Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever

Emotional eating is by far the most common cause of weight gain. As you'll learn in Shrink Yourself, all the diets, exercise regimens, and surgical procedures in the world will not free you from this vicious cycle. Why? Because they don't address your reasons for overeating.

Shrink Yourself, a supportive, unique, and ground-breaking guide written by a world-renowned therapist who has helped thousands of people lose weight and keep it off, gets to the heart of the problem. Shrink Yourself gives you the equivalent of eight expensive sessions with the best weight-loss therapist in the world for the price of a single book.

Yo-yo dieting is an endless cycle. You diet and lose weight. Then you eat "comfort food"—that piece of cake, huge bowl of ice cream, or enormous bag of potato chips you devour to smother your feelings of fear, anxiety, stress, anger, boredom, loneliness, frustration, or so many other feelings. The comfort doesn't last long. Soon you feel guilty for breaking your diet, so you displace the guilt with another helping. Before long, you're unpacking your fat clothes again and berating yourself for your lack of willpower. Then, warily, you contemplate the next diet.

With Shrink Yourself, renowned psychiatrist and emotional eating expert Dr. Roger Gould offers the first step-by-step analysis of the connection between eating and emotion. Dr. Gould explains why the connection is so powerful and shows you how to break the emotional eating cycle, shed all your excess pounds, and keep them off for good. Based on Dr. Gould's unique method and his work involving more than twenty thousand people, this revolutionary eight-session program reveals that your uncontrollable hunger is connected to feelings of powerlessness in your life. You'll discover the five layers of powerlessness and you'll learn how to recognize and cope with each of them by:

• Conquering the feeling phobia

• Waking up from the food trance

• Challenging your self-doubts

• Defeating your defeatism

• Creating real safety

• Dealing positively with anger

• And more

Food may be a relatively inexpensive "over-the-counter tranquilizer," but its side effects can be devastating. So before you rush to try the next fad diet or start binge eating after a stressful day, ask yourself, "Is this the way I want to live?" Then read Shrink Yourself and learn how to take control of your emotions to slim down permanently? without ever counting calories again. You can truly shrink yourself.

Praise for Shrink Yourself

"This empowering book will allow you to lose weight by recognizing the psychological stumbling blocks in your life that contribute to your emotional eating. If you're fed up with yo-yo diets that leave you feeling frustrated, confused, and powerless, you owe it to yourself to read the wisdom in this book."

—Joseph J. Luciani, Ph.D., author of Self-Coaching: The Powerful Program to Beat Anxiety and Depression

"Some things in life we can change; some things we can't. Our weight is definitely something we can change and control if we follow Dr. Roger Gould's brilliant method. Every time I'm tempted to reach for that extra sugar fix, I think about what I learned in Shrink Yourself—and I just keep on walking."

—Maud Adams, actress and model

"Drawing on his background in psychiatry, Roger Gould makes a major contribution to our understanding of the obesity epidemic by identifying the basic emotions that give rise to unhealthy eating habits and offering a manageable step-by-step program for readers to combat it."

—Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Emotional eating is by far the most common cause of weight gain, and all the diets, exercise regimens, and surgical procedures in the world will not free you from the problem. Why? Because they don't address your reasons for overeating. In Shrink Yourself, renowned psychiatrist and emotional eating expert Dr. Roger Gould offers the first step-by-step analysis of the connection between eating and emotion and shows you how to break the emotional eating cycle, shed your excess pounds, and keep them off for good. Based on Dr. Gould's unique method and his work involving more than twenty thousand people, this revolutionary eight-session program will help you slim down permanently without ever counting calories again.

Dr. Gould presents his well-tested strategy for helping readers conquer what leads to emotional eating--fear, anxiety, stress, and other factors--and slim down.

Roger Gould, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author, and former head of Community Psychiatry and Outpatient Psychiatry at UCLA. Dr. Gould is one of the world's leading authorities on emotional eating and adult development. His work on the life cycle was used by Gail Sheehy in her #1 bestselling book, Passages, and in his own book Transformations. Dr. Gould has pioneered the use of online therapy sessions focusing on weight loss and other issues, and he has been acknowledged by the Smithsonian Institute as a pioneer in the innovative use of computers in psychiatry. His Web site on emotional eating is shrinkyourself.com.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

PART ONE.

The Learning Sessions.

1 Emotional Eating 101.

2 Food, the Over-the-Counter Tranquilizer.

3 The Costs of Powerlessness.

4 Your Self-Doubt Layer.

5 Your Frustration/Reward Layer.

6 Your Safety Layer.

7 Your Rebellion Layer.

8 Your Emptiness Layer.

PART TWO.

The Practice Sessions.

9 Recovering Your Power.

10 SESSION 1: Getting Started.

11 SESSION 2: Conquering the Feeling Phobia.

12 SESSION 3: Waking Up from the Food Trance.

13 SESSION 4: Challenging Your Self-Doubts.

14 SESSION 5: Defeat Your Defeatism.

15 SESSION 6: Creating Real Safety.

16 SESSION 7: Maturely Dealing with Anger.

17 SESSION 8: Fill Yourself Up.

Shrink Yourself Conclusion.

Index.