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Your relationship with food says more about you than you would think.
What type of eater are you? Uninformed? Emotional? Perhaps unconscious? While everyone eats for different reasons, like responding to internal cues such as emotions or external ones like social activities; knowing why you do this enables you to address your weight demons.
After 25 years of industry experience, Jenny Craig has developed five distinct eating categories that allow us to understand how we eat and why we eat; balanced, uninformed, emotional, unconscious, and social.
 Uninformed eaters tend to think of certain foods as ‘bad’ and try to eliminate them from their diet in hope of reaching their goal weight. When dining out uninformed eaters know they need to control portions but have no idea what sort of quantities they should be aiming for...
Emotional eaters often crave certain foods in response to feeling excited, anxious, bored or upset and tend to binge eat after arguments. As their title suggests, eating is triggered by their emotions and they are also inclined to reward themselves with food after a tiring or stressful situation.
Unconscious eaters like to lick the plate clean regardless of the portion that is served and instinctively eat while sitting in front of the television. While social eaters overindulge when dining out or celebrating holidays, birthdays and other special occasions.
 Karen Inge, one of Australia's leading accredited practising dietitians, says “Your eating style reflects some of your own individual experiences. Occurrences throughout your life have shaped your relationship with food – from your childhood or school experiences to your past weight loss attempts. These factors alongside eating cues and habits can dictate your feelings towards food.
“It is possible to have more than one eating style, and by distinguishing it or them you will be able to identify the strategies that will enable you to develop a healthy relationship with food.
“Weight management is just what the term implies: the ability to manage one’s body weight. Management is an ongoing process and is not accomplished in one single act no matter how sincere the effort. It is about lifestyle change and tackling your eating habits for the long term, and the first step is addressing your eating style.”
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