Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever [Paperback]

Roger Gould (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 2008

Studies show that the reason why many people gain weight—and keep it on—is emotional eating, not physical eating. Now Dr. Roger Gould, a psychotherapist and a leading authority on emotional eating, shows how to overcome fear, anxiety, and other stresses and stop using food as an over-the-counter tranquilizer that can cause weight gain. With 12 practical ways to stop emotional eating and an eight-session program, Dr. Gould helps you become your own eating therapist and shrink yourself for good.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Shrink Yourself

"In Shrink Yourself, Dr. Gould offers a simple but profound truth: hunger originates in your mind, not your belly. 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

"Obesity is an epidemic in America, and numerous experts have tried to identify its causes. Drawing on his background in psychiatry, Roger Gould makes a major contribution to our understanding of it 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

"It's important for long-term weight loss to change your eating habits to include healthy, whole, natural foods in your diet, but in order to motivate yourself to lose weight for the long term you need to change the way you think about eating???and about yourself. Shrink Yourself gives you the equivalent of eight therapy sessions with a brilliant psychiatrist who coaches you step by step to stop emotional eating and start feeling and looking great."
- Fred Pescatore, M.D., author of The Hamptons Diet and The Hamptons Diet Cookbook

"In this motivational, fascinating, and practical new book, Roger Gould shows readers how to lose weight by stopping and reversing the emotional eating habits they have developed over a lifetime."
- Mike Huckabee, Governor of Arkansas and author of Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork

"This is a masterpiece: the only serious and practical guide for anyone serious about losing weight."
- Warren Bennis, University Professor at the University of Southern California and author of On Becoming a Leader --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (April 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470275375
• ISBN-13: 978-0470275375
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Recovery > Drug Dependency
  • #17 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Eating Disorders

More About the Author

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

136 of 137 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best so far (40 years) in many ways, May 26, 2008

By 

oolala53 (San Diego) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever (Paperback)

First, I thought it was very interesting that when I searched for this just know, Amazon suggested to pair it with The Beck Diet Solution, which I discovered last summer and am using as well. Dealing with emotional eating is where I thought Beck fell short. This book fills that gap and so much more. I did a two-weekend training course on stopping emotional eating 27 years ago, but there was no follow-up, and it involved a lot of gimmicky things like 'selling" your right to overeat, and affirmations that would somehow magically make you act differently. Thousand of affirmations later-no such luck.

I definitely disagree with a few reviewers who said that it doesn't have any solutions. It has one of the best sequences of recommended activities that I've seen. The problem is when it comes right down to it is that a person is going to have to choose not to eat sometimes when he/she really, really wants to! No one can make you do that, unless firearms are involved, and that would be a temporary fix anyway. The book does a good job of helping someone realize that it is really more painful to continue emotional eating than it is to stop it, no matter how hard it seems at the time. A person must also choose to do something else besides eat. That is the bottom line. I've known both of those truths for a long time, yet somehow this book helped me actually implement the behavior.

Another plus is that he does not recommend any certain diet. It's up to each person to determine what foods will allow her/him to eat amounts that provide the peace we are looking for. (Beck says research shows few people maintain weight loss without some kind of systematic plan, but regimented systems are contraindicated for healing emotional eating. To each her path.) He also doesn't recommend substituting some low-cal food to replace the junk we want to eat when we aren't hungry. Drinking a lot of water, trying to fill up on celery, all those tactics, in my opinion, just make things worse later. Bite the bullet and face not eating at all until you are hungry for real food! Eating is not going to solve the problem!

In my years of trying to diet (I actually stayed on them only a few times, but I learned a lot about what healthier foods taste delicious to me and let me eat amounts I want often enough), I have changed what I eat for meals so much that I can't imagine putting a bag of chips in with my lunch, but you could do it, if that's what pleases you most. My downfall wasn't meals; it was a bag of chocolate kisses at a time, or 3/4 of a carton of ice cream, or a package of cookie dough-many of you know the drill. And it wasn't necessarily mindless, I KNEW I was eating the whole package. When I was in the middle of it, I couldn't imagine what it was going to take for me not to do it. But it has happened, for now, at least.

I've not binged for nearly two weeks (okay, I know that is a short time, but I've been working up to it, not just jumping in for the honeymoon), and I've been more active. I'm more comfortable in lots of clothes, and there is even a pair of fallback cords that are very close to going to the thrift store pile. I used to adore Geneen Roth, the queen of emotional eating writers, and definitely credit her with my having a much gentler attitude toward my body and habits, plus with eating, even overeating, everything without guilt, which I think also helped lay the foundation, but Gould brought it together. Finally, without his even mentioning anything religious, his approach dovetails quite well with a spiritual practice i've been implementing in other areas of my life. I'm very grateful I found the book.

I will say that i do recommend trying to find a support group in your effort, either live or online. I haven't done his online program, so I can't speak for that, but I joined (for free) Sparkpeople.com and got on a message board team called Living Binge Free that has also helped me have a place to kick around ideas and share success, as well as be lovingly made accountable. There is also a team there devoted just to Shrink Yourself which I and another person are trying to build.

Good luck in your quest. If you had given up for awhile, I think this will be your best bet to return to the issue. maybe your last.

142 of 146 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The thoughtful evening and diet solution, May 17, 2007

By 

Rogger Trujillo (Canoga Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever (Hardcover)

I stumbled upon Dr. Gould's book after listening to a radio interview he gave promoting his book. I am glad I wrote his name down because I could not remember the title. (A little gimmicky) I was skeptical that a psychiatrist could really help you lose weight through therapeutic techniques. I mean, just start exercising and eating less, right? I read the Beck Diet Solution and found it rather dull.

Anyway, I could not put his book down, I finished it in 2 days...which for me is huge. And I have been on my best eating behavior. I am now consciously controlling my appetite...no binge eating and no late night snacking. I think Dr. Gould gave me great advice on how to understand the signals that lead to fill yourself with food. I think it would work for other applications as well, but I guess that is for another book. BTW, There are practical lessons in chapter 3 that I keep re-reading.

Now I bought it for some co-workers who I thought would benefit.

64 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Permanent Solution, July 19, 2007

By 

Jo Ana Starr "Mind-Body-Spirit" (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever (Hardcover)

It's really wonderful to see a book that offers an intelligent approach to permanent weightloss, that explains why diets don't work and offers solutions.

We eat, in many cases, to stop the pain. We learned this most basic food instinct in infancy, and we've refined the concept of pain to include physical and emotional pain. It is really helpful to understand that when you are nervous, you grab something to eat, in part, because one of your oldest memories is of feeling better after your bottle.

And when you understand that years of eating has programmed us to know that food equals relief and comfort, then it's easy to understand why we return to that behavior in times of stress. Fortunately, in this book, you will learn how to change those behaviors by identifying the specific stressor-prompts that cause you to over-eat, and how to disempower them.

This is a powerful must-read book for anyone who wants to lose weight.