Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Another excerpt from Stop Your Emotional Eating, a new weight-loss book for women in the Using Psychology to Lose Weight series

There is a chain of events that always leads to the act of emotionally eating. This chain of events is made up of your thoughts and feelings, your reactions to situations—and you might not be aware of them. Lack of awareness is the usual course.

When this chain of events that precedes and causes your lapse in eating behavior is taking place, it is a well-established pattern that has gotten to be pretty automatic. Automatic, meaning you don’t give it much thought, might not pay attention to it, and before you know it, you find yourself doing it. 

In such a chain of events, you unknowingly make decisions that lead you down the slippery slope to emotional eating. Surprising as it may be, decisions that you might think are innocent and not at all connected to eating are what propel you from link to link in this chain. These are not food related decisions. Nevertheless, it is these non-food decisions that are forcing you to resort to emotional eating.

To break the pattern of emotional eating, you have to familiarize yourself with the chain of events and then change the non-food decisions you are making.

You can buy Stop Your Emotional Eating at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, Kobo, Blackwell's (UK), Chapters/Indigo (CA)

Other books in the — Using Psychology to Lose Weight series —

Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Vol 1. Psych Yourself to Start
Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose Vol 2. Psych Yourself to Stick to It
Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose Vol 3. Psych Yourself to Keep It Off
   ...handy advice manuals to use every day

Breaking Up with Food: Maria's Last Diet
   ...a novel of passionate weight loss.
  The book delivers its self-help by pulling the reader deep into a psychological milieu.

by Maria's Last Diet

Stop Your Emotional Eating, is the latest book in the Symmetry Press weight-loss books for women Using Psychology to Lose Weight series.

This book addresses the pitfalls and the possibilities involved in getting rid of emotional eating once and for all. The book is divided into three parts. Part One is called “the proof of the pudding” because it lays the groundwork for seeing emotional eating for what it is. Part Two is called, “is in the eating”. It is a compendium of emotional eating ideas, ways to think more fully and clearly about your emotional eating. Part Three is entitled “stop”, and that’s just what it is all about—how to stop your emotional eating. In “stop” there are lots of strategies you can use for all the different aspects of emotional eating you might be facing.

What can you do about emotional eating?

First of all, you can recognize it for what it is.

In other words, you can tell yourself when you do the emotional eating thing, that you are doing it. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re hungry, or that it’s time to eat, or any of those self-satisfying rationalizations. No good. You gotta tell it like it is. Emotional eating, that’s what I’m doing. Labeling is always an interesting step. It’s a process, really, not just a step. The process, as you will see, involves setting into motion your mental apparatus. Paying attention. Remembering. Sounding the alert. Talking to yourself. What’s interesting about labeling is that it can stop you from doing something just by giving that something a label.

Since we’re on the subject of labeling, why not make labeling your first step in curing yourself of emotional eating. It’s a simple step, but a powerful one. It may not do the whole trick. Even if labeling your eating behavior as emotional just slows you down a bit. That’s OK. Accept this small success. After all, your emotional eating is by now probably on automatic. So any interference with its automatic nature is not to be sneezed at. Small successes like this can be combined to form bigger achievements.

You can buy Stop Your Emotional Eating at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, Kobo, Blackwell's (UK), Chapters/Indigo (CA)

Other books in the — Using Psychology to Lose Weight series —

Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Vol 1. Psych Yourself to Start
Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose Vol 2. Psych Yourself to Stick to It
Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose Vol 3. Psych Yourself to Keep It Off
   ...handy advice manuals to use every day

Breaking Up with Food: Maria's Last Diet
   ...a novel of passionate weight loss.
   The book delivers its self-help by pulling the reader deep into a psychological milieu.

by Maria's Last Diet

Emotional Eating at It's Finest

I'm standing in my kitchen, yearning for some food

I ask myself –

Now, which cookie will help me feel loved?

A bowl of what kind of ice cream will tell me I'm good enough?

How many M&Ms will it take for me to raise my self-esteem?

What will calm my worry down best, the peanut butter or the bagel?

What will take care of my anger—let me see? Maybe some pudding?

How much cheese will I need to give me the strength of a superwoman?

What's my best friend, pizza or pie?

Will the whole sleeve of Oreos make me feel worthy?

 How much is enough?

You can buy Stop Your Emotional Eating at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, Kobo, Blackwell's (UK), Chapters/Indigo (CA)

Other books in the — Using Psychology to Lose Weight series —

Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Vol 1. Psych Yourself to Start
Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose Vol 2. Psych Yourself to Stick to It
Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose Vol 3. Psych Yourself to Keep It Off
   ...handy advice manuals to use every day

Breaking Up with Food: Maria's Last Diet
   ...a novel of passionate weight loss.
  The book delivers its self-help by pulling the reader deep into a psychological milieu.
 

by Maria's Last Diet

The Function of Emotional Eating

Emotional eating serves some useful functions for you. And don’t you ever forget it. You can dispute this all you want. But you’d get nowhere. Only when you can open yourself up to thinking about the value for you of emotional eating, only then will you be taking the first true step to doing something about it.

First, you have to face what you’ve been thinking of as maladaptive—your pattern of eating—and think of it as being adaptive in some way(s) for you.

Next, try to discover the reason(s) you made this adaptation of eating like there is no tomorrow or eating up all the sweets.

Want to make a little wager that at the heart of the matter will be something about you emotionally. What’s adaptive about eating so much or eating so much comfort food that’s no good for you, is that it is good for you.

Let’s just take a quick case in point. If you’re feeling anxious for instance, you usually have to find a way to discharge the anxiety, get rid of it before it affects you too much, or before it consumes you, which is the worst thing anxiety can do. It can eat you up. But before it eats you up, you eat it up—or rather you eat over it, just like you might smoke a cigarette or take alcohol or go on a shopping spree; anything to escape. You have to escape the anxiety, dampen its effect, or else. Or else what? Well, you don’t want to find out “or else what”.  

Eating over your anxiety becomes an adaptation you make. It is maladaptive because it contributes to unwanted weight gain, and to feeling bad about yourself. It is maladaptive because it keeps the same solution in place—eat over it, again and again—and doesn’t lead to new, more adaptive solutions, such as facing down your anxiety so that it doesn’t stay so powerful and influential.

You can buy Stop Your Emotional Eating at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, Kobo, Blackwell's (UK), Chapters/Indigo (CA)

by Maria's Last Diet

Here's another excerpt from Stop Your Emotional Eating, just released as the latest book in the Symmetry Press weight-loss books for women Using Psychology to Lose Weight series.

     Ode to Food 

my friend my enemy
my prize my punishment
my medicine my poison
my provider my thief

my protection my danger
my choice my compulsion
my solution my problem
my calm my storm

my facilitator my obstacle
my shield my dagger
my healer my torturer
my escape my lock

my joy my despair
my dream my nightmare
my love my hate
my hope my regret

You can buy Stop Your Emotional Eating at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, Kobo, Blackwell's (UK), Chapters/Indigo (CA)

by Maria's Last Diet

Here's an excerpt from Stop Your Emotional Eating, just released as the latest book in the Symmetry Press weight-loss books for women Using Psychology to Lose Weight series.

Emotional eating. We all do it. No one escapes to a place where emotional eating isn’t part of her life.

That’s OK, because emotional eating doesn’t pose a problem for everyone.

Eating when you’re upset can help you feel better, without having any bad consequences.

Not everyone who eats for emotional reasons gains weight, or gets too fat for their own liking, or for their own good. Not everyone who eats away their hurt, or their anger, or their worries, seriously limits their ability to cope with their feelings in more adaptive ways

Emotional eating is a problem for you when it causes problems for you.

You can buy Stop Your Emotional Eating at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, Kobo, Blackwell's (UK), Chapters/Indigo (CA)