PHOCUS Eating Map

A self-reflection tool for understanding your eating patterns, capacity, sensory needs and gut-brain responses.

The PHOCUS Eating Map is a gentle self-reflection tool designed to help you explore why eating may feel difficult, inconsistent, delayed, narrow, emotionally charged, or difficult to sustain right now.

Rather than focusing on willpower, discipline, or dietary perfection, PHOCUS looks at the wider ecology of eating, inviting you to reflect on patterns, hunger signals, food options, capacity, gut-brain communication, sensory context, and self-kindness. The goal is to help you understand your eating patterns with more clarity, compassion, and support.

Your results are not a diagnosis or a diet-quality score. They are simply a starting point for understanding where eating may need more support, flexibility, structure, or compassion.

PHOCUS does not tell you whether you are eating “well” or “badly”. It helps you understand what kind of support your eating may need, whether you are reflecting on your own experience or learning how to support and guide others more thoughtfully.

The PHOCUS Eating Map

A gentle self-reflection tool for exploring why eating may feel difficult right now.

All questions refer to the past 7 days. Choose the option that best fits your current experience.


Patterns


1. My eating varies a lot depending on the day.

2. I skip meals because I lose track of time or forget to eat.

3. Stress or overwhelm makes my eating more chaotic.

Hunger and interoception


4. I find it hard to know if I am hungry or just stressed, tired, or emotional.

5. I often notice hunger only when I feel unwell, shaky, or very irritable.

6. I struggle to tell when I am comfortably full.

Options


7. When I am tired or overwhelmed, I can only manage a very small number of familiar foods.

8. I avoid cooking or preparing food even when I want to eat.

9. Having too many food options makes it harder for me to decide what to eat.

Capacity


10. My ability to organise or prepare food changes a lot from day to day.

11. When my mental energy is low, eating in a way that supports me feels nearly impossible.

12. Without routines or support, my eating becomes more inconsistent.

Underlying neurobiology


13. My appetite changes noticeably when I am stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed.

14. I use food to manage or soften uncomfortable emotions or body sensations.

15. My digestion, such as bloating, discomfort, or bowel changes, shifts when my emotions change.

16. My gut sensations often feel confusing or unreliable, making it hard to know what my body is telling me.

17. My mood, clarity, or energy often change with how my gut feels.

18. When my gut feels off, I feel a strong pull toward certain foods or a strong avoidance of others, even when I cannot explain why.

Sensory context and self-kindness


19. Sensory input around food, such as smell, texture, sound, or lighting, affects what or how much I can eat.

20. I avoid some foods because the sensory experience feels overwhelming.

21. Busy, loud, or unpredictable environments make eating more difficult for me.

22. When eating feels difficult, I tend to put pressure on myself rather than respond with understanding.

23. When my eating feels unsettled, I sometimes overlook the role of stress, context, or limited capacity.

24. I find it difficult to respond kindly to myself when eating feels challenging.

PHOCUS Eating Map is the public-facing name for the online self-reflection version of PHOCUS Questionnaire v1.1. PHOCUS Questionnaire v1.1 © Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas, 2026. All rights reserved.

PHOCUS is currently undergoing research validation. It is provided here for individual self-reflection only.
This questionnaire may not be copied, shared, adapted, reproduced, distributed, embedded, taught, used commercially, or included in research, clinical, educational, organisational, or professional materials without written permission from the author.
Commercial use is not permitted. PHOCUS remains the intellectual property of Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas.
For any use beyond individual self-reflection, please contact the author.

This questionnaire is a reflective screening and formulation-support tool. It is not a diagnostic instrument, not a diet-quality score, and not a measure of motivation, discipline, or willpower.

This embedded version calculates your result in your browser. It does not send or store your answers.

The PHOCUS Eating Map is designed to give you more than a score.

When you complete the PHOCUS Eating Map, you receive a personalised reflection profile showing which areas may be making eating harder for you right now. Your result highlights your total PHOCUS score, your main areas to support first, and your scores across six domains: eating patterns, hunger and interoception, food options, capacity, gut-brain responses, and sensory context and self-kindness.

The aim is to help you move from self-blame to useful information. Instead of asking, “Why can’t I just eat better?”, PHOCUS helps you ask more specific questions, such as:

  • Is my eating rhythm being disrupted by stress or time blindness?

  • Am I missing hunger cues until my body is already struggling?

  • Am I overwhelmed by too many choices?

  • Is my capacity too low for the kind of food planning I expect from myself?

  • Are stress, digestion, mood, or sensory load shaping what feels possible?

Your result also gives you practical starting points, so you can begin with the area carrying the most strain rather than trying to change everything at once.

Are you ready to PHOCUS? Start your Eating Map below.

What PHOCUS tells you

PHOCUS Eating Map

What to do with your PHOCUS result

How to interpret

PHOCUS can be useful in different ways, depending on who you are and why you are here.

