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Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Foreverx$8.39
  (42 reviews)
Best Price: $8.39
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.
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Customer Reviews
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The thoughtful evening and diet solution
By A247KZAR5VC89I on 2007-05-17
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.
A Permanent Solution
By A2BPFPVOWCTKDJ on 2007-07-19
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.
staying healty
By A2VEN0O5PVVSON on 2007-05-07
Dr. Gould's book offers an easy and practical way to stop over eating. Most people know at least one person who struggles to stay healthy or who struggles with eating. This insightful approach helps you understand how to break free from those bad habits. It gets to the root of emotional eating, and gives you tools to manage your eating. This is a good and interesting read.
best so far (40 years) in many ways
By A2LBGBXKV4GWVL on 2008-05-26
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.
Do You want to Get Better?
By A2N8446X1704EG on 2007-10-31
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!
- Great Book!
By A3ATKPNVIVTKZ8 on 2007-05-10
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.
- Shrink Yourself
By A29JE31PKTBTN3 on 2007-06-27
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.
- great diet/eating book
By AIUDUB2S5X07D on 2007-05-09
There are too many diet books and too many people who have eating issues. Most other books just deal with symptoms and surface work, this book deals with underlying causes that keep us eating what we don't want or need. I saw the author on the Early Show and he seemed like a very insightful doctor. I can see why this approach might actually work.
- Wonderful book, not so good online program
By A253CVB71K66V2 on 2007-11-02
I found this book to be very enlightening. The author has remarkable insight regards the whys and hows we stuff ourselves. I was so impressed with the book I joined his online program. It was rather tedious and involved sitting there about a half hour at a time. When I out threw my back out it was virtually impossible for me to sit at the computer and work on this program. I requested a refund, and received a very curt response telling me no. In this light, buy the book but forget about committing to the online program.
- A bracing and embracing book
By A1BZQP6FUE5X10 on 2007-05-26
If you have ever had even a passing issue with food--not enough, too much--
then you will want to read this book and then you will want to invite
Roger Gould over to sit and talk and be comforted and advised and reassured.
His insightful, kind voice comes across on every page
of this thoughtful and smart consideration of the underlying reasons that
cause us to lose control over our nutricion and ourselves. He is not didactic
nor declarative, but gentle and observational and helpful, most of all.
With myriad books on the shelves instructing us to eat this, drink that,
lose this, want that, it is refreshing to encounter one that gets us to 'how'
by explaining 'why.' The applications transcend diet, and are available to
all areas of our complicated, often confusing, lives. We would all be better and
stronger, with such wisdom from Mr. Gould, to carry around in our heads and hearts.
- Great Ideas
By A3AY2F2JWHN2YX on 2007-06-10
I am an avid reader of all self help books on emotional eating-this author so far has been frank and painfully honest about the real reasons we eat when we do not need food.
- Puts It Together
By A2EFIUAOF4YRAN on 2007-09-30
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. Used by More Than 100,000 PeopleASIN:0071477365 Lickety-Split Meals: For Health Conscious People on the Go!
- An Eye Opener
By AVUCQ3M61OA9O on 2008-04-10
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.
- Great book.
By A3NGWLUB2VULYE on 2007-05-14
Practical, useful and in-depth. Really helpful. Lots of good info on the book's website too: www.shrinkyourself.com
- Disappointed
By A152G49IXFL3OG on 2007-11-06
Sorry but I couldn't disagree more with most of these reviews. While very good at nailing the problem (I definitely saw myself in it!), it falls short with a solution. Just more behavior modification. Nothing I haven't heard before. Cheaper than a shrink and about as effective.
- Good but a little dry
By A25MT72TNKN4YQ on 2007-07-09
I have found the book to be good but it is a bit dry in some places but if your suffer from Emotional Eating then this book is a must read.
- shrink yourself
By A2IV9RSLST6Z56 on 2007-10-13
This was the best book I have read to date on emotional eating. At times I felt like I was reading my own biography. I recommend it to anyone who battles emotional eating like I do.
- Excellent! By far one of the most influential books I've read.
By A3LY6ITBO2S42Z on 2007-08-23
I first saw Dr Gould on my favorite local morning news show and I was impressed with him and the facts and information he spoke of in regards to "true" weight control. I have been struggling with losing 20lbs for at least 2 yrs and something clicked when I saw him that morning --I knew he spoke the truth. I guess I always knew it was me and my thought patterns, that was contributing to my eating & weight issues. I only did not know the path to take to make successful changes in my life and my health. So I ordered his book the following week and have been literally in awe in how poignant and precise the information is. It really hits home. I had many 'ah-ha' moments, and continue to re-read it as I tackle my eating habits with new insight.
- Great Help!
