Taming of the Chew Book Review

It's been about three weeks since I read The Taming of the Chew (A Holistic Guide to Stopping Compulsive Eating) by Denise Lamothe, Psy.D H.H. D. Being a doctor of holistic health, she uses a holistic model to deal with the physical, emotional and spiritual.

There are probably dozens and dozens--maybe hundreds--of overweight people who have found her book very useful. While she strongly suggests that we "love our little girl" and she has a chapter on Healing the Emotional Self, she doesn't tell you what to do with basic emotions which I would think would be a strong part of healing the emotional self.

Without dealing with emotions it's rather impracticable to stop compulsive eating. But then again self love goes as long way as it's certainly an important part of my book.

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Breaking Free From Emotional Eating "Eating Crow?"

Ok, I was going to take a look at Taming of the Chew in this post, but in my last post I said some critical things of Renee Roth's book Breaking Free from Emotional Eating. I still agree with what I said, but then I ran across some book reviews of the previous edition of the book when it was called Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating at
http://behappydieting.com/diseases-conditions-and-treatments/compulsive-eating-diseases-conditions-and-treatments/breaking-free-from-compulsive-eating.html Sorry I can't link this--the url is too long. There are five posts which fit in very well as an add for the book from individuals who laud the book.

It's a good thing that I said in my previous post that the approach could work for some which these posts bear out. The problems I still have with the book are the change in title to go from Compulsive Eating to Emotional Eating and never really handle the subject of emotions and the "eat whenever you're hungry" thing. Obviously she got the point across that when eating is no longer a taboo, you then only eat when it's appropriate.

Take the emotional eater quiz? Click here.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Breaking Free From Emotional Eating Book Review

It's been about two weeks or so since I read Breaking Free From Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth. If you google "emotional eating" this book shows up on the first page of results. You would think that it would be a great source for dealing with emotional eating.

But all it is is a ridiculous approach void of any information on how to deal with emotions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that her approach won't work--obviously it has for her and some of those who have worked with her.

What is her approach? Well, eat all you want any time you feel hungry. I find that interesting because sometimes I feel hungry and instead of going for instant gratification, I might let ten minutes pass by and holy cow, I forget about food and have no desire for food, but if I had eaten when I felt hungry then it might have triggered more desire for more and more food.

The irony is that I use a similar approach with the power of suggestion which is that, "I eat whatever and whenever I desire and am amazed how easy I fill up on flavor and taste and feel fulfilled within."

She misses the qualifier "amazed that I fill up on flavor and taste."

The bottom line though is that she simply jumped on the bandwagon of using the phrase "emotional eating," in her title. The book was previously published as Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating.

I find that there is no real direction in her book about how to deal with emotions--how to deal with the denial of emotions, how to embrace them, how to experience them, how to rereference yourself.

As a source for dealing with emotional eating I would not recommend it. As a book to read for shedding weight, I would not recommend it either.

Tomorrow I'll look at The Taming of the Chew

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Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Shrink Yourself Book Review"

For safe eating practices, use condiments. I heard that today from my son's girlfriend, got a chuckle from it and thought I'd share it.

In the last several posts I've been reviewing three different books about solving emotional eating. The most recent book was Shrink Yourself by Roger Gould MD which I reviewed chapter by chapter. Now for the overall review. Doctors are experts at anatomy and he certainly understands the anatomy of obese individuals. But where does he go from there? Not far.

It's basically half of a book. Opps, doesn't look he'll ever endorse my book.

What's missing? There's no utilization of the art of suggestion--not even a list of affirmations. Ok, I use hypnosis which is the power of suggestion. I guess I take it for granted and don't realize its power until I read a book that is void of the art of suggestion. He doesn't discuss "self talk" in terms of the the suggestions you use to get rid of weight.

