For years as a dancer, my relationship with food was wrapped up in numbers - calories, portions, rules. I spent so much energy stressing over what I should or shouldn’t eat that eating rarely felt joyful. When I found yoga, something shifted. On the mat, I learned presence and compassion; off the mat, I started focusing on nourishing myself instead of restricting myself. For the first time, food became less about calories and more about care. That evolution felt so easeful and natural after years of tension with eating that I knew there had to be something real behind it. That curiosity is what led me to explore mindful eating in my master’s thesis.

So more than ten years ago, when I was writing my thesis and diving more into this topic, I came across something that completely shifted the way I thought about food: the Mindful Eating Questionnaire (MEQ).

What the MEQ Actually Measures

The MEQ isn’t about calories, macros, or “good” versus “bad” foods. It looks at the patterns behind our eating. It breaks mindful eating into five areas:

• Awareness – noticing flavors, textures, and how food feels in your body.

• Disinhibition – eating past fullness or eating when you didn’t really intend to.

• Emotional Response – turning to food when feelings get big.

• Distraction – eating on autopilot, while working, watching TV, or scrolling.

• External Cues – how much your eating is shaped by things outside of you: portion sizes, social pressure, availability.

What I Learned from My Thesis

In my research, I found that people who practiced yoga regularly tended to score higher on awareness and lower on distraction. That made sense. The presence people cultivated in their practice seemed to spill over into their food choices.

That was my first big “aha”: our eating habits don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re shaped by everything else we do to care for ourselves.

From Research to Real Life

Even after I finished my thesis, I kept going back to the MEQ. I used the framework in my work as a dietitian and plant-based chef, and I started to see these categories come to life in real people.

Some clients were adventurous and tuned-in, others ate on autopilot, some were driven by rules, and others by emotions. These patterns repeated over and over—and they weren’t just behaviors, they felt like personalities around food.

That’s when the idea of Eating Archetypes began to take shape.

The Bridge Between the Two

The Archetypes are, in many ways, a translation of the MEQ into something more human and approachable. For example:

• High distraction → Overwhelmed Eater tendencies.

• Strong emotional response → Emotional Eater.

• High awareness → Adventurous Eater.

• Sensitivity to external cues → Performance Eater.

Where the MEQ gives data, the Archetypes give you a story. And stories are easier to connect with.

Why It Still Matters

The MEQ showed me years ago that mindful eating isn’t about rules—it’s about patterns and self-awareness. The Archetypes build on that idea by helping people recognize their own patterns with curiosity rather than judgment.

Want to see which Eating Archetype reflects your mindful eating style? Take the free quiz here .