you to stay fully present while eating because your mind is usually in a million different places. Sometimes you'll be so engrossed in what you're doing that you'll go hours without eating until you suddenly realize you're starving and eat whatever is available to you at that time so that you can get back to whatever you were doing.

Unconscious eaters may have a hard time identifying when they're hungry or full, and typically don't view food as a source of nourishment or fuel. If it's in front of them and tastes good, they'll eat it.

Some unconscious eaters have some crossover with the emotional eater personality, using food as a coping mechanism when they're stressed, angry, bored, sad or lonely. When you're using food to feel better emotionally, it can quickly become a mindless, unconscious eating experience, and before you know it, the entire bag of chips is gone.

Food for thought for unconscious eaters:

It's time to raise your awareness levels when it comes to your body and food. The main thing to remember here is to come from a place of curiosity over judgment.

Start with getting curious about:

1. How to identify high-energy foods vs energy-depleting foods for your body

2. How to honor your intuitive hunger and fullness levels (aka being able to recognize what happens internally before you get hungry and how your body feels at different fullness levels)

Try this out:

Have a Chewing Contest. Grab a friend and choose something for you both to nibble on for the contest. Then, at the same time, take a bite (I think it’s fun to do this with something crunchy like a carrot) and start counting your number of chews. The one with the most chews wins!

PS - Part of the experience is remembering to savor the flavor and be present in the moment. The point of this isn’t to get you to start chewing your food 30 times every time you take a bite of something. This exercise simply brings conscious awareness to our eating experience. (Fun fact - an average person chews their food only 3.3 times before swallowing!!)