Emotional Eating - A Practical Guide to Taking Control

This revealing and useful book tells how emotions can cause bad eating habits and provides an effective antidote to radical crash diets. The author uses a cognitive-behavioral approach, and offers an encouraging alternative to current theories on the causes on overeating, such as psychopathology, addiction, or moral weakness. Emotional Eating shows how to identify individual patterns of emotional eating, and then tells readers how to respond to these patterns. Filled with tables charts, and self-assessment tests, Emotional Eating can help you learn self-control by identifying emotional triggers and developing alternative behaviors.

Excessive overeating in response to emotions must be controlled before weight management can be successfully achieved, according to Abramson (psychology, California State Univ.). Using case histories, he explores some of the causes of emotional eating (e.g., childhood programming, family life, and sexual abuse) and the manifestations of emotional eating (e.g., "sneaky snacking," grazing, and binging). Simple quizzes, designed to help identify emotional eating patterns, and exercises in behavior modification are provided. Of particular interest is the last chapter, which helps the reader determine whether or not it is a good or bad time to diet. While not a diet book or a 12-step primer, this is a tool for developing healthier ways of handling emotions and food. Another popular title on this subject is Frank Minirth's Love Hunger: Recovery for Food Addiction (Thomas Nelson, 1990). Purchase for comprehensive weight-loss or self-help collections.
- Linda S. Greene, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.