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

I eat to fuel my body, that's basically it.

Boredom and lonliness are triggers for me. And food just tasting really good. Like Thanksgiving dinner with roasted turkey and all those sides and desserts - it's times like that when I know I've had enough but it tastes so good I want to keep eating. Thankfully it doesn't happen that often!

For boredom eating, it helps to find ways to keep yourself busy whether that be physically or mentally. And also be aware of co-triggers I used to sit around on the weekend watching shows about cooking or restaurant reviews so not only was I bored but all that good looking food was a major temptation. I still might watch shows like that because I love hearing all the cooking tips and finding new recipe ideas BUT I don't watch them for long and if I find myself wanting a snack, I turn the TV off and get busy doing something (go for a walk, housework, etc) - or at least turn the TV off and read a book instead.

Loneliness is a bit harder but it also helps to keep myself busy since it's a good distraction. And I make sure I turn the radio or TV on so there's some background noise. Thankfully Hubs doesn't go away very often!

Good luck!

I eat to fuel my body, that's basically it.

Me too.

For the taste. I really wish I could be one of those 'only eat when I'm hungry' type, but I love food too much. It's not boredom or stress, just that not many thing give me as much pleasure as eating something delicious. Sadly, lol.

I eat for a variety of reasons, and I find that I eat different things for different reasons.
"Healthful" food (vegetables, lean meats, protein bars, etc.) I eat to fuel and fulfill macronutrient requirements.
Less than healthful food (chocolate, high-sugar coffee drinks, chips out of the bag, etc.) I eat because I want it. Sometimes that's correlated with strong feelings of stress. Like I can blow through a large bag of chips if I'm studying for a long time. Those foods are also ones I can eat in small portions and be satisfied if I actually pay attention to eating them.
Pasta in particular is something that I occasionally just really want to eat in an uncontrolled manner. Like on Friday I was slightly buzzed and got takeaway gnocchi.
Alcohol--sort of a food, also a drug. I don't drink it often, but I do in social situations because it's what people do, and sometimes specifically because I want to let go and think a little less for a little while. I'm an alcohol peer educator and a college campus EMT, meaning I know how to drink safely and have strong motivations to do so.

I agree with the above poster who said that stress leads to eating but distress leads to loss of appetite. Check Tuesday of last week in my diary--I went through a breakup after my last class but before I'd eaten dinner, and when I finished that conversation and the follow-up conversation with a close friend, I couldn't stomach the idea of eating. There was another day that week that was actually similar, although without the precipitating event, but that day I decided I'd just drink the calories because I was more concerned about getting them in than worrying about the quality.

When I'm low on energy, I also tend to be lower on motivation for self-control, but I've run into it enough times that I've realized that controlled eating will make me feel better whereas uncontrolled eating will actually just make me feel worse, physically and emotionally. It's gotten to the point where it's started to tip the other way a bit--that I'll just elect not to eat--but I'm aware of that and keeping a careful eye on it.

ETA: I eat to regulate my mood. Not in like a comfort-eating sort of way, but I start to revert to highly depressive thought patterns if I go without eating for too long. I have friends who know this and remind me of it if I start being a mess. I've thought about running a case study on myself trying to correlate mood with blood sugar, but I don't really like sticking myself that much. I also don't have my own glucometer. My body temperature also drops when I don't eat, which compels me to curl up in a ball and be unproductive.

When I am stressed out or bored.

Boredom is my biggest downfall when it comes to food - Being bored instantly triggers the "im really hungry" thing which leads to eating for no reason.. and it is never good healthy choices either

Probably out of boredom..........

If I'm upset or stressed - I go to the opposite 'mode' - and I don't eat............................

lack of love life

As for many others, because it tastes good and I enjoy food....................a lot.................and I am a good cook.

Because I like food.

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!

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

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

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: