The Appetite Awareness Workbook

Book excerpt: People with normal eating patterns eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. But people struggling with binge eating relate very differently to this most basic need, often risking depression, gastrointestinal problems, and even death because of their problems with food. The Appetite Awareness Workbook offers an eight-week, cognitively based program to help you learn to pay attention to hunger cues, keep track of your feelings about food, and develop an eating schedule that discourages binge eating. In a series of easy exercises, the book guides you toward taking control of eating habits. First, gradual changes help you eat only when hungry or when a mealtime is scheduled. Then, awareness exercises help you stop eating when moderately full. Finally, by using cognitive techniques to control the tendency to eat for emotional reasons and journaling exercises to stay motivated and on track, you'll learn how to retrain yourself to maintain normal and healthy eating habits for life.