Since the book is about emotional eating, I would hope that there would be a section on how to embrace emotion--how to feel emotion--what to do with specific emotions like anger, confusion, frustration, happiness... But no, in the section about emotions he gives recycled advice as to how to deal with them like go jogging, mediatate (stress management stuff). Now there's nothing wrong with stress management stuff, but sitting down to mediate (unless you're a sufi) isn't the way to deal with anger.

Basically, the author recognizes that emotinal eating is a response to stress but his advice is limited to the standard everyday stress management techniques which are not going to help a binge. Can you imagine being at the boardwalk and feeling a bit gloomy as you walk by the candy apples or the chocolate store and then thinking to yourself, "Oh I feel a bit gloomy, I think I'll sit down and meditate, or put on my jogging shoes and go for a run rather than eat?" Yes, I think I remember taking a few deep breadths as one of the tips, but what are you going to say to yourself as you take a deep breadth to make a difference? And so if you do eat that candy apple, how do you handle it to make a difference in your life as opposed to loading on the guilts later on?

Overall I find the book a half a book and missing a lot of very important information--worth it's ten bucks on Amazon if you're interested in the anatomy of obesity.

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Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Shrink Yourself Book Review"

I'm coming to the end of Shrink Yourself by Roger Gould M.D.
Usually doctors have their heads up their you know what, but I must admit this guy is on target as to why those who are overweight eat. Chapter 15 is about Creating Real Safety specifically about how some over eaters use food to avoid reality. He then gives the rational side of the power of reality.

Chapter 16 is about my favorite subject--Dealing With Anger. But it's a far cry from what I expected. He deals mainly with resentments from childhood--not a bad subject but I would have titled the chapter "The Price of Childhood Resentments."

Chapter 17 Fill Yourself Up is about dealing with the emptiness within you.

Throughout much of the book he uses how negative self thinking will lead one to disastrous negative conclusions about an event and then goes through the same event with looking at the event differently. It reminds me of a commercial on the radio several years ago where a fellow suffering from a physical ailment went to his local hospital and ended up with a life long condition and then the same scenario is replayed with him going to a special hospital where he ends up cured and happy.

Overall, I'm impressed with Roger Gould's understanding of the weight issue, yet very disappointed in the fact that he never dealt with ordinary everyday emotions (even anger).

Likewise his rational thinking mechanism could have been greatly simplified. I'm also disappointed that he didn't specifically deal with building self esteem, but for less than $10 on Amazon it's worth a read.

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Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Shrink Yourself"

I'm coming to the near end of my review of Shrink Yourself by Roger Gould, MD. Chapters 14 and 15 are about dealing with self doubts and self defeatism. Like the two previous chapters I find them overwhelming. He's dealing with self put-downs and self doubts and provides examples of self communication to set things straight. I would hope that in his last chapters he goes into building self worth.

I'd suggest reading these two chapters for no other reason other than to see a comprehensive list of self put-downs and self doubts. Perhaps there's one that's been dictating your life that you're unaware of.


More to come

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Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Shrink Yourself"

I'm reviewing the book Shrink Yourself by Roger Gould, MD and am in Part II Chapter 11 and 12. Both chapters are well worth reading however, I find them overwhelming and would imagine that one suffering from obesity would also. It's so much to do and remember that it can be stressful in itself. But then again, one tip may well be all you need as he provides many tips for overcoming the feeling phobia as well as getting out of your food trance. Although there's a lot of information, I feel it could be greatly simplified. I also notice that although he deals with the "feeling phobia" he doesn't really go into how to feel emotions. He doesn't tell the reader what to do with some powerful emotions such as anger, depression, confusion, uncertainty... other than to do one of many stress management activities. In a sense it's like telling your mother that you are angry with her and her response is to go jogging or maybe shopping. Maybe he handles how to feel emotions later in the book.

More to come

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Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Shrink Yourself"

Continuing with Roger Gould's book, Shrink Yourself I'm at the beginning of Part II which is Chapters 9 and 10.

