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Eating as a way to get rid of or soothe negative emotions like stress, anger, fear, boredom, sadness and loneliness. It makes sense that SO many people are emotional eaters because ALL of us feel at least one of these feelings from time to time.
Sometimes the strongest junk food cravings hit when you are at your weakest emotionally. Sure, there are ways to prevent emotional eating by not having the food in your house, having someone hide the food (I have tried this and it failed miserably), or just straight finding the will power to continually say no, which is something I have never done before reading this book.
I used to try to eat pretty healthy for most of the week and then on Friday’s I would go to the grocery store, get 2 donuts, some type of candy, and a snack of some sort. I would try to eat all of it in one sitting, binge again on Saturday and Sunday and then try to get myself back on track on Monday. Life got a lot busier since having 2 kids, and I was finding that I was eating like this every single night! I knew I needed to figure something out otherwise I was going to have to buy some bigger clothes soon.
I have read so many books on how to control my eating, and none of them have truly worked until this one. I finished the book called “Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Quit Emotional Eating,” and I literally feel like I’m free of this problem once and for all. Allen Carr is known for his book, “Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking,” that has literally helped millions of people quit. He has applied the same strategy he used to help people quit smoking and used it for so many other addictions as well. Here are some more life changing takeaways I have after finishing this book,
- Have Pity on Others – Instead of feeling jealous of people who eat like you used to, have pity on them because they are trapped and rejoice because you aren’t.
- Beware of the Little and Big Monster – The little monster is the thing that sometimes cries out for comfort food, and the big monster is the thing that feeds it. If you don’t indulge the little monster, the big monster won’t be woken up.
- Realize you’re FREE – Recognize that you are free of the gross, processed misery that you put yourself in for so long. You are happy and healthy and we are supposed to remind ourselves of that whenever the little monster starts to say it wants something.
- NEVER eat for comfort, only eat when you’re hungry. I also heard this quote from someone, “It’s a lot easier to stop at 0 doritos than it is to stop at 1 dorito.” It is perfect because you don’t have to enforce the willpower to stop at 1. Junk food is designed to break your willpower!
- All it takes is 1 binge – 1 binge will get you back into the trap. Remember you are FREE and you are HEALTHY. It isn’t what you want or how you want to feel anymore.
- Junk food is just GROSS – There is no smell most of the time, no vibrant color, no real value, and you feel crappy afterwards. (Most of the time we scarf it down anyway and then move on to the next treat)
- There are no Addictive Personalities – They go on to prove in the book that the addictive personality is really just a theory, it isn’t WHO you are.
- Prepare for hard times – We all have hard times whether it’s the loss of a loved one, tough day at work, or our kids are being extremely difficult. If we prepare for these times we can respond to them in the best way and not crumble back into the trap of addiction. How do we do this? We do this by repeating to ourselves, “I am free, I am not caught in the trap that junk food has me in anymore, I am happy!”
- Eat like the French – Allen Carr mentioned that the French spend hours eating because they eat slowly, and take the time to enjoy their meals together. As a teacher who gets 25 minutes to eat lunch, this one I can’t do, but I can definitely work on savoring every bite!
I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who is struggling with emotional/bored/over-eating. It basically tells us how we have been brainwashed, and gets us to look at junk food in a totally different way. If you have read this far I’m going to assume you struggle with the same problem as me.
Living your best life is NOT living a life stuck in addiction. Living your best life is about living free of all that, growing in confidence because you’re free, and just loving yourself more and more because of it. You deserve to be FREE. I’m not sure who is reading this or what you struggle with, but I am going to link several books by Allen Carr in hopes of catching your attention on at least one of them. I truly hope they help you as much as they have helped me.
Find the links here 👇
