Why do you eat?! (other than for hunger/survival)

DeadliftAddict

Because I like food.

brenn24179

I eat for comfort. I eat especially when I am sick, most people cant but not me I think if I eat I will feel better.

If I am aggravated, I eat, it seems to soothe me I guess like an alcoholic with a drink.

If the food looks good I eat, has nothing to do with being hungry.

I am one of those closet eaters, I do not overeat socially, I love to talk, but when by myself different story.

Bad weather, I eat, guess I get bored, need to get outside and be active.

If I am upset, I eat. Trying to learn other ways to soothe me like stay away from certain people, hot baths,music, don't have trigger foods around, talk with a friend, take a walk or exercise. .

I am very greedy when it comes to food.

I don't think of the consequence until after I eat the food.

I had rather eat and escape a problem rather than take a pen and paper and solve the problem

JoyeII

Other than to fuel my body:

As a social experience (dining out with friends)
As a celebration (family events, etc.)
Sometimes boredom
Sometimes for comfort

And, because it's yummy!

blobby10

A fascinating question which has brought up a huge range of answers so here's another one!

I don't like food. I do not enjoy eating and this is the root of all my problems and why I have always carried an extra 21lbs or so.

If I don't have the food near me, I don't eat. For example, I have just come back from a working trip to Italy - I ate breakfast at the hotel, lunch was one panini (no crisps, cakes, desserts, fruit as it wasn't on offer) then evening meal of a pasta course, a meat/fish course, and a dessert. No snacks because I was nowhere near a shop!

On work days, I eat breakfast at home, lunch at work - just a sandwich/houmous and veg etc but once I step into home (at whatever time in the evening unless I'm really drunk!) I eat anything from a full meal already prepped to snacks all evening, good food, bad food, you name it I eat it. Whether that is because I'm unhappy, or bored, or frustrated or happy or just because it's there, I don't know. If the 'bad' food ie chocolate, crisps, biscuits aren't there, I don't go to the shop to buy some and am able (at the moment) to resist buying them!

I'm nearly 45 with 3 gorgeous teenage children and a wonderful husband, all fit and healthy so no reason to be unhappy!
Hope this helps your research

christineengel13

I LOVE FOOD! I love to prepare, smell, touch, taste food. Must be the Italian in me.

bcattoes

Hunger - self explanatory
Taste - I eat foods I enjoy, and sometimes purely for enjoyment
Social - parties, cookouts, reunions, dining out, etc.

That's about it.

neandermagnon

I eat food because:

1. 600 million years of animal evolution with natural selection in favour of animals who like eating, because without enough frontal lobe to understand "you must eat or starve to death" animals need to really enjoy eating to eat enough to survive..... this means I really, really like eating because I'm the product of 600 million years of evolutionary success

2. 2-7 million years of hominins (including humans once they evolved) sharing food as a social behaviour and probably also exchanging food for sex, means that I really, really like eating with other people, including being treated to a nice meal by a man that I like and whatever follows on. And I like parties. And I like eating around a campfire/barbeque. All of this for pretty much the same reason: that's how humans are.

3. Because of 1 and 2 I believe that enjoying food and social events involving food is a totally natural human trait and I think it's bad for mental health to deny ourselves these things. It's an issue that it's bad for physical health to overindulge too much, but that's what MFP is for, i.e. counting calories so people can indulge responsibly and in moderation.

4. Food is just plain yummy.

5. I pay attention to macronutrient and micronutrient intake to ensure good health and to meet my weight lifting goals.

6. Obesity is caused by the fact we've developed an advanced enough culture to be able to ensure ourselves an almost unlimited supply of food and not have to do any physical labour to get it. The modern cultural attitudes towards enjoying food at parties, social gatherings, eating together etc, are not unique to this culture. Every culture in the past and present has (had) feasts and feasting as part of the culture.... difference is they had to work their butts of ploughing fields or hunting/gathering food or whatever before they could have a feast and they didn't have a reliable supply of food, so it was really difficult to get obese in the past because of that... but Henry VIII managed it because he was a king and had people wait on him hand and foot and a jousting accident caused him to be unable to exercise much for the rest of his life, so he didn't even have the kind of recreational physical activity that other kings in the same era had. So he got fat because he was sedentary and ate too much. He really, truly, was ahead of his time.