If you are completing it for yourself, your result can help you understand what may be making eating harder right now, and where support may be most useful to begin. You might notice that your eating is being shaped more by hunger cues, decision fatigue, sensory load, digestive changes, emotional regulation, low capacity, or self-pressure than by knowledge or motivation.

You may find that the result is enough on its own. It may give you language, clarity, and a more compassionate starting point.

If you would like support making sense of your result, I can help you translate your PHOCUS profile into practical, personalised next steps. This might include building a more workable eating rhythm, reducing food-related decision fatigue, supporting hunger and fullness cues, creating low-capacity options, or understanding how stress, gut-brain responses, sensory context, and self-kindness are shaping your relationship with food.

You can learn more about how I work here.

If you are a practitioner, coach, nutrition professional, therapist, or educator, PHOCUS can also help you think differently about eating in neurodivergent adults. Rather than seeing inconsistent, restricted, delayed, or convenience-based eating as a lack of motivation, PHOCUS invites a more ecological and neurodivergent-affirming interpretation.

Learn about the PHOCUS masterclass here.

The PHOCUS Eating Map on this page has been developed from years of research, clinical work, and lived experience, and is now in the process of research validation. It is here as an invitation for individual self-reflection. The masterclass provides the wider teaching context, including how to interpret PHOCUS results, how to understand the optional PHOCUS-T module, and how to turn the framework into practical, compassionate support.

Want support with your PHOCUS result?

If your result feels useful and you would like to explore it further, you can book a consultation with me. Together, we can use your PHOCUS profile as a starting point to create a realistic plan designed around your nervous system, your history, your sensory needs, your capacity, your gut-brain patterns, and your everyday life.

Support
BOOK A CONSULTATION

For practitioners and curious learners: PHOCUS-T and the masterclass

For Practitioners

PHOCUS also includes an optional trauma-aware layer called the PHOCUS-T Safety Map.

This additional reflection explores how tension, vigilance, judgement sensitivity, feeling watched, or feeling unsafe may influence eating and digestion. It does not ask about trauma history or diagnosis. Instead, it helps people reflect on whether nervous system safety may be influencing what feels possible around food.

Because this module needs more context and care, PHOCUS-T is not available on this public page. It is currently available only inside my members-only area for people attending my online PHOCUS masterclass on Wednesday 15th July.

In the masterclass, we explore how to interpret the PHOCUS Eating Map and the PHOCUS-T Safety Map without pathologising the person, how to understand eating through a neurodivergent-affirming and trauma-aware lens, and how to translate the profile into practical support.

For practitioners, coaches, nutrition professionals, therapists, and educators, the masterclass offers a fuller understanding of how the PHOCUS framework, the PHOCUS Eating Map, and PHOCUS-T Safety Map can be used thoughtfully. I aim not to turn PHOCUS into a rigid protocol. I would genuinely like it to help you ask better questions, understand eating in context, and support people with more precision, kindness, and clinical care.

You can find out more about the masterclass on the PHOCUS Masterclass page, or reserve your seat below.

PHOCUS | ADHD-Friendly Nutrition Masterclass
£65.00
One time

Enjoy lifetime access to the PHOCUS Masterclass members’ area, including the live 90-minute training session with Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas, the post-event recording, exclusive slides, participant notes, the PHOCUS food and meal-creation guide, plus a workbook and interpretation guide to help you apply your PHOCUS Eating Map result in everyday life, clinical work, or professional practice. The live event is scheduled for 5pm UK time on Wednesday 15th July.

✓ Live 90-minute Masterclass plus post-event recording
✓ Exclusive slides and participant notes
✓ PHOCUS food and meal-creation guide
✓ PHOCUS Eating Map workbook for personal/clinical reflection
✓ Evidence-based ADHD nutrition with kindness at its centre

Optional PHOCUS-T Safety Map guidance inside the members’ area

Immediate access after secure online payment.

Disclaimer

The PHOCUS Eating Map is intended for information, education, and self-exploration. It is based on PHOCUS Questionnaire v1.1. Your result is generated locally in your browser. No personal data is collected, no cookies are used, and no information is stored on servers or databases.

PHOCUS does not constitute a clinical assessment or diagnosis, and it does not replace evaluation by a qualified professional. It is a reflective screening and formulation-support tool designed to help you understand eating through a body-mind lens, including patterns, capacity, interoception, sensory context, stress, gut-brain influences, and self-kindness.

PHOCUS is currently undergoing research validation. Any result from the PHOCUS Eating Map should therefore be understood as a reflective guide, not as a validated clinical score or diagnostic conclusion.

As a clinical neuroscientist, my commitment is to communicate science in ways that help people understand, reflect, and make informed decisions, without labelling, moralising, or diagnosing. If anything raised by this questionnaire feels significant, distressing, or relevant to your daily functioning, it deserves to be explored with appropriate professional support.