Conquer Your Food Addiction : The Ehrlich 8-Step Program for Permanent Weight Loss (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This behavioral approach to losing weight is divided into eight weekly sessions in which participants work to overcome their addictive eating habits and strive to meet a personal weight-loss goal. The author, a self-described compulsive eater, is a counselor who designed this nutrition program and currently uses it with clients. Although Ehrlich asserts that her rather complicated plan is not a diet with food prohibitions, no one who faithfully follows it will overeat. Based on limiting the number of food types that can be consumed at each meal, this system, according to Ehrlich, will change ritualized compulsive eating into planned, healthy consumption. For example, breakfast should consist of one or two items, lunch can include two to three items and dinner may contain three to four elements, such as a piece of meat, a starch and a vegetable. She also recommends drinking 10 glasses of water a day and prohibits diet sodas and finger foods. Above all, Ehrlich stresses that readers need to change their habits with regard to food: all meals should take at least 20 relaxed minutes to be consumed, each item should be entered in a food log the author details here and meals should be planned ahead of time.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

"If you struggle with compulsive eating, here is my promise to you: I will show you how to lose your excess weight and keep it off permanently -- but only if you are ready to make a serious commitment."

-- Caryl Ehrlich

Nobody can successfully cajole, argue, or prod another person into shedding those excess pounds. It just doesn't work. The commitment has to come from within. But if you are ready to go for it, the Ehrlich 8-step program for permanent weight loss is a godsend. It is not a diet. It does not tell you what foods you must eat or which ones to avoid. There is no need to count the calories, fat grams, or carbohydrates you consume. The perfect solution for compulsive eaters, it is a behavioral approach to weight loss that teaches you how to change habits to overcome food addiction. Caryl Ehrlich, a former compulsive eater, developed this program twenty-six years ago for herself and has taught it to participants in her program with successful results for twenty years.

As Ehrlich observes, no deprivation diet will work for food addicts, because they use food the way other addicts use drugs or alcohol: not to satisfy physical hunger but to stuff down painful feelings -- loneliness, anger, boredom, sadness, and the like -- with a never-ending conveyor belt of food. "If you're eating for physical satisfaction, you don't really need to eat very much. But if you're eating to narcotize, you could back up a truck full of food to your home or office and it still wouldn't be enough."

Conquer Your Food Addiction shows you how to develop the skills necessary to approach food in a new way, and learn how to distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger. The program explains the trickiness of addiction so that overeaters become aware of their unconscious, ritualized eating habits and awaken to a new, realistic relationship with food. Binge eating, guilt, and anxieties about food and body image will be dramatically lessened as understanding increases. Using original concepts and easy assignments, this proven program retrains the thought process so you see food in a new, better, and healthier way.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition edition (June 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743229746
• ISBN-13: 978-0743229746
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #649,212 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Inconsistent and disappointing, August 31, 2006

By	Epi_girl - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conquer Your Food Addiction : The Ehrlich 8-Step Program for Permanent Weight Loss (Paperback)

Ms. Ehrlich (who has no credentials I have been able to discover) begins by promising that her program is not a diet, and that you can still eat anything you want. She goes on to essentially equate bread with dessert, and forbid sandwiches outright, along with anything else eaten with the hands. There does not seem to be any recognition that different people have a problem with different types of food or eating situations. Despite her claim that this is not a diet, much of the book is taken up by her meal plans.

With revolting illustrations and such recommendations as wearing tight clothes and tightening the belt before eating, she takes an aversive approach to food and eating in general. There is also a lot of focus on weight. "If you really want to weigh ___ pounds" is repeated as a mantra. Ehrlich prescribes an obsessive habit of twice-daily weighing, going so far as to insist that if the reader were serious about weight loss, he or she would pack a bathroom scale on trips. A person with a compulsive eating problem probably already has plenty of self-loathing, and it seems like some of these strategies could really backfire.

There IS some good advice in here--like the importance of recognizing small successes rather than focusing on failures--but not nearly enough attention to the behavioral aspects of compulsive eating.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Turned my life around, October 9, 2002

By A Customer

I have been dealing with an eating addiciton for ten years, and this book has finally given me the tools and the know-how to crack the addiction. I have lost twenty pounds and am at a weight I haven't seen since high school. This book is NOT a diet, it's a life-style change. For anyone that has tried every diet in the book, who eats for every reason under the sun except for being hungry, for anyone who feels out of control when it comes to food, BUY THIS BOOK. Follow Caryl's program and you see your body and your mind change in ways that you didn't think possible.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Self-contradicting plan, August 11, 2006

By	E. Pietrafesa (Denver, Colorado) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Conquer Your Food Addiction : The Ehrlich 8-Step Program for Permanent Weight Loss (Paperback)

This book offers two main things- no diet to follow, and a new outlook on food for the reader. It encourages eating when hungry, in moderation, and encourages the reader to "repattern" thoughts away from food.

That said, the book follows with sample meal plans, demands that the reader cook all meals and explains what foods are forbidden. This seems to contradict the message of eating all foods in moderation. Also the reader is encouraged to weigh themselves twice daily. Almost all doctors and nutritionists will agree that once a week is ideal for weigh-ins, and more frequency can cause obsessive behavior.

This book is only for the strong-willed reader who is intellegent enough to pick and choose miss Ehrlich's methods. Many individuals with addictive tendencies, such as those targeted by this book, could find themselves in a spiral of bad behaviors and obsessions.