7. Being puritanical about food isn't that different to how 19th century people were puritanical about sex.... there's not much difference between "food is for nourishment only, not for enjoyment" and "sex is for procreation only and not for enjoyment" - these things absolutely should be enjoyed, but both have to be taken responsibly, hence MFP and condoms. Yes, MFP is analogous to condoms.

8. I exercise because it's fun, improves my mental health and makes me feel strong and energetic.... and also because humans aren't meant to be sedentary. The health risks of being sedentary extend way beyond obesity. Any exercise that you enjoy will do, because self-torture is counter-productive and should be avoided for the sake of mental health.

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tl;dr - there's nothing bad about enjoying food and social events with food. Humans in all eras before you enjoyed food, but they had to catch it or farm it or do physical jobs and walk a long way to buy it before they could eat it. So just enjoy food responsibly and get exercise too because humans didn't evolve to be sedentary

skinnyinnotime

I love the taste of different foods. Take a chicken for example, how many different ways you can prepare it and use recipes from different cultures, I really enjoy my meals!!

neandermagnon

I LOVE FOOD! I love to prepare, smell, touch, taste food. Must be the Italian in me.

I believe it's the human in you.... but Italian food is particularly delicious :drinker:

Kita328

Sometimes (not always) I think people eat socially too.

In a way Food=Love for so many cultures and families. It can bring people together. In turn it makes it harder to say you dont want a slice of pie that Great Gramma made- or a new In law- you eat to fit in. By saying I love your food it can translate to you love that person a little more. Saying no to somones food can be insulting...

Just food for thought

SunofaBeach14

I love food. You might as well ask why humans have sex.

cwolfman13

I am a foodie.

LindaLou1397

I eat because of cravings and once I start it's hard to stop. I crave sweet and salty foods, particularly candy and chips. I hardly ever eat because of hunger, boredom, etc. Most times I'm not sure what hunger feels like.

FoodFitnessTravel

I love food. You might as well ask why humans have sex.

lol good one. "i eat to survive" is the same to me as "i have sex to reproduce". Not judging or anything. My life would be easier if that was the case though

luadams2

Like some of the posters above, I also love to cook. It's really hard not to overeat when you love food and cooking!

I grew up where preparing food was an expression of love. My mom's 86 years old and when I go visit the first thing out of her mouth is still "Are you hungry?" She feeds anyone who walks in the door. When I get together with my sisters, what do we do? We eat!

I eat pretty healthy overall, but every now and then I binge. I read what people post here on MFP and I'm learning my food triggers. Stress and depression are definitely triggers for me!

No_Finish_Line

social events

bored

depressed

favorite tv show

knitandrun

I am a runner and triathlete; I’m not incredibly fast, but I often place in my age group in 5Ks (running around 22 min.) and in local sprint distance triathlons. I went through an awful bout of IBS in 2009, and over about three months, I had a handful of several-day-periods of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. I didn’t eat much at all then. I lost down to my freshman in high school weight of 107 (I had been around 120). Once I got everything settled down with the IBS through medication and eating healthier foods (i.e. very little fast food), I found that I loved food. With foods that were known to not irritate my IBS, I indulged more often, gained the weight back and then some. I got up to 133, which isn’t overweight for my height of 5’3,” but my clothes weren’t fitting well, and the added few pounds made me slower in running. The final straw was when I couldn’t fit in my triathlon shorts in May of 2012. That’s when I started logging my calories on My Fitness Pal, to get rid of those extra pounds for better performance in races, and to get rid of the little roll that was forming around my waist. I still come back to My Fitness Pal for a month or so each spring, to get rid of the 3-4 pounds that I gained over winter with yummy holiday meals and less training due to cold weather.

Why I ate over-ate after my IBS-issues: eating made me feel normal again. I loved the taste of food. I ate past the point I was full because food tasted so good and I was so thankful to not be feeling nauseated and sick anymore.

Why I eat now: to fuel my body for daily life and athletic training. I still love the taste of food, particularly chocolate. Sometimes I eat mindlessly while surfing the web on the computer or while watching TV. Oftentimes I eat because I think, “I have earned this treat. I trained/ran/swam/biked hard today.” Usually, however, my estimate is too high regarding how many calories I burned in my training, and I let myself eat four cookies when two would have been plenty. Like someone else on the forum said, I don’t think about the consequence of my eating until afterward.

stuffinmuffin

For fuel (especially after exercise)
To be social - celebrations etc
For the taste
Enjoyment of cooking

I'm not a stress eater. If I get stressed I tend to lose weight quite rapidly. Fortunately I'm very laid back! :glasses: