Published: June 12, 2024
Note: In this blog post, I recommend the book The Hunger Habit by Dr. Judson Brewer. The links to this book on Amazon.com on this website are affiliate links, meaning that Nourished by Science receives a small commission from your purchase at no additional cost to you. You can review our conflict of interest policy here.
In the previous two blog posts in this series, we discussed that the types of foods people eat in a meal have a major impact on the number of calories they eat. For example, people tend to overeat if a meal contains ultra-processed foods, hyperpalatable foods, or liquid calories in the form of sugar-sweetened or alcoholic beverages. And they eat fewer calories if a meal is rich in protein and fiber and has a low energy density, because all of these characteristics make a meal more satiating per calorie.
This is true even when people are told, in a research lab setting, to eat only when hungry and to stop eating when they are comfortably full.
One key factor has been neglected in our discussions so far: We often are motivated to eat for emotional reasons, or because we crave the pleasure we receive when eating certain foods. This phenomenon is often called non-hunger eating, and there is little doubt that it can contribute to overeating and may play a role in overeating and weight gain.
Many of you, particularly my fellow gentlemen, may scoff at the notion that emotions or need for reward could be driving factors in your overeating. But particularly if you are not aware of this aspect, the information I share in this blog post may really change your relationship with food.
There is a rich literature linking stress and emotional eating to weight gain and an increased risk of obesity, and also greater difficulties with weight loss. There is also good evidence that interventions targeting emotional eating can reduce energy intake and aid in weight loss. One challenge in this field is that numerous intervention approaches have been tested, including different mindfulness-based approaches, acceptance and commitment therapy, and cognitive behaviroral therapy. While different approaches have been found to aid in weight loss, these are not well standardized, and have not been systematically compared against one another. It has therefore remained largely unclear which approach is the most effective for the treatment of excess body weight, and particularly for the prevention of overeating and weight gain.
In this blog post and the associated video, we are largely focusing on a mindfulness-based approach by Dr. Judson Brewer. Please be aware that numerous other approaches exist, and that at this time it is not possible to provide clear guidance on which approach is the most effective. The suggestions made in this blog post are intended to help you become mindful of potential non-hunger eating behaviors, and their triggers. If you find the suggested exercises too limited to address whichever issues you are experiencing, it is strongly recommended that you see additional professional help.
Triggers of Non-Hunger Eating
There are many different reasons we may want to eat that have nothing or little to do with physiological hunger. For all intents and purposes, I think we can group them into two categories: emotional eating and hedonic eating.
Emotional eating occurs when we use food to cope with difficult emotions such as anxiety, depression, stress, or boredom. Food provides temporary relief by distracting us from these emotions and giving us a sense of pleasure instead.
Hedonic eating is when we want food just for the purpose of pleasure and is based on what we commonly call a craving. We walk by an ice cream parlor, the ice cream looks amazing, and we don’t even consider whether we are hungry or not. We just want to enjoy an ice cream.
I guess everyone can intuitively relate that both emotional and hedonic eating are real and, for most people, have a big impact on what we choose to eat and how much we choose to eat. The question is, however, …
What To Do About Non-Hunger Eating
… what to do about non-hunger eating?
Now, this is a very big topic, and entire books and programs exist just to address the different forms of non-hunger eating. One I would like to recommend to you is The Hunger Habit, by Dr. Judson Brewer, an academic who conducts research on this very topic. I’ll keep it a bit shorter here, but some of my suggestions are based on that book.
For the purpose of this blog post, I would like to introduce you to four strategies to become more mindful of your non-hunger eating.
Strategy #1: Relearning to Feel Hunger and Satiety Cues
What do I mean by ‘relearning to feel hunger and satiety cues’?
Well, I think most people have a very cognitive approach to eating these days, admittedly partly because of people like myself who constantly talk about our nutrient needs and why this or that food is healthy or unhealthy. What I mean here is that many of us eat what we think we are supposed to be eating, perhaps matching portions or calories or just types of foods to what we have been told we need. Partly as a result of this scientific approach to eating, many of us have lost touch with our internal hunger and satiety cues. We may eat food we are not really hungry for, or we may restrict our eating to the point that we are not satiated by our meals.
