Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever »

Roger Gould, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author, and former head of Community Psychiatry and Outpatient Psychiatry at UCLA who is one of the world's leading authorities on emotional eating and adult development. His Web site on emotional eating is .#{.

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.

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     1
The Learning Sessions     9
Emotional Eating 101     11
Food, the Over-the-Counter Tranquilizer     25
The Costs of Powerlessness     37
Your Self-Doubt Layer     46
Your Frustration/Reward Layer     61
Your Safety Layer     93
Your Rebellion Layer     109
Your Emptiness Layer     126
The Practice Sessions     139
Recovering Your Power     141
Session 1: Getting Started     147
Session 2: Conquering the Feeling Phobia     170
Session 3: Waking Up from the Food Trance     184
Session 4: Challenging Your Self-Doubts     196
Session 5: Defeat Your Defeatism     213
Session 6: Creating Real Safety     233
Session 7: Maturely Dealing with Anger     245
Session 8: Fill Yourself Up     256
Shrink Yourself Conclusion     264
Index     266