I got the distinct impression from reading chapter 9 that he was himming and hawing and it continued into chapter 10. It's like, "OK we're going to get you in control of your emotional eating, but I don't
1. either know where to start or
2. What to really tell you."

Chapter 10 did get rolling with a bunch of don'ts and things to avoid and ended with the only thing that really applies to emotional eating and that was to "observe."

More to come

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Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Shrink Yourself"

Continuing our review of Shrink Yourself by Roger Gould, MD finishes part I of the book with chapters 6, 7, and 8.

Chapter 6 is mainly about how overweight people shy away from being thin because of all the mechanisms they've learned to use their weight to avoid being put in situations that would require them to "shine" (my word), to avoid sexual issues... It's about how people hide behind fat.

Chapter 7 is the various rebellion issues that overweight people use to get even with their parents and those who criticized them as youngsters.

Chapter 8 is about using food to fill emptiness in one's life.

Overall these chapters provide interesting and informative information well worth reading for as they say, "if the shoe fits, wear it."

I'm looking forward to reviewing Part II.

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Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Shrink Yourself"

Book On to my next book to review--Shrink Yourself by Roger Gould MD. The introduction and first two chapters were more about emotional eating than the entire book by Geneen Roth was.
In the introduction Dr. Gould identifies the emotional eating problem as powerlessness. I must say that label pretty well fits all psychological problems. I mean those suffering from anxiety, panic attacks, lack of confidence, low self esteem... are all lacking power in their lives.

Nevertheless in Chapters 1 and 2 he provides an over abundance of case histories of those suffering from extreme stressful situations such as divorce relying on food and relates it to an alcoholic.

Chapter 3 is the Cost of Powerlessness in which he states that it's easier to be upset with yourself for pigging out than it is to deal with the emotional upset of something like anger or rejection. He goes on to say that overeaters have a feeling phobia--they're afraid of feeling emotions all of which I agree. There's also the challenge of maturing--throwing out the old childhood limiting programs and rewriting you own guidelines of life. The inability to deal with this conflict throws a lot of people into binging.

Chapter 4 is about how we let our low self esteem take a hit from other's criticisms, rejection... and that it's the low self esteem which contributes to binges and I agree with what he's saying.
Even self doubts (without anyone else's input) triggers binges. It's the critic within you--the self puts downs--that drive you to binging. He promises that in part II he'll give you a way of dealing with your critic.

Chapter 5 is somewhat about being hungry for what you lack or not knowing what you lack or not living up to your potential (dreams). Then there's the everyday pressures and stressors that contribute to overeating.

So far I'd say it's a one legged approach in that up to this point the book has been about eating in response to undesireable stress and fear--nothing about eating in response to happiness, celebration, achieving goals... Maybe that will come later in the book.

Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Breaking Free From. Emotional Eating Pt IV."

The last three chapters of Geneen Roth's book Breaking Free from Emotional Eating starts with chapter 13 and how fat people loath themselves and then it moves into about 15 different things to do to begin liking (loving) yourself. Forgive yourself and forgive others. Page 171 is the first serious attempt to discuss emotions and the emotion of choice is anger. She ties it in with forgiving those with whom you're angry and ends the chapter with what it would mean to be a powerful woman.

Chapter 14 is about pain, "Life is Hard, then You Die." She offers tips on dealing with pain.

Chapter 15 is about "Men Use Sex the Way Women Use Food." It's about women's fear of being thin and having to deal with the issues of being feminine.

Chapter 16 is titled "Compulsions." Maybe I read it too fast but I didn't get that it had much to do with compulsions.
'Whoops I goofed, there's a chapter 17 which is one page about affirming that there's an end to self flagellation and put-downs.

Maybe I read the book too fast and missed its genius as I found it to miss the mark. It's as though she picked topics at random and tried to weave it into her "breaking free" program. What do you think?

