Product Description

This book reveals how you can cope with your feelings of frustration, boredom, or loneliness, and offers a unique step-by-step program to stop your emotions from interfering with your eating habits.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35031 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The traditional emphasis on diet and exercise fails to address the underlying psychological causes of overeating, argues this engaging self-help book. Instead of eating to satisfy physical hunger, we indulge in "emotional eating" to make up for low self-esteem, to distract ourselves from unpleasant moods (anger and frustration make us crave crunchy, chewy foods, while loneliness and depression demand creamy comfort foods) or to act out and defuse suppressed feelings. Spangle, a registered nurse and weight-loss counselor, recommends a number of techniques, including writing projects, hugging exercises and positive-thinking mantras to help overeaters unearth and deal with their food-related emotions, and gives practical advice on sticking to weight-loss regimens. She writes insightfully of the ways people interact emotionally with food, and includes first-person confessionals from her clients; by turns poignant ("eating helps me stop thinking about how much I hate my life" says one lost soul) and lascivious ("I pull out a stack of curved golden morsels" writes a woman on a Pringles binge, who finds the munching sounds "soothing, like water lapping softly on the beach"), these attest to food's psychic power. But her tips are sometimes silly ("Pound on your pillow until your arms are too tired to lift food to your mouth") and her five-step-plan to combat cravings (which, with some practice, you can "flash through" in "less than a minute") can seem inadequate to deal with the emotional traumas she feels are at the root of obesity.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Linda Spangle beautifully and gently illumines the source--not just the symptoms--behind emotional eating. This book is destined to -- Ann Louise Gittleman

From the Inside Flap
· Recognize your craving,
· Identify your emotion,
· And solve the real problem.

We all give in to "emotional eating" sometimes. Food is an easy solution to dealing with—or avoiding—uncomfortable emotions. But when you’re trying to lose or maintain weight, emotional eating can sabotage everything you’ve worked so hard for.

Linda Spangle, founder and director of the highly successful WINNERS for Life wellness and weight-loss clinic, offers hope to those who want to take control over their eating habits and lose weight for good. Life Is Hard, Food Is Easy will completely change the way you think about food, giving you a powerful strategy for conquering your emotional eating habits and achieving lasting weight-loss success. With Spangle’s approach, you can succeed on any diet. Without it, most diets are doomed to fail.

Using specific guidelines, each step in Spangle’s 5-step plan involved answering a question related to the connection between food and emotions.

STEP 1: What’s going on? What’s making you want to eat? Learn the connection between non-hungry eating and specific categories of emotions, which Spangle terms "Heart Hunger" versus "Head Hunger."

STEP 2: What do I feel? What are the emotions behind the situation? There’s more to your emotions than mad, glad, and sad. Break out of an "emotional box" using the unique "I feel…because…" exercise. You’ll learn how to pinpoint your feeling exactly and get to the root of what’s making you eat.

STEP 3: What do I need? What’s missing in your life right now? Trace your favorite foods back to your childhood and connect them to the emotions you felt when you ate these foods. Discover how much these same emotional needs often drive your eating patterns in your adult life, and learn how to address those needs in ways that don’t involve food.

STEP 4: What’s in my way? What barriers might stop you from taking action? Identify issues that keep you from using your weight-management skills. Learn how to spot the "crazymakers" in your life and how to sidestep dieting sabotage from loved ones.

STEP 5: What will I do? What’s your "action plan" that doesn’t involve food? Here are effective, easy guidelines for handling tough situations when eating is expected and encouraged—celebrations, holidays, social get-togethers, even business meals.

This is not a book about compulsive eating or all-night binges. It’s for "normal" people who raid that refrigerator after a tough day and, in ten minutes, undo an entire week’s worth of careful eating. But rather than suggesting you eat low-fat foods on a midnight snack run, Life Is Hard, Food Is Easy helps you figure out why you were standing in front of the refrigerator in the first place.

Drawing on her own personal struggle with emotional eating, Spangle combines thoughtful advice, personal stories, real-life situations, written exercises, and practical tips and tricks you can use every day. By taking car of your needs and coping with your uncomfortable emotions, you can free yourself from the trap of using food as an easy solution.

Customer Reviews

Life Is Hard, Food is Easy
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I am a personal trainer and have purchased half a dozen of these for my clients to help them identify their reasons for why they eat when they are not hungry. The book has steps toward identifying emotional eating and then reducing and eliminating destructive patterns. I'd recommend the book.

This book is a treasure, not only for weight loss but life in general
My twin sister gave me a copy of the book "Life is Hard Food is Easy" a couple of years ago. This summer I finally had the chance to read it and I wish I had done so years ago. While I don't currently have a problem with emotional eating, I can tell that I did in the past. I am currently on a weight loss regimen and succeeding little by little. I know that the suggestions in this book will help me not only with the continued weight loss, but also with other areas of life.

One of the pieces of advice that stuck with me the most is to think of overweight/obesity as a condition that must be managed throughout life. This book has many practical suggestions that will help you succeed in managing your condition. I am grateful to Linda Spangle for sharing her story and for having the courage to give us a different view of the weight loss puzzle.

Very helpful book!
I am not even close to finishing this book and I already love it. It is nice to read about people who have been through the same things as I have. The tips and suggestions are not at all overwhelming and the book provides a very positive outlook for the future. If you are at all experiencing emotional eating for any reason, I would definitely give this book a try. Well worth it!