How to Identify and Overcome Unhelpful Eating Patterns

Introduction

What if you could stop second-guessing every health decision and start trusting your body’s ability to be well? In a world full of conflicting advice, it’s easy to feel like you have to choose between intuition and science, but the truth is, they work best together. Your body is designed to heal, adapt, and thrive with the right support. In this post, we’ll explore unhelpful eating patterns through that lens, so you can take practical steps to finally create your desired health.

What are Eating Patterns?

Eating patterns are the habits, routines, and subconscious behaviors that shape how, when, and why we eat. They are almost completely on autopilot, so most of our eating behaviors happen outside of our conscious awareness.

Ideally, these patterns support nourishment, energy, and enjoyment of food, but when your relationship with food has been shaped by restriction, fear, or self-judgment, certain eating patterns can become unhelpful. These well-worn default patterns keep you stuck in cycles of stress, guilt, and frustration. 

For someone who has struggled with food rules, extremes, and uncertainty about what’s truly healthy, unhelpful eating patterns often come from a place of survival rather than intention. These might include eating to numb emotions, eating out of rebellion, bouncing between extremes of restriction and overindulgence, or feeling out of control around certain foods. Instead of serving your well-being, these patterns create more exhaustion, self-doubt, and confusion about how to move forward.

How Do I Know If I Have Unhelpful Eating Patterns?

The key to identifying when an eating pattern is unhelpful is noticing whether it makes you feel disconnected from your body, trapped in cycles of shame, or unable to make choices that help you support your health. If your eating habits leave you feeling out of control, anxious, or like you have to “start over” constantly, it’s not a failure on your part. This is a sign that the pattern needs to shift. 

The good news? Eating patterns can be rewritten. 

With curiosity and self-compassion, you can gently replace unhelpful habits with more supportive ones over time. In doing so, you’ll create a drama-free way of eating that is aligned with your long-term wellness.

Before we begin, I want to say this loud and clear: it’s okay to eat. The goal here is not to trick yourself into not eating when you need the food. This post is a discussion on default patterns that are not serving our health when it comes to food. If the eating patterns are coming from genuine hunger, the only way to work through unhelpful habits is with consistent and adequate intake of quality nutrition.  With that said, let’s explore the most common types of unhelpful eating patterns.

Understanding Mindless Eating

Mindless eating happens when your body is being fed, but your mind is a million miles away. This can be due to eating in the presence of physical distractions, like eating while watching TV, checking email, scrolling on your phone, taking a work call, attending to screaming children, driving, or reading the news. It can also happen when there is no physical distraction, but your thoughts are consumed with other things.

Mindless eating happens when we are not present with our food. Put simply, the antidote to mindless eating is mindful eating. Mindful eating seems out of reach when we have so many things going on. 

If we think mindful eating means that we have to meditate before a meal, set food on our fine china, light a candle, rate our hunger, do a gratitude practice for each ingredient on our plate, chew each bite a million times, and rate our fullness again, we will never have time for it. If we think we have to be perfect, we won’t do it at all. Honestly, sometimes trying to eat mindfully stresses me out instead of bringing more enjoyment to my meals. 

Easy Mindful Eating Patterns

Instead of trying to do mindful eating perfectly, pick one thing to try and consistently do to bring more awareness to your meal times. Here are some simple and practical ways you can bring more mindfulness into your meals, even with a busy schedule:

• Sit down if you can
• Take three deep breaths before eating
• Put your phone on the other side of the table
• Chew a bite two more times than you normally would
• Notice the texture, taste, and smell of the very first bite
• Use a smaller utensil
• Set a timer to be present for the first 2 minutes
• Eat without multitasking (Even for a Few Bites)
• If you are going to multitask, let it be just one distraction at a time
• Split your meal in half and check in with hunger & fullness mid-meal

Even integrating one or two of these habits can make meals feel more intentional and satisfying.

Eating to Escape a Situation

Escape eating is when you use food to avoid an uncomfortable physical, emotional, or social circumstance. I think it’s way more helpful to talk about escape eating rather than emotional eating because it helps you get to the root of the problem.

If you just label yourself as an emotional eater, you don’t really know how to move forward. But if you recognize that you are trying to escape from something, you can start to bring some awareness to the situation and choose a different option. There are so many ways this can show up, like eating to:

• Push through fatigue
• Numb physical dis like headaches, cramps, nausea, or blood sugar crashes
• Soothe restlessness
• Provide stress relief
• Avoid anxiety
• Soothe sadness or loneliness
• Suppress anger or frustration
• Combat boredom 
• Blend in while in a group
• Ease awkwardness
• Fill the silence 
• Handle social pressure
• Distract from loneliness in a social setting 

Food can easily become a coping mechanism for discomfort. Identifying the real issue, whether it’s boredom, social anxiety, or avoidance, can help you find a better solution. If you only notice it after the fact, that’s okay. Make a mental note of how the situation unfolded so that when it comes up again, you’ll be more likely to recognize the behavior as it begins.