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Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Breaking Free From. Emotional Eating Part III"

I think I understand why the subject of emotions and food is so poorly covered in Geneen Roth's Book which my last two posts were about. It's because the book was initially titled "Breaking Free From Compulsive Eating" and when it looked like emotional eating was becoming a buz phrase, she changed the title which means its what I call a recycled technique--true it stands alone but basically is a technique to ultimately create awareness as is generally used for habitual eating.

Chapter 6 is about learning our eating behaviors from our parents--how we were programed to eat from childhood. Chapter 7 is a about the program we received about eating in restaurants.

Chapter 8 is about exercise which is a standard discussion in most books. She warns about becoming an exercise freak and lists several things to watch for indicating you're an exercise freak. She has a section titled Scales are for Fish which I found amusing and am in agreement.

Chapter 9 is about what you want in terms of being thin.

Chapter 10 is looking at the image of the thin you and the fat you--a shift in self image.

Chapter 11 is about judgement and starts out with an interesting twist. For instance, in response to being told by one woman's lover that she's too heavy, she ate more and gained ten pounds rather than notice that her lover has a problem getting close.
Judging your eating behavior is the wrong thing to do as opposed to noticing your eating behavior free of judgement (much like I did in my posts a couple weeks ago when I was observing). The balance of the chapter is about tips on stopping judgement of yourself or handling them from others.

Chapter 12 is about trusting--trusting yourself that once you give yourself permission to eat everything in sight that you won't.

There's only three more chapters and I still haven't seen any real guidance re recognizing or handling emotions and what that would be all about.

Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Breaking Free From. Emotional Eating Part II."

Reviewing Geneen Roth's Book, Breaking Free of Emotional Eating continues with chapter III titled "Distractive Eating--It Doesn't Count if You're Not Sitting Down. This chapter is basically about how much energy many overweight people put into sneaking food, eating while they are distracted with music, TV..., emotional discussons and so on. The guidelines are introduced about eight weeks into her Breaking Free Program to stop eating while standing or being distracted by anything else. This all makes perfect sense but can simply be summed up with one hypnotic suggestion.

So it's like in the first two chapters full reign to eat whenever you desired is given and now she begins reeling you in with guidelines.

Chapter IV is about When Enough is Enough. The first part of the chapter is about listening to a voice that says, "enough is enough." But quite frankly much of it was confusing other than through all the confusion eventually you'll hear that voice. She went into the "Kids in India are starving," "Clean your plate" beliefs and ended with suggesting that we remember doggie bags in restaurants, practice leaving a few bites on your plate and even practice throwing away some food.

The closest she gets to discussing emotions is to ask yourself while you are eating what you'd rather be doing. Actually I phrased it that way back in the late 70's. She phrases it a little differently but it's basically the same question in what you're looking for in terms of emotional comfort.

Chapter V is about binging. She give you permission to binge and then provides advice such as if someone catches you binging, don't hide it; talk to the food; notice the texture, color, etc...; go to a mirror and touch your face, arms... She includes a section on food allergies which is poorly covered.

Even though she covered some important and interesting points, I'm still not impressed with the approach or the organization of the program. More to come

Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Breaking Free From. Emotional Eating."

After the first two chapters of Geneen Roth's Breaking Free from Emotional Eating I must say that I am not impressed so far. Her approach is one that worked initially for her personally and that was to stop all dieting and self limiting behavior when it came to food. Simply eat whenever you're hungry.

I take exception to this because in reality (and maybe it's semantics, but I don't really think so) to achieve physical hunger it would require 6 weeks of fasting. In fact if you were to fast for twelve hours or so, you will no longer feel hungry. And fasting for a week-end now and then can be a great thing that actually helps you cleanse your liver.

Nevertheless, when she did this she gained fifteen or so pounds over a few months (I believe) and then got rid of 30 pounds over two years. Great for the result.

I use a similar suggestion in the work that I do and it's like this, "You eat anything you want and are amazed to find that what you really want to eat is far more nutritious and less in quantity than you ever dreamed possible." Who cares about making up for twenty years of dieting by pigging out on as much chocolate or ice cream as you can consume until you're fed up? If you can get turned onto healthy eating by suggestion and find that you can really care less about the candy and ice cream, why plague yourself with gluttony?