So the very first activity I’d like to suggest is designed to get in touch with your internal cues. Anytime you feel like eating, first pause for a second, feel and listen to your body, and rate your level of hunger. I have created this poster shown in the image below (also available for download here) as a tool to help you do that. You will rate your hunger level on a scale from one to ten, with one being starving, five being neutral (neither hungry nor full), and ten being stuffed. A rating of three would be equivalent to normal hunger, and this is where you ideally want to be when you start to eat. Then keep this in mind while you are eating, and check in every once in a while with how you feel. And ideally, stop eating when you feel comfortably full. So that would be a seven on this scale. And I would actually suggest that you try eating until you are comfortably full, meaning don’t stop before just because you have been counting calories or measuring portions, and feel that you should have had enough.
This exercise is all about relearning to FEEL what your body is telling you, not you telling your body what it should be feeling. And as long as you eat a high-quality meal that meets some of the criteria I shared in the last two blog posts, meaning it’s not fast food or ultra-processed food, but a largely unprocessed or minimally processed meal rich in protein and fiber-rich whole plant foods, it is fine to eat enough to feel comfortably full. These are the meals that actually nourish your body, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be even able to eat too many calories as long as you make the meals highly satiating and stop eating when you feel comfortably full.
I’d like to suggest that you make notes for this exercise, as illustrated below. You start your meal here when you are hungry, we mark this with a circle, and then you stop as soon as you are comfortably full, and mark this with a square. After you have done this multiple times as an exercise and taken notes, the goal would be to continue doing this quickly and informally every time you eat.
So, strategy number one is relearning to feel hunger and satiety cues.
Strategy #2: Naming
What you will find is that many times throughout the day, you may feel like eating, but if you pause and really feel into your body as to whether you are hungry, you may either not be sure – which probably means you are not really hungry – or you would rate yourself as neutral or just a little hungry. These would be a four or five here on this scale. At this point, I suggest you make a mark on this sheet, maybe an X, and try to name whatever feeling may have made you think about eating. This could be habit, boredom, sadness, or a craving for a specific food. As in this example here:
In these situations, my suggestion is NOT to always conclude that you are not allowed to eat. The entire point of this exercise is to become more mindful and curious about the inner workings that often drive you to seek out food even if your body doesn’t really physiologically need it yet. So with curiosity and kindness towards yourself – no judging! – just observe and try to understand where that need for food came from. And then make a mindful decision on whether you want to follow the urge to eat. You can decide to go either way.
So if you are walking past an ice cream parlor with your kids or grandkids and they pull you towards it because they want a treat, you may observe that you would also like an ice cream cone, even though you are sure you are not really hungry at all. And you happily decide that it would be nice to share an ice cream with your family.
Another time, you may realize that what is really going on is that you are stressed or sad, and come to the conclusion that you don’t really need food, but a walk in the park or a chat with a loved one.
So, again, strategy number two, naming, is all about becoming mindful about what may be fueling a need to eat at any given moment, to be curious about it, and with kindness towards yourself, actively decide whether or not you want to eat.
You can use this downloadable poster here for this activity, one page per day. Or just create your own version of this poster.
If you print it double-sided, you will find something on the back side that relates to the next strategy.
Strategy #3: Mapping Your Habit Loops
Each time you feel like eating something, you can also use the second page of the downloadable poster (see image below) to note whatever you think, or better feel, may be triggering your desire to eat. Under behavior, you can note what you decided to do about it. Did you eat, or do something else? And lastly, under result, you can note how you felt about the entire process afterward. You can complete this while you are in the midst of things, or in the evening before going to bed. The value is in reflecting on the result and learning from it. So maybe you realized that you had a craving for potato chips, just because they were there, and even though you rated your hunger as a five, neutral, you ate the entire bag all in one sitting. As a result, you noted that you felt great while doing it, but lousy and overly full an hour and even still two hours later.
Again, the emphasis here is on doing this exercise with kindness and curiosity towards yourself. If you ended up eating the entire bag of potato chips, don’t beat yourself up over this. It happened, and it’s not a catastrophe. But we want to understand our regular habits that trigger our non-hunger eating, and learn from how we feel afterward.
