When Food Is Comfort. Julie M. Simon

      Food, water, shelter. Most people are familiar with this list of basic human needs. And, of course, a basic need, like the need for food, is something that absolutely must be met. Yet every day millions of people struggle with how to eat food in a manner that doesn’t destroy their health, sanity, or sense of self-worth. For something that seems like it should be so simple, making a decision about what to eat and following through with it has proved for so many to be so difficult as to be essentially impossible. As a psychiatrist who has spent my entire career treating addictions of varying sorts, I’ve seen nearly every possible variation of this struggle. As a former medical director of one of the oldest and largest treatment centers in the world, Hazelden, I’ve helped countless people and their families recover from the devastation that compulsive behaviors can cause. And as the author of the bestselling book Craving: Why We Can’t Seem to Get Enough (Hazelden Publishing, 2013), I’ve explored both the science behind why cravings occur and the strategies for how to manage and prevent them effectively. I’ve appeared on all the major television networks discussing the devastating impact of cravings — most of these, including CNN, the CBS Early Show, and ABC’s 20/20, have described me as one of the nation’s leading experts on addiction. Yet I’ve always understood that although we know so much about drug and alcohol addiction, compulsive overeating remains a poorly understood phenomenon.

      As part of my research for Craving, I spent the majority of 2012 speaking with scientists and experts of all kinds on why compulsions are so difficult and how specifically to address them. I found and explained new insights that have helped countless people achieve freedom from cravings. One observation I made is that shame drives many self-defeating behaviors and that there is only one effective method of eliminating it: only love can neutralize shame. This means that food, water, and shelter are not the only basic human needs — love, too, is essential to survival. I also observed that needs that cannot be met in a constructive manner will be met in a destructive manner — they are needs and must be fulfilled one way or another.

      During that time I came across Julie Simon’s first book, The Emotional Eater’s Repair Manual: A Practical Mind-Body-Spirit Guide for Putting an End to Overeating and Dieting, and was impressed — I recall reading it in one sitting. In that book, Julie essentially writes a clear, frank, and effective prescription for emotional eaters. She begins by explaining the problem and making the important observation that the latest-and-greatest diet can’t possibly be the solution. By framing the problem as emotional hunger, she then explores how various forms of self-care can resolve the insanity that goes along with chronic overeating. I shared that book with many of my colleagues, who agreed that it was worth sharing with patients and friends. Since then, I’ve known many people who’ve used her methods to heal from the wounds that drive self-destructive eating.

      In When Food Is Comfort, Julie builds on her earlier book with a deeper exploration of the critically important relationship between nurturing, comfort, and eating. Beginning with a simple checklist to assess emotional eating, she explores how inner nurturing is essential, and why and how its absence leads to a search for external sources of nurturing and comfort. She presents this information in a compelling manner with specific, and often personal, examples of how overeating results from an inability to self-nurture. Julie herself has suffered from these problems and unabashedly takes the reader through how she achieved freedom. She focuses on the practical: part 1 explores the connections between childhood experience and the need to seek validation and comfort externally, and part 2 presents seven specific skills and exercises that can restore inner nurturing and eliminate the dependence on food for emotional comfort.

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