Plus if you do eat ice cream and or candy or whatever, wouldn't it be great to "fill up on flavor and taste" and not have to gluttonize yourself into gaining any weight at all--much less fifteen pounds? Ironically, her approach is the same as mine but 180 degrees different--completely opposite. Does that make sense?

So far, not impressed, hopefully there will be some real gems yet to be revealed in dealing with Emotional Eating as the title suggests.

Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Taming of the Chew Pt V"

Part II of Taming of the Chew by Denise Lamothe, Psy.D., H.H.D. continues with a chapter title Healing the Emotional Self in which she reviews the many emotional hurts we often go through as children and how children assume the blame. She explores the confusion of sexuality and it's impact on one's psyche leading to the Chew running rampant.

For the today person, she provides infomation on building self confidence, setting healthy boundaries (minimize being taken advantage of by others), becoming assertive, and learning to laugh.

The last chapter of Part II is Healing the Spiritual Self in which she suggests things such as:
1. Designing your environment to be pleasing.
2. Living in the Here and Now rather than the guilts of the past.
3. Moving beyond emotional pain in life to learn and benefit from it.
Then I discovered there's a Part III which is a summary of the book. It's about making conscious choices--rather than count calories, be aware of the consequences of the cookie.
Then she suggests many tips to manage stress along with tips for avoiding the binge, i.e. before letting the Chew have it way you will do one of a dozen different activities such as:
1. Calling a friend,
2. Locking yourself in the bathroom with a bubble bath.
3. Take a walk or ride a bike
and the list goes on and on.
She provides a self talk scenario where if you make a mistake and eat too much or binge you can possibly learn from it.
Then I discovered there's a Part IV titled Summing It All Up starting with the importance of making a Committment. She then wraps up her book with several pages of repeating passages from the book as a summary of the important messages.

My take on the book is that it is definitely worth reading. I believe that she could have done much more with the emotions specifically. In the summaries, she basically recycles a lot of techniques that have been used for decades rather than 0ffering a new approach to embrace emotions.

I know it might sound self profiting, but I'd recommend reading my book first and the her book for grounding. While she has covered the emotional hurting that contributes to low self esteem, my book is a lot more effective at tackling emotions which is what mastery of emotional eating is all about. We both agree on the importance of building self esteem and confidence, however, my approach is about learning how to feel good about you even on a "bad hair day." Her book is available through Amazon.com for around $10.00.

My next post will be about Geneen Roth's book titled Breaking Free from Emotional Eating.

Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Taming of the Chew Part IV"

Part II of Taming of the Chew by Denise Lamothe, Psy.D., H.H.D. begins with Chapter 6 which is a few pages about being responsible for making the necessary changes.

Chapter 7 begins with finding an appreciation for our physical body through moving it as in exercise is fun. She then tackles robotic eating by becoming more aware of when you are eating and appreciative of the food you do eat. She suggests that if your goal is to lose weight have one day a week with nothing more than juice.

In this chapter is also a section on Self Love where she suggests looking in a mirror every day and finding things you like about you. Then go to war (not her words) against the substances which have caused you trouble like alcohol, sugar... But stop beating yourself up for making mistakes and she then suggests some healthy substitutes such as stevia instead of sugar.

She suggests counseling to deal with addictive behaviors such as alcohol. She then provides a rather extensive list of alternative healing approaches such as biofeedback, acupuncture, rolfing, hypnosis, polarity...

In my next post I'll cover the next chapter about Healing the Emotional Self. I'm getting excited about finishing this book because I just received another book titled Breaking Free of Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth.

Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotionial Eating "Taming of the Chew Part III"

This is the third post about Taming of the Chew by Denise Lamonthe Psy. D., H.H.D.
Chapter IV is Understanding The Social Reasons for Over Eating and begins with self esteem--how we let our self esteem be determined by other's opinions about us, what we think others think of us, measuring up to be the perfect looking man or woman... The result of many being that they are obsessed with their weight, what they eat, and so on. She asks an interesting question, What would we be thinking about if we weren't obsessed with thoughts about food, our appearance, weight...?

She writes about how we focus on what we don't have as opposed to being grateful for what we do have. Even fairy tales affect us in how we think of ourselves.

The book was initially written for women and she goes on to notice how boys are viewed as being more important than girls and how men have more important jobs such as being doctors whereas women become nurses. Of course this is the mind set of the 50's and 60's and thus women had limited options in life. Women were expected to put others' needs before their own.

Chapter 5 is titled Understanding the Spiritual Reasons for Over Eating. Oh, by the way, the Chew is the devious part of us that drives us to overeat. Back to the spiritual reasons. She says basically that when we are out of touch with our spiritual selves, we are more numb and then tend to eat to compensate for the lack of our spiritual connection.

This chapter ends Part I of the book--more to come.

Again, you might disagree with me, but so far I'd say that the book is not laid out very well. She attempts to lay out part I of the book as Physical, Emotional and Spiritual. She mixes in how our self esteem drives us to be compulsive in our needs to diet and be skinny.

I find it more important to focus on the types of eating--habitual and emotional and deal with them directly rather than assume everything is emotionally driven.

In my next post I'll begin to review Part II.

Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Taming of the Chew Part II"

This is my second post on the book Taming the Chew by Denise Lamothe, Psy.D., H.H.D. If you're wondering what H.H.D. stands for it's a degree for being a Holistic Doctor

Chapter II is titled Understanding Physical Reasons for Over Eating. It starts out with the programming we've received since childhood relating food with emotions or emotional situations. It then goes into substances that are harmful and should be eliminated from the diet such as alcohol, artificial sweeteners, caffeine, diary, and salt.

I agree it's beneficial to minimize most of them, however, I would not make diary one of them. She could just as well tackled gluten. but didn't. True it's probably healthier to eliminate diary, however, to shed weight it's not an important issue unless there's a food addiction or allergy to diary.

Chapter III is titled Understanding the Emotional Reasons for Over Eating and is about our short comings affecting our self esteem, the negative affect of growing up in abusive dysfunctional families, and what she describes as our "sub selves' which is about how we think about our eating behavior and how we handle it.

You might disagree with me, but so far I'd say that the book is not laid out very well--not organized very well. She touches on a lot of things you'll find in my book, but thus far she only touches on them. In my next post I'll review the next chapter or two which should put me at the end of part I of the book--the half way point.

Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.

Emotional Eating "Taming of the Chew"

I ordered three books about overcoming emotional eating and the first to arrive is Taming the Chew by Denise Lamonthe, Psy.D., H.H.D.

In the Introduction she says, "This book is not about being thin. It is about loving yourself just the way you are and eating in ways that feel nurturing.--not compulsive or self destructive. You will lose weight if you implement some of the suggestions on the following pages. If you wish to do so, that is fine--but helping you to lose weight is not my primary goal."

I don't see why you can't do both, discover how to love yourself and also drop all the weight you desire. In other words, have it your way.

So far I've gotten through the Intro and the first chapter. She definitely has a powerful understanding of how some emotional eaters use their excess weight to keep from being successful and steps right into that in the first chapter. Personally I believe that jumping into that issue is a bit premature. It's better described as a specific type of emotional eating as it involves only one emotion. In my book I jump into the issue much later in the book and cover it in far greater detail. But maybe I'm jumping the gun, maybe she revisits the subject later.

More to come.


Not sure you're an emotional eater? Click here and take the quiz.

Want to a cure for emotional binge eating and discover how to identify emotions, embrace them and feel them? You can purchase the, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) emotional eating now for only $14.95. It's a $39.00 value.