| Studies show that the reason why many people gain weight—and keep it on—is emotional eating, not physical eating. Now Dr. Roger Gould, a psychotherapist and a leading authority on emotional eating, shows how to overcome fear, anxiety, and other stresses and stop using food as an over-the-counter tranquilizer that can cause weight gain. With 12 practical ways to stop emotional eating and an eight-session program, Dr. Gould helps you become your own eating therapist and shrink yourself for good.
Twenty years ago, I started working with psychotherapy outpatients who also had eating issues. When these patients told me that they had trouble controlling their weight because they ate too much, I would ask, “Why do you eat too much once you’ve decided not to?” You can imagine the answers I got as I pursued the question over the years. The answers ran the gamut of everything that has been reported in every self-help diet book, in every online diary, in every confessional written by the morbidly obese, the bulimic, or your average everyday overeater. “I eat because I’m ravenously hungry.” “I eat because I’m bored, or lonely, or married, or single.” “I eat because I pass a donut shop, or I had too much to drink, or I was at a party.”“I eat because my mother cooked and I didn’t want to disappoint her, or because I want to eat as much as my husband can, or I don’t want to deprive myself, or I’m depressed.” For years, my exploration of this question led nowhere. |