I predict you will become much more mindful about the triggers of your non-hunger eating, and that is probably the most important first step towards addressing it. There is now a fairly rich literature showing that mindfulness approaches can play an important role in helping individuals deal better with cravings, and can play an important role as part of weight loss programs. The specific recommendation here is that after you have mapped your habit loops related to non-hunger eating for a few days, make mindful decisions about whether and how you want to act on these triggers.
Strategy #4: RAIN
A particularly useful tool for this is RAIN, the fourth strategy I’d like to share. RAIN is an acronym, and it stands for Recognize, Accept, Investigate, and Non-Identification.
Recognize means that we feel into our body to recognize whether we want to eat because we are truly hungry, or for another reason. And then to feel what that trigger of non-hunger eating may be. This is what we have been discussing so far.
Accept is the opposite of what most of us reflexively do. If we sense a difficult emotion, such as anxiety or a craving, we fight it because we feel like we should not be having this emotion. The concept of accepting means that we should relax into the feeling and not fight it. Accept it. OK, I am feeling anxious. I have a craving. It’s fine.
Investigating means that now, with curiosity and kindness to ourselves, we try to learn more about what we are feeling, and what exactly it feels like in our body. Just accept it for what it is, do not immediately act upon it, and feel what it does to your body.
And lastly, non-identification means that we should not identify with the difficult emotion, or the craving. So often, we experience a craving or an emotion such as anger or anxiety as a personal failing. It really isn’t. We all experience such emotions all of the time. What matters is how we respond to these emotions, and in this exercise, we are practicing not to immediately react to it, and not to judge ourselves for feeling it.
As an example, let’s say you sit on your couch, and you remember that you had chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer. You feel a craving coming. You start to imagine what it would be like to have a large bowl of that ice cream. Whether or not you’ll end up having some ice cream, take a moment to use RAIN. Recognize the feeling, name it. OK, I am having a craving. Accept it for what it is. Maybe even smile at it. Totally understandable that you have the craving! It’s pretty delicious ice cream! Investigate what it feels like. You are starting to salivate. Maybe your heart is beating a little bit faster, because you are kind of excited about that ice cream. Maybe you no longer feel sleepy, but now really alert to go hunting for that ice cream. Just investigate with curiosity, but then remember non-identification: don’t judge yourself, and don’t identify yourself with the craving. You are not the craving, and there is no reason to feel bad about the craving. The ice cream was designed to make you crave it.
One suggestion Dr. Brewer makes in his book that I really like is to look at a craving that is confronting you, or another difficult emotion, as if it was a beloved child. Let’s say like a child in a grocery store that is screaming because it wants the treat NOW. Well, what would you do if your child acted like this in a grocery store? Just buy him or her all of the treats, just so they stop screaming? No, you would be kind, but firm: you don’t need these treats now. And you would be willing to tolerate the screaming for a little bit, and not act on it. And I think that if you try a similar approach with yourself, with love and kindness and no judgment, you may find that many of your cravings just go away after a while. Give it a try. It doesn’t actually take that long and you will have all but forgotten about the ice cream.
Dr. Brewer explains all of this in more detail in his book. Again, if this blog post resonated with you, you may enjoy his book. The link is in the description box below the blog post.
Let me wrap this part up with one very important point: if a deep psychological issue keeps coming up as a trigger for non-hunger eating, talk to a specialist and address that root cause with professional help. Some feelings that drive us to eat may be too strong or too deep for us to just recognize, accept, and investigate by ourselves. Maybe we’ve carried them around with us for a long time, maybe because of childhood trauma, and that may make it impossible for us to practice non-identification when we feel them.
Why I Called the Series “Keys to a Healthy Body Weight”
You’ll note that I called this series “Keys to a Healthy Body Weight.” I want to make clear that when I say healthy body weight, I don’t mean being as slim as possible. I feel it’s equally important to also be mentally healthy and happy with our body, and to have a positive relationship to the food that nourishes us. Actually, the name of this channel, Nourished by Science, is not a coincidence. There is a reason I didn’t call it “Resist Your Urges” or “Fight Your Biology!”