Eating to Fill A Void

Fill-the-void eating is different from escape eating. It’s not using food to run away from something, it’s using food to fill a hole that food doesn’t fill. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think it’s helpful to use the label “emotional eating” most of the time. Getting more specific on exactly what you are using the food for helps you uncover which strategies to bring to the situation.

Here are some voids you may be trying to fill with food:

• Lack of close friendships or meaningful social connections
• Feeling unseen or unappreciated in relationships
• Absence of deep purpose or direction in life
• Feeling disconnected from personal values or beliefs
• Unfulfilled creative expression or passions
• Lack of joy or spontaneity in daily life
• Absence of self-compassion or inner kindness
• Feeling unsupported or misunderstood by others
• Suppressed emotions with no safe outlet
• Unmet need for rest, play, or true relaxation
• Longing for love, intimacy, or deep connection
• Feeling disconnected from nature or a sense of belonging
• Lack of meaningful challenges or growth opportunities
• Struggle with self-worth or personal identity
• Feeling stuck in routines that don’t feel fulfilling

These needs are valid, and it is a good thing that you are seeking to have them met. When food has been a stable and dependable source of comfort from the day we were born, it’s reasonable that it would be the go-to soother when these painful voids are exposed.

Trying to fill a void with food is fitting a square peg in a round hole. It’s never going to offer a long-term solution. 

Hungry Ghosts and eating patterns

The incredible women’s health expert Dr. Aviva Romm refers to these voids as hungry ghosts: the unresolved wounds, unmet emotional needs, and internal emptiness that often lead people to seek comfort in food, rigid wellness routines, or external validation. Instead of addressing the root cause (such as loneliness, lack of purpose, or past trauma), many try to fill the emptiness with food, strict health regimens, or cycles of self-improvement. However, these cravings are never truly satisfied because the real need isn’t being met.

Restrictive Eating Patterns

Many think of problematic eating patterns as only having to do with over-eating, but under-eating is at least as harmful. From digestive stress, metabolic downregulation, reproductive issues, and psychological effects, undereating can affect every system in your body. 

It can be tricky to know if your eating patterns are restrictive or simply healthy boundaries around food to help you reach your best health. If you are experiencing feelings of guilt after eating “off-limits” foods, eating outside of an allowed time window, or breaking the rules of a diet or program that isn’t built personally for you, you are probably restricting.

The Restriction Cycle

Cycling between extreme restriction and backlash episodes of overeating leads to immense stress, guilt, shame, food preoccupation, dysregulated hunger and fullness cues, blood sugar swings, and nutrient imbalances. Restriction leads to both biological and psychological urges to overeat. Overeating after undereating is not a matter of willpower.

Instead of rigid rules, aim for balanced meals and consistent nourishment throughout the day. Over time, your hunger and fullness cues will regulate, and you will feel more connected to your body, and paradoxically, more in control around food than you ever were when you were restricting.

Eating Out of Rebellion

Restricting certain types or categories of food can also lead to consequences for some people. If you find yourself rebelling against any diet rules with secretive or out-of-control eating, this psychological restriction may be an unhelpful eating pattern for you right now. 

This doesn’t mean you can’t have limits on what you choose to eat or not eat, but it does require you to know yourself and set boundaries that don’t have strong negative consequences. 

Rebellious eating shows up as eating something simply because it feels like breaking the rules. These rules can be external expectations, internal expectations, or both. Some people rebel more strongly against one than the other, or equally against both. If you are a rebel at heart, giving yourself full permission to eat all foods in a way that honors your body helps break the cycle.

Do You Need to Release Food Rules?

If you love rules (like me!) and don’t tend to be a rebel, you’ll probably be more able to establish a more explicit structure around your eating patterns. If this is you, there is no need to get rid of your guidelines to avoid rebellion if that isn’t something you tend to struggle with.

Eating as a Nervous System Habit Loop

Researcher Dr. Jud Brewer wrote an insightful book called The Hunger Habit, where he discusses the reasons why we eat when we are not hungry and how we can work with our brain, rather than against it, to finally break unhelpful eating patterns.

Almost 90% of the thinking we do throughout the day happens outside of our conscious awareness. The brain is a master of patterns, systems, and automation. It is always seeking ways to wire information together and write scripts to run behaviors on autopilot so that we can use that small amount of consciousness on the most critical analytical thoughts. 

Brain habit loops are our brain’s greatest strength and their greatest weakness. When the autopilot runs patterns that lead to healthy and helpful behaviors, we can be effortlessly healthy. When the autopilot is running a destructive habit, it can be extremely difficult to rewire this pattern.

