Eating Behavior

2.1 Hunger and satiety
Hunger and satiety are crucial regulatory mechanisms that greatly contribute to maintain a healthy body weight, or to disrupt it if something goes wrong. Today we try to understand how they work.

2.2 Do we eat only when we are hungry?
There are many other situations in which we eat even if we are not really hungry. The regulation of eating behavior is not only biological, but also psychosocial.

2.3 Comfort eating, stress eating and other disordered eating behaviors
Our tendency to associate food with comfort, reward or love, can result in disordered eating behaviors such as comfort eating, stress eating, binge eating, food addiction, food obsession, purging, and night eating syndrome.

2.4 Eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa
Our concept of what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ is primarily a product of our culture, our values, what we see around us and what our parent taught us. This applies to body weight as well. Eating disorders, such as Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa, are pathological conditions which require medical attention and treatment.

2.5 What drives our food choices?
What drives our food preferences and our food choices? The answer involves both biological, psychological and social factors.

2.6 Strategies and tricks to change our eating habits
It’s really hard to change any of our habits, and this applies to our eating habits as well. However, we do have strategies and tricks to do it successfully.

On to the next section...