Emotional Eating - Psychology of Weight Loss

Emotional Eating - The Psychology of Weight Loss Next Page >>

Summary & Comment

Dr. Roger Gould is commonly recognized as a pioneer and expert in the field of adult development. Along with his expert team, he developed a revolutionary interactive approach to therapy. His programs have been tested on more than 20,000 people in seven different scientific studies. The latest study conducted by UCLA and Kaiser Permanente said that each of Dr. Gould's Guided Sessions are about as effective as traditional in-person therapy. Psychology Today said, Dr. Gould's programs are based on "proven research results."

After perfecting his approach, Dr. Gould and his team took on the task of making an effective weight loss program aimed at helping people eliminate the obstacles to reaching and maintaining their ideal weight. He has revamped an earlier program called "Mastering Food" and recently relaunched it as a much more robust program called "Shrink Yourself" (www.shrinkyourself.com).

BestDietForMe.com presents some of Dr. Gould’s findings for you in several articles below, reprinted with permission. Our analysts find this to be one of the best psychological programs we’ve seen used for weight loss. This program may be used as a standalone weight loss program or in conjunction with another diet plan (such as Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Atkins, LA Weight Loss, or the diet websites). to supplement their program. I

Shrink Yourself will help you examine why you eat too much (emotional eating) and how you can change this habit to achieve long term weight loss. The secret of weight control, according to Dr. Gould, is understanding why you eat, not what you eat.

The program is applicable for you if..

- you want to stop bingeing, overeating, or breaking your diet

- you break your diet when you are sad, lonely, upset, bored or stressed

- you've lost weight before but gained the weight back

- you were determined to lose weight but gave up for some reason.

Shrink Yourself is a 12-week online program that includes: 12 guided sessions, 12 weekly workbooks, a habit diary, unlimited hunger coach, community forum access, reminder emails, and more. The cost is $120, or you can pay as you go at $40/month, with a 100% money-back guarantee.

Some of Dr. Gould's research findings...

The 12 Types of Emotional Hunger

By: Dr. Roger Gould, M.D.

Below are the 12 types of emotional hunger that fuel emotional eating. In order to lose weight for life, you will have to conquer all 12 types. Look over the list -- which type of emotional hunger derails your diet?

Type 1. Dulling The Pain With The Food.

If you get really hungry when you feel angry, depressed, anxious, bored, or lonely, you suffer from Type 1 emotional hunger, and you use food to dull the pain that these emotions cause.

Type 2. Sticks And Stones May Break Your Bones, But Cake Won't Heal What Hurts You.

According to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food, if you react by getting hungry when others talk down to you, take advantage of you, belittle you or take you for granted, then you suffer from Type 2 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid confrontation.

Type 3. A Full Heart Fills An Empty Belly.

If you crave food when you have tension in your close relationships, you suffer from Type 3 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid feeling the pain of rejection or anger.

Type 4. Hate Yourself, Love Your Munchies.

If you tend to become hypercritical of yourself, if you label yourself "stupid," "lazy," or "a loser," you have Type 4 emotional hunger. You eat to "stuff down" self-doubts.

Type 5. Secret Desires Have No Calories.

If your hunger gets activated because your intimate relationships don't satisfy some basic need like trust or security, you suffer from Type 5 emotional hunger and you use food to try to fill the gap, according to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food,

Type 6. Forty Gulps And The Well Is Still Empty.

If you eat to make up for the deprivation you experienced as a child, you have Type 6 emotional eating.

Type 7. It's My Pastry, and I'll Eat If I Want To.

If you eat to assert your independence because you don't want anyone telling you what to do, you have Type 7 emotional hunger.

Type 8. I Can't Come To Work Today--I'm Eating

According to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food, if your appetite kicks in when you're faced with new challenges--if you use food to avoid rising to the test, or to insulate yourself from the fear of failure--you have Type 8 emotional hunger.

Type 9. Aroused by Aromas, Not by the Chef.

If you stuff your face in order to avoid your sexuality-either to stay overweight so that nobody desires you or to hide from intimate encounters--you suffer from Type 9 emotional hunger.

Type 10. I'll Beat You With this Éclair.

Emotional eaters often eat to pay back those who have hurt them, often in the distant past. They use their bodies as battlegrounds for working out old resentments. If you do this, you're really battling type 10 emotional hunger

Type 11. Peter Pan and the Peanut Butter Cookie.

If you eat to make yourself feel carefree, like a child, you have Type 11 emotional hunger. You eat to keep yourself from facing the challenges of growing up.

Type 12. That Stranger In Shorts Wearing Your Face.

If you overeat because you fear getting thin, either consciously or unconsciously, you have Type 12 emotional hunger.

Emotional Eating -- Phantom Hunger

By Dr. Roger Gould, M.D., Founder, Mastering Food

If you binge, snack constantly, overeat a lot, or can't control what you eat, then you are suffering from emotional eating. If that's the case, diet plans have probably failed you, and on some level, you probably feel like you just can't lose weight no matter what you do.

But whether it's midnight cravings, secret binges, or constant snacking, the problem is always the same: you experience hunger, but can't seem to satisfy it for long. And when the craving for food grips you, you can't tell that your hunger originates in your mind, not in your belly.

I like to think of it this way: you eat when you aren't really hungry because you have two stomachs--one real, the other a phantom. According to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food, the hunger in your belly signals you when your system has a biological need for food. If that was the only signal of hunger you received, you'd be thin. It's the phantom stomach that causes the problems. The phantom stomach sends out a hunger signal when unruly emotions and unsolved personal agendas start pushing themselves into awareness. A short-circuit occurs, and you feel so hungry that you're compelled to eat.

I see the power of the phantom stomach demonstrated almost daily in my work with patients. The other day, a patient who had just finished breakfast told me in the middle of a difficult session that she suddenly felt extremely hungry. As soon as we started talking about her sexual problems with her husband, her appetite kicked in and she could hardly wait to get to McDonald's. Her phantom stomach was shouting, demanding action.

Phantom hunger comes on quickly and knows what it wants, and it wants a lot of it. Biological hunger comes on gradually and you can satisfy it with relatively small amounts of food. Phantom hunger has such power that it drives you to go to almost any lengths to satisfy it.

I saw this fact demonstrated in Technicolor when I consulted at the Pritikin Institute, a well-known weight loss program in Santa Monica, California, where clients paid $10,000 a month to take part in a controlled healthy diet and exercise program. Although the tuition for the program far exceeded the cost of attending the most expensive private university in America, I frequently found participants sneaking out for hamburgers and French fries at a corner stand. These were all highly motivated people sent to Pritikin by their doctors because of serious, life-threatening health problems, but positive motivation clearly wasn't enough to help them resist phantom hunger. As you know, all weight loss programs depend on positive motivation, ignoring the obvious: that there's such power in the emotional forces underlying the desire to binge or overeat that if you don't expose those forces and conquer them, you'll always be at their mercy--you'll always have weight problems.

According to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food, if you want to stay on the "lose some pounds and gain them back" cycle for a lifetime, go on a conventional diet. But if you want to stay trim for the rest of your life, you need to stop focusing on what you should eat to lose weight, and instead ask why you overeat when you really aren't hungry.

Although diet plans can provide important nutritional information, we can see that diets don't and can't work if they don't address the real reason why you overeat. It's essential that you recognize the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger, and learn how to deal with each of the emotions and situations that trigger your phantom hunger so that you eat only when you need to, not when distress triggers your cravings.

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