8 Keys to End Emotional Eating (8 Keys to Mental Health)

by Howard Farkas

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Author: Howard Farkas

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 039371232X
ISBN 13: 978-0393712322

Bring an end to emotional eating by getting to the root of the problem.

Most books about emotional eating tend to focus on how to strengthen self-restraint or how to identify what triggers it. The former can make the problem worse, while the latter may be different each time it occurs. Both approaches fail to help emotional eaters understand why they feel compelled to do something that they don’t want to do in the first place. This understanding is the key to changing this behavior.

Howard Farkas, who has more than two decades of professional and teaching experience as a clinical psychologist specializing in emotional eating, explains the underlying motive that drives the behavior: emotional eating is not a passive failure of self-control, but an active impulse to reject the control of dieting. This defiant need “to be bad” usually leaves the person feeling guilty and anxious about their eating, and recommitting to their diet until the cycle repeats, and the compulsive eating recurs.

8 Keys to End Emotional Eating provides a detailed plan for breaking this pattern. By explaining the root cause that drives the desire to binge, Farkas offers practical skills to help you learn to change your mindset about dieting and end the impulse to binge. His road map for the future will help readers maintain healthy eating habits for years to come.

Review

"While diet advice typically aims at identifying triggers and strengthening self-restraint, clinical health psychologist Farkas contends that emotional eating is primarily owing to the rejection of the control necessitated by dieting--a desire to "be bad." Farkas seeks to help readers change their mind-sets about dieting through the use of his eight keys, which include breaking the diet mentality, resolving inner conflict, and upgrading coping mechanisms."

-- Library Journal

"This excellent, short, and practical book offers many refreshing ideas and perspectives...A valuable book with many interesting insights in line with HG understandings."

-- Human Givens

"Filled with useful tips and compassionate expertise, this book could help anyone to become more conscious around their eating, whether you're experiencing issues or not. For those who suffer most, it could mean the end of emotional eating and painful dieting, and hope for a better relationship to food and life."

-- Greater Good Magazine

"This is not a diet book, it is a life book. Farkas has looked into the roots of overeating, down to the core. He will help you to change your relationship with food and yourself."

-- Babette Rothschild (from the foreword)

From Goodreads reviewers:

Joey: "I'm definitely glad I picked it up. Sometimes having someone articulate an issue or name a problem in a book is itself encouraging and freeing because you know you aren't the only person feeling a certain way, and also that others have found ways to manage. The most helpful thing in the book for me is the idea that a lot of disordered eating comes from a feeling of lack of control in other areas of life."

Kuroshi: "As someone who's struggled with unwanted binge eating or stress eating for years, I appreciate that this book goes into motivations that are driving the "out-of-control" eating and provides some practical ways to start changing the behavior. This is not a "diet" book, which is a good thing - it maintains what I felt was a neutral tone toward people wanting to lose weight, and even makes a case for why dieting can be counterproductive."

From the Author

My purpose in writing 8 Keys to End Emotional Eating is to make my approach to the treatment of emotional eating more widely available, beyond my clinical practice.

I view emotional eating as a rebellious response to the harmful message of the diet culture that you must lose weight in order to belong. People who are vulnerable to this idea may accept the sacrifice and self-deprivation that this requires, but only to a point. Eventually, their intuitive sense of fairness and their need to make their own choices tells them that this is wrong. That's when emotional eating may occur. By challenging the belief that being accepted requires dieting, you can eliminate the need to reject it with defiant eating. Adopting a less restrictive and more intuitive approach to eating will help you reestablish a healthier and more enjoyable relationship with food. The book's eight keys will show you how.

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8 Keys to End Emotional Eating (8 Keys to Mental Health)