Breaking free from emotional eating to lose weight is to start by understanding that the brain has two built-in directives: pleasure seeking and survival. Which one influences our eating behavior? Both!

The Pleasure-Seeking Program

First, Since you were a child, how many holidays have you celebrated? Add to that the special occasions and birthdays, such as weddings and anniversaries, and you may total between eight and fifteen per year. All of these occasions brought with them friends, relatives, attention, love, warmth, and what else? You got it--lots and lots food!

What happened when you ate your peas or cleaned your room? You were rewarded with what? Dessert! Or on Sunday Daddy would pack up the family and take you to? Friendlys?

Little wonder your brain often says, "Eat, it tastes good; you deserve it; you'll feel better; be nice to yourself."

The Survival Program

When you were a baby and you cried-for most any reason-what was the answer? The bottle, right? Anytime you were upset or frustrated, the bottle was there. The result was that you learned an early association with food and frustration. And when you ate your baby food-especially carrots and peas, you were rewarded with kudos and related food with pleasurable feelings.

Later when you were a toddler, maybe you made an overture toward another little boy or girl and were rejected, or your teacher yelled at you because you didn't have your homework, or you didn't have a date for a dance, or you broke or lost a toy, or some other calamity happened, and you ran home crying, "Mommy, Mommy, the world's coming to an end." And what did Mommy say? "Come have some milk and cookies. You'll feel better in a little while." Certainly, a little while later you felt better. All this time you have thought it was the cookies and milk, when it was really just the passing of time. No wonder your brain often says, "Given all the bull you've put up with you deserve something" or "Eat, you've had a rough day." or "Eat. If you don't, it'll get thrown away and you'll be wasting money," or "Eat. Be nice to yourself and treat yourself to something good!"

The Result

For many years this was OK. Then at some point you discovered that you had a weight problem. At what age? Ten, sixteen, forty six? The age is irrelevant. The first five or six years of your life are the most formative. By the time you realized you had a weight problem and needed to lose weight, you had already been perfectly conditioned to eat in response to pleasure and/or survival.

Little wonder then when you feel

* bored
* glad
* down
* confused
* upset
* frustrated
* rejected
* excited

your brain suggests eating. The result is the program.

The obvious answer to stop overeating would simply be to eliminate emotional eating and stop the program.

However, because most of us have been trained to deny our feelings, the brain doesn't say, "Eat, you're happy." It says, "Eat because it looks good." Even when we're bored, the brain doesn't say, "Eat because you're bored;" it says, "Eat because it would taste good," or "Eat because there's nothing else to do."

Because of this, the emphasis is on having an eating problem rather than a problem handling emotions which by the way are a reaction to our various stressors in life. The bad news is that our emotional reactions to stress become stressors in themselves and this is because of our limited experiences in managing emotions. The goal to breaking free from emotional eating is to learn to acknowledge emotions as they are felt--end eating emotional--stop diluting emotions with food.

An effective approach to losing weight involves asking questions "What is missing here? Why are people not getting the results they are promised? It is clearly nonproductive to keep using the same approach when the results are so poor. It's more important to gain a grasp on breaking free from emotional eating than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas results are there by learning about emotional eating. Stop emotional eating empowers you in all aspects of your life.