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Self-regulation is the goal-directed process through which people monitor and modulate their thoughts, emotions, attention, and behavior — through goal setting, self-monitoring, inhibition of impulses, and adjustment in response to feedback — to align actions with internal standards or long-term goals (Heatherton, 2011, PMC).
In nutritional psychology, self-regulation underlies the capacity to initiate, sustain, or terminate eating in response to internal hunger and satiety cues and to align food choices with health and values-based goals, supported by executive function, interoceptive awareness, and affect regulation, with regulatory deficits implicated in overeating, emotional and disinhibited eating, and disordered eating patterns (Dohle et al., 2018, PubMed; Herbert, 2021, PubMed).
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Encyclopedia of Nutritional Psychology. (2026). Self-Regulation. The Center for Nutritional Psychology.
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