Simply put, the nervous system creates patterns that seek pleasure and avoid pain. We have a lot of patterns that would serve us well in survival situations, but don’t necessarily help us in our modern environments.

Instead of fighting the habits we have, we have to develop ways of rewiring the pleasure and pain associations to serve us in our modern times. Dr Brewer discusses these more in his book, but the tips in the following section provide the general process of rewiring unhelpful eating habits.

Rewiring The Hunger Habit

Based on the principles from The Hunger Habit by Judson Brewer, here are some ideas to try as you work to rewire your brain and break unhelpful nervous system habit loops around eating:

• Pause before eating: Am I actually hungry? What am I feeling right now?
• Use the ‘Bigger, Better Offer’ technique: What would actually feel better at this moment?
• Track patterns non-judgmentally: Notice when, where, and why unhelpful eating happens.

• Recognize the trigger: What cues the eating behavior?
• Shift focus to body sensations: Where do I feel this craving in my body?

• Find alternate rewards
• Pair eating with a positive experience: Eat in a peaceful setting without distractions, savoring the food fully.
• Reframe eating as an act of care for your body

• Journal about emotional triggers 
• Connect with supportive people
• Create soothing rituals: Deep breathing, stretching, or listening to music before or during eating.
• Get curious instead of critical: Approach struggles with a learning mindset: What can this moment teach me?

These acts of awareness can all be part of the process, but don’t feel like you should use all these strategies all the time. Try a few things that sound potentially helpful and see what happens. By consistently applying these strategies with patience and self-compassion, you can start breaking unhelpful loops and build healthier eating patterns.

Eating Out of Social Pressure

Eating is a social act, and that’s a good thing! Eating used to be a communal activity, and it has definitely shifted to an isolated experience only in recent times. But food still plays a significant role in most social gatherings, and with that, there can be many social pressures that dictate what, when, and how much you eat. In a social situation, you may eat:

• At an odd time, just because others are eating
• Because you feel obligated to participate in group meals
• Food that is offered to you to avoid seeming “rude”
• As part of an event to avoid seeming “boring” or not part of the celebration
• Less, or more, than you otherwise might, because people make comments on your body
• Less, more, or differently because of diet-focused conversations that make you self-conscious
• Something that won’t serve your health goals because it’s the only thing available
• Differently to fit in with how the group eats
• To avoid doing other things at the event

There is nothing wrong with the choice to do these things or not to do these things. The only thing that matters is that you know that it is your choice alone. There will be some level of discomfort in either direction. It is up to you to decide which choice is more important to you. 

Obligation Eating

Don’t get stuck in obligation eating. If you choose to eat, enjoy it, be present, celebrate, connect with others, and fully embrace the moment. If you choose something else at that moment, enjoy your choice, be present, celebrate, connect with others, and fully embrace the moment. It’s not about the food. Most of the time, no one notices or cares either way. If you are gracious and non-obnoxious, people are generally happy to let you do what you want to do. 

For example, I once showed up to a wedding with a Tupperware of potatoes and vegetables for dinner and happily enjoyed the conversation and the company. No one said a word about me eating my own food, and it wasn’t a big deal to anyone. I finally realized that I could always make the choice to eat what I wanted to eat for my health. I now have no problem just doing my own thing.

To overcome social pressure to eat, you need a twofold approach. 

• First, you need to know what is most important to you in that situation and decide how food plays into that. Play the situation through in your head and have a loose strategy nailed down before it starts. 
• Then, make sure you have prepared for that situation. This might mean eating ahead of time, bringing a dish to share that you know will serve your health goals, bringing your own food entirely, or choosing to eat whatever is there with no stress. Planning to just wing it is not a plan unless you don’t care what the outcome is. 

No matter what you choose, remember that it’s not about the food.

Next Steps To Overcome Unhelpful eating patterns

In this post, we discussed a multitude of ways that unhelpful eating patterns show up in our everyday lives. We all frequently engage in mindless eating, escape eating, fill-the-void eating, restriction-backlash eating, rebellion eating, habit eating, and social pressure eating. These are all part of the normal human experience, and none of them is a big deal when done occasionally in isolation. But if they have become sources of distress in your life and are impacting your health and well-being, it is worth exploring strategies to help work through them.

All unhelpful eating patterns can be unlearned through compassion, curiosity, and practice over time. Just like our minds formed these patterns over time, we can unlearn them over time, too. Lasting change comes from understanding, not from judgment, so give yourself grace as you change. 

Now, I’d love to hear from you: what is the unhelpful eating pattern that’s holding you back from your health goals? Let’s brainstorm some strategies together!

Wishing you well,

Meghan