Eating Isn’t Just Eating: The Eight Types That Shape Your Food Story
- Bronwyn Fletcher
- Aug 12
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 3
Most people think of eating in simple terms: you’re either ‘overeating’ or ‘dieting’. The Weighting for Happiness® Project takes a very different view. Using the Eight Types of Eating framework, it reveals that eating is never just about food. It’s a mix of conscious choices, hidden rules, and emotional drivers, many of them invisible until you know where to look.
8 Types of eating
The eight types are Functional, Secondary, Dieting, Constrained, Social, Comfort, Relief, and Conscious eating. Each one plays a role in your daily calorie intake, sometimes in ways you would never think to record.
Regular eating
Functional eating covers your regular meals, but even here, automatic portion sizes and ingrained food rules can add more than you realise. Secondary eating includes all the unplanned mouthfuls, finishing the kids’ leftovers, tasting while cooking, eating on the go, that sneak in unnoticed.
Restricting your eating
Dieting and Constrained eating seem similar but are different. Dieting is following a formal set of rules for weight loss, while Constrained eating is the quiet, ongoing restriction you apply when you’re not officially on a diet.
Social and comfort eating
Social eating is shaped by how you feel you’re being judged by others. Comfort eating is emotionally driven, often tied to deep memories. Relief eating is semi-automatic, a system-level response to restore balance, often misunderstood as a lack of willpower.
Yor ultimate goal
The goal is Conscious eating, being present with your body and making deliberate choices about what, when, and how much to eat. This isn’t about cutting foods out. It’s about recognising the forces shaping your eating so you can decide whether they serve you.
When you see your whole eating system, the power shifts from the food to you. You stop looking for one more diet and start looking at your own story. And because your story is as unique as your fingerprint, no generic plan can deliver what understanding your own system will.
If you’re ready to make the invisible visible and uncover the deeper reasons behind your eating patterns, the Weighting for Happiness Project can show you how.
Free Resources for you
Get the Free Cheat Sheet on the 8 Types of Eating
🎧 Listen here:
To start discovering why diets didn't work for you, download my free e-book here
Check out the Weighting for Happiness programs for the tools and roadmap to uncover your food story. Download the free e-book
Listen to my Podcast 'Before Dieting' where ever you listen to your Podcasts or try the Apple/Spotify links below.
🎧 Listen to Amy’s story on Before Dieting …
Episode 6 - Eight Types of Eating
Happy listening - Bronwyn 💚
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