Customer Reviews

Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

this is the first time I have ever written a review for a book before. I have read tons of diet books, been on just about every diet there is, have reached my highest weight yet, and was just about to give up!

I bought this book with some skepticism. I knew I ate for emotional reasons, but just was so tired of failing time after time. I cannot tell you this book has changed my life, but I have some real hope that it will. It is not a diet - in that it doesn't tell you WHAT to eat. But it will help you identify WHY you eat.

I was so tired of white knuckle diets that I could never maintain for a lifetime. In church one day, the homily was about spiritual growth. What does this have to do with losing weight? Well, it was compared to a diet, in that so many of us start a diet, and then end up at some point going off of it, returning to our old "habits" and end up regaining most all of the weight back, and then some. For lasting change, it requires CONVERSION, a change of heart, a change in lifestyle!

This book is not easy. But it is about transformatiom, creating a new life. One where food returns to its correct place in our lives - for fuel, not for tranquilizing. For once, I have hope that I can do the work necessary, and change my life for the better. What about the weight? Well, I trust that it will slowly come off as I do the work to change the reasons I eat in the first place.

I feel like a tightly closed bud of a flower, and as I do the work to change and grow emotionally, it will open up and become a beautiful flower. Need another analogy? I am a caterpillar, locked into a cocoon that food has placed me in. As I learn new habits and release old fears, I will break open the cocoon and finally be FREE!

I've had issues with my weight my entire life. In 2004 I lost 117 lbs on one a popular commercial diet plan. Sure, I was thrilled, and although I swore I wouldn't gain a pound of it back, I managed to put on 30 lbs over the last 2 years. Anyone can lose weight if they follow a diet plan. Shrink Yourself immediately gave me the ability to look at the reason I reverted back to my old destructive ways-I am an emotional eater. There are a lot of written exercises that help the reader with self examination, however this is extremely time consuming, but I "get it". Now I feel I have the right mindset to distinguish between my emotional needs and physiological hunger.

It is an excellent Book. I have read only half of it. I have lost 30 pounds
gone from 240 to 210 and still losing. I am 75 and am having to get smaller pants.

I've known Dr. Gould for several years, having helped him with his website. He taught me a great deal about my own eating issues, and I've seen firsthand how his methods have helped many people overcome their eating challenges.

He is brilliant, kind, and deeply cares about helping people - he's spent a lifetime devoted to this area. This book is thoughtful and well-written. It provides an intelligent framework for reflection and increased awareness of self and eating challenges. With awareness comes the possibility for change. With this book, you will not only learn how to overcome your eating challenges, you will learn to know yourself better and grow in fruitful ways.

The fact that I have only written two reviews in 8 years speaks to how strongly I feel about this book.

This is a great book to help you really understand your specific triggers for emotional eating. I have found it especially helpful when used with his online course which you can find on his website.

The course adds substantially to personalizing my experience. I was at a party the other day and it was so clear what the dynamics were that would cause me to overeat as I'd read the book and also gone through practice scenarios of my own on the online course.

I've read tons of books like this - this one was by far the best. Read Water with Lemon by Zonya Foco (Water With Lemon: An Inspiring Story of Diet-free, Guilt-free Weight Loss!) either before or after and also The Craving Cure(The Craving Cure) and The Right Weigh by Rena Greenberg (The Right Weigh: Six Steps to Permanent Weight Loss) - they really helped me put my emotional eating in perspective spiritually, emotionally, and with a practical approach.

It's really working well for me, thank goodness.[[ASIN:1401906877 Used by More Than 100,000 People]]ASIN:0071477365 Lickety-Split Meals: For Health Conscious People on the Go!

This book is basically a promotional tool for his online website. To sign up for the website its $119. Grant you its smart marketing. Authors don't make a lot of money on book royalties but they get all the money from their own website, so I don't blame him. But the bottom line is that I felt that he was more interested in making money than helping people to overcome their emotional eating habits. If this is the case he should have really come out and said it in the book, which he never does. He should really say, "it will be quite hard for you to get control of your emotional eating on your own. I strongly recommend that you try my online program that will help you overcome your emotional eating issues." That is how the book should end, but it does not.

First, I found the book was NOT well researched. There were almost no reference which is very odd for a book of this type. I guess he based everything on his own experience with emotional eating, which seems to be extensive.

Next, there are frequent reference to the website and kind of saying its the complete program and the book is only a "taste".

Many of the thoughts in the book are not very well developed. For example there are a number of exercises that describe an exercise but don't actually tell you what to do! This tells me that the editor did a bad job on this book and anyone who had read it and tried to apply it would also be scratching their head.

There are some good points. The self-analysis of the negative things you say to yourself and teaching you how to respond to those negative thoughts are the most valuable contribution this book has to make.

Also, many of the exercises are really quite good and have helped me. What I have gotten into the habit of doing is reviewing my notes every morning when I first wake up of what Harriet (my inner critic) is telling me when I'm feeling a binge coming on. By reviewing first thing in the morning my answers to Harriet and my hunger are easier to respond to. Also, I review my other healthier ways to cope and it puts in my mind to choose one of those too. I'm surprised that this has help me deal with my binge feelings when they come on. I never thought I could effectively deal with those feelings. I thought I was stuck forever responding to my emotional binge urges by eating, but now I am implementing new strategies that hopefully will be able to help me keep the weight off forever.


However, many of the other solutions are incomplete and just don't seem to be as developed as they should have been. It just felt like this book was rushed out there to the public to promote the website. I hope with a second edition the author will correct some of these problems. I guess increasing the book size by 30% and adding some solid research to back up his claims would improve the book immensly.

Another distirbing thing is that the book does not tell us the prior results of his program. Sure there are some testimonials, but when an online program has been around for several years there should be some quantifiable results. None are given and this is a red flag to me.

So, I say to you Mr. Gould you could have done a lot better. You're a doctor after all, and it seems that a doctor should have the attention to detail that this book lacks.

I have spent 40 years trying to lose weight without success. But, after reading this book and doing the on-line course (I'm still in the final, 12th week) I can say that my emotional eating has been greatly reduced--as has my size. 30 pounds lost in a period that included Christmas and some of the sort of stressful events that, in the past, would have me gorging on food in order to zone out and escape the problems. During those 11 weeks, I followed no diet, just the advice in this book that enabled me to cut down on emotional eating. I also enjoyed all the usual Christmas fare--plum pudding, mince pies, chocolates--the lot--and I enjoyed them all the more because I didn't stuff myself sick.

The journey Shrink Yourself encourages you to take isn't necessarily an easy one. Honestly facing fears, seeing the benefits being overweight has brought you, working out more productive (or, at least, less damaging) ways to deal with problems than eating are called for and, at times, are highly uncomfortable. That, said, the process is an empowering one. At the end of the day, you are helped to take real control of your life. Losing weight is only one of the improvements you can make with the help of this book.

Best of all, I do not fear slipping back into my old patterns of emotional eating. Seeing through emotional eating's empty promises of comfort is like seeing through the Emperor's new clothes. You can't go back. I'm not sure I ever would made these changes were it not for this book.