8 Keys to End Emotional Eating

by Howard Farkas, Babette Rothschild (Foreword by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393712322
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/24/2019
Series:	8 Keys to Mental Health
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	158,950
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Howard S. Farkas, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who has been working and teaching for more than twenty-five years. He is the founder and president of Chicago Behavioral Health, LLC, specializing in the treatment of emotional eating. He also serves on the faculty of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where he teaches in the clinical psychology graduate program. He is a member of the Academy of Eating Disorders and of the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals.

Babette Rothschild, MSW, LCSW is an internationally recognized PTSD specialist and best-selling author of seven books translated into eighteen languages, including her new offerings Help for the Helper Updated + Expanded and the 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery Workbook. Babette is also the creator and Series Editor of W. W. Norton’s 8 Keys to Mental Health Series. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

Key 1 Get a Fix on Emotional Eating 20

Key 2 Break the Diet Mentality 40

Key 3 Be Strategic About Control 67

Key 4 Understand the Motive 86

Key 5 Resolve the Conflict 106

Key 6 Boost Your Coping Skills 119

Key 7 Cue Your Reasoning 135

Key 8 Accept Yourself and Thrive 151

References 163

Index 165

Editorial Reviews

"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

"8 Keys to Ending Emotional Eating offers insights into emotional eating that I have not read or heard before. The information is easy to read, a personable, engaging writing style. The content detailed, well informed, and supported with clinical examples…I see this book as part of a healthy therapeutic relationship with a therapist who resonates with you, senses into your struggle, and offers the support you need to both come to awareness of and appreciate your past and then take the next steps to make changes for a healthier relationship with food and with yourself."

Somatic Psychotherapy Today - Nancy Eichhorn

"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

10/01/2019

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. VERDICT Farkas's angle of eating for defiance will touch a nerve but will also offer help to instill a constructive response in many overeaters seeking ways to get to the core of the behavior.

Library Journal