By A2ZNMI572J2OBI on 2007-10-02
I have struggled with Emotional Eating all my life. Even after loosing 208 pounds following gatric by-pass surgery this will still an issue for me. This book truly touchs the heart of the matter and has enabled me to begin the healing process!
- Not impressed
By A24KSX0IBCUDFF on 2007-11-29
I was not impressed with this book. It did not give any tools that you might need to help the stress eating.
- Breakthrough!
By A21JPXSLP7XKBQ on 2007-09-10
Italian and jewish parents and grandparents and wonderful cuisine ensured stuffing my face for the good life and good moods. The idea was to leave the table unable to eat more! NOT GOOD! Dr. Gould made the connection for me between a sense of emotional well being and gluttony. Broke the habit painlessly! Less time working it off in the gym. Lower blood pressure! Terrific breakthrough for all of us who love food and robust eating.
Pete Abrahams, Winegrower
- Good insight as to why you may overeat
By A3J5EKTJ7TT33X on 2007-09-07
Book provides good insight as to why you may overeat, or eat too much of the wrong things. Most useful to me has been the point about pausing before you eat to think about why you are eating. At the end of the day though, as with most diets or programs that purport to aid with weight loss or management, the effort is up to the individual.
- Life-changing information
By A1XUXJD3A7Y3AI on 2008-02-19
This book is incredible. I saw something of myself in almost every single page. Dr. Gould might have been writing directly to me. Reading it was not an easy experience, as it can be hard to see such bold truths about yourself and to realize all the work there is to be done, but I am very glad I made the effort to read it through to the end. There is a great deal here to think about, chew on, and learn from, and though the process may be difficult I think at the end it can change many people's lives for the better. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
- Focus on the reasons why you overeat
By A3UDDLBE3N2CA4 on 2008-04-28
This is a fantastic insight as to why you overeat, call it emotional eating, comfort eating or being addicted to food, this book gives you a plain english explaination of why you do it and how to overcome it.In a world that spends billions on diets, this just may hold the answer to your over-eating, without a diet inside! How? By explaining the reason people eat when they are not hungry. Brilliant and inspirational.
- Maria
By A14XLOQE25VEQB on 2008-06-30
I've received more help from the first half of this book, than I have in 25 years of dieting. For the first time in my life, I looked in the mirror and saw some positives and I'm 100 pounds overweight! In one month I've lost 10 pounds and I'm finally dealing with the issues that have been plaguing my life. This is a doable lifestyle change that will enable me to be free from excess weight and the mental games that keep me overweight.
- Best book on emotional eating--ever!!!!!!!!!
By A37QUWYO7KGUGW on 2008-08-09
I've been an overeater for 37 years and this book is without a doubt the best book I've ever read on emotional overeating. First I read the book, then I joined the shrink yourself on line program.
If your really an emotional eater, then this book will touch you in some way. Take what you like and leave the rest---------my bet is you'll take a lot more then you will leave.
- Awesome!
By A2PQ7QWWX61W5G on 2008-01-12
I think this book is a "manual" for all emotional eaters out there. I was able to understand my dysfunctional eating behavior and the reasons why I've been yo-yo dieting all my life. It's a great tool for self-awareness and self-discovery.
- Hits the nail on the head
By A1GBG1HRIRQTDY on 2008-04-08
This book is fantastic. Every other book on intuitive eating or non-dieting I have read touches on emotional eating but this really goes into the full depth of it. It's just been amazing how much I can recognise myself while reading the chapters. In a way it's scary because I realise that I will have to deal with my feelings and my thinking. Now that I am so aware of why I eat when I am not hungry there is no turning back. I have done all the exercises, will take a break, and read the book one more time. Thank you!!
- Great book to help you Shrink Yourself
By A13ML1OY4AEXU6 on 2008-06-07
This book is awesome. It gives one the opportunity to look at the heart of the issues. Instead of trying to solve the problem from the outside in, it provides the individual the opportunity to explore the issues and problems from the inside out. This book really works. If you really want to shrink yourself, give yourself the opportunity to explore whether you fit the profile of an emotional eater. If you decide that you do, then the concepts and methods described in this book will help you achieve your goal.
- The Best Diet Solution EVER
By A2EQ8TUJWQ8ZU0 on 2008-06-11
I felt compelled to spend my precious time to write this review because this is surely the very best diet solution ever! I say this because I have bought all the diet books and done all the diet programs, but there was always something basic and integral MISSING. What was missing is exactly what SHRINK YOURSELF explores thoroughly, and that is the question/s: What is making me eat? & Why can't I control my food? & How can I come to grips with those two dilemmas? I decided to order this book from Amazon after I read my library edition; I just had to have my own copy to reference and re-read forever. Go for it.
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