To me, our bodies are a wonderful gift. Seriously, and I am not even trying to be overly dramatic here. The older I have gotten and the more I have learned about how all of this works, it’s just absolutely amazing and nothing short of a miracle that we are alive. Shouldn’t we treat this body with love and appreciation? Instead, so many of us hate our own bodies, or we are being teased, and worse, because we carry extra weight. We look at our food largely as the enemy because it contains calories. Quite frankly, this is so wrong on so many levels. And I’d like to do my part in changing our culture of dieting, our cultural ideal of slimness, the stigma we attach to obesity, and this whole stupid approach where we see calories when we should be seeing amazing, enjoyable food that nourished our body and enables us to live this amazing life!
My goals for myself, and for you, are, therefore, not just to weigh as little as possible, but for us to:
- Have a friendly and happy relationship with our food and our bodies; while at the same time
- minimizing our chronic disease risks by maintaining low levels of visceral and ectopic fat.
These are not mutually exclusive, and when we pursue one, we should not lose sight of the other. Note that I am not aiming to minimize body fat but to minimize the visceral and ectopic fat that is directly linked to an increased risk of chronic disease. Carrying around a few pounds of extra subcutaneous fat has little or no impact on chronic disease risk.
So, when I considered the keys to a healthy body weight, it was important to me to identify science-backed ways to eat well and enjoy our food without worrying about our calorie intake. While at the same time preferentially eating foods that make it less likely that we’ll overeat.
Summary: How to Maintain or Achieve a Healthy Body Weight
In the last blog post, I shared three simple rules.
These are first, to not regularly consume ultra-processed foods, sugar-sweetened or alcoholic beverages, or treats. These are all factors that cause us to overeat. I say here “do not regularly consume” because I am no fan of absolute food rules. But I do think it is important that all of these foods and drinks here should best be seen as treats that we enjoy only occasionally and in moderation.
Second, incorporate a portion of protein and a large portion of fiber-rich vegetables, berries, or fruit into most meals. Limit added fats, oils, sugars, and syrups. This rule is to make the meals you eat more satiating per calorie.
And third, prioritize getting eight hours of sleep every night. That is because sleep deprivation is a major driver of overeating. And, by the way, I do recognize that many people don’t get enough sleep, not because they play blog post games late into the night, but because they just cannot fall or stay asleep. I absolutely feel for you. But sadly, that doesn’t change the impact of sleep deprivation on calorie intake, and I do think it’s important to be aware of that.
Now, these are three solid, evidence-based rules. However, I would move what we discussed in this blog post to the number one spot: be mindful of non-hunger eating.
Because for many of us, emotional eating or constantly seeking food reward by craving highly palatable foods is pretty clearly one of the major reasons we overeat. I do think we need to be willing to identify and address major emotional triggers of eating, and – quite frankly – we need to be willing to not constantly give in to our need for highly rewarding food.
So my suggestion is to really and honestly look at this topic of non-hunger eating, and tackle what needs to be addressed. Seek help if you need to. And always remember, we want to be kind and non-judgemental in the process. We are living in an incredibly difficult environment, with marketing, time- and financial constraints, and constant stress clashing with our biology that still seeks highly rewarding, energy-dense, sweet, and fatty foods. Cut yourself some slack, but at the same time, be willing to face the root causes that are making you gain weight and become increasingly unhealthy and unhappy.
I encourage you to use these keys to a healthy body weight to find a balance for yourself that allows you to find a positive relationship with your food and your body, and really enjoy your meals, while also prioritizing your long-term health.
Until next time, take care.
Download the poster to practice being mindful of your non-hunger eating here.
References
- Judson Brewer: The Hunger Habit: Why We Eat When We’re Not Hungry and Hot to Stop. Avery, January 30, 2024.
- Ulrich-Lai et al.; Stress exposure, food intake, and emotional state. Stress 2015; 18: 381-99.
- Dakanalis et al.; The association of emotional eating with overweight/obesity, depression, anxiety/stress, and dietary patterns: a review of the current clinical evidence. Nutrients 2023; 15: 1173.
- Frayn and Knaeuper. Emotional eating and weight in adults: a review. Current Psychology 2017; 37: 924-33.
- Dunn et al.; Mindfulness approaches and weight loss, weight maintenance and weight regain. Current Obesity Reports 2018; 7: 37-49.