an extract from no 3. anybody fancing exploring this further?
The Second Step: The 12 Types of Emotional Hunger
The second step to stopping food addiction is to become familiar with the 12 types of emotional hunger. The more you can "see" your own reasons to continue your addiction to food, the more clear you will be that there is something you can do about it, even though you will probably need some form of help and guidance to do it well and effectively.
Through my research and practice, I've identified 12 distinct sources of emotional hunger, each driven by a different type of motivation. These different types of emotional hunger are what fuel emotional eating patterns, make you overeat, and until they are handled without food, will keep your food addiction alive. You'll probably recognize some of these motivations easily, while others will seem less applicable to your life. Some of these may not apply to you, which is good. However, battling just one of these can be difficult.
Type 1. Dulling The Pain With The Food Trance.
If you get hungry when you feel angry, depressed, anxious, bored, or lonely, you suffer from Type 1 emotional hunger, and you use food to dull the pain that these emotions cause.
Type 2. Sticks And Stones May Break Your Bones, But Cake Won't Heal What Hurts You.
If you react by getting hungry when others talk down to you, take advantage of you, belittle you or take you for granted, then you suffer from Type 2 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid confrontation.
Type 3. A Full Heart Fills An Empty Belly.
If you crave food when you have tension in your close relationships, you suffer from Type 3 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid feeling the pain of rejection or anger.
Type 4. Hate Yourself, Love Your Munchies.
If you tend to become hypercritical of yourself, if you label yourself "stupid," "lazy," or "a loser," you have Type 4 emotional hunger. You eat to "stuff down" your self-hatred.
Type 5. Secret Desires Have No Calories.
If your hunger gets activated because your intimate relationships don't satisfy some basic need like trust or security, you suffer from Type 5 emotional hunger and you use food to try to fill the gap.
Type 6. Forty Million Big Gulps And The Well Is Still Empty.
If you stuff yourself to make up for the deprivation you experienced as a child, you have Type 6 emotional eating.
Type 7. It's My Pastry, and I'll Eat If I Want To.
If you eat to assert your independence because you don't want anyone telling you what to do, you have Type 7 emotional hunger.
Type 8. I Can't Come To Work Today—I'm Too Fat.
If your appetite kicks in when you're faced with new challenges—if you use food to avoid rising to the test, or to insulate yourself from the fear of failure—you have Type 8 emotional hunger.
Type 9. Aroused by Aromas, Not by the Chef.
If you eat in order to avoid your sexuality—either to stay fat so that nobody desires you or to hide from intimate encounters—you suffer from Type 9 emotional eating.
Type 10. I'll Beat You With this Éclair.
Type 10 emotional eaters stuff themselves to pay back those who have hurt them, often in the distant past. They use their bodies as battlegrounds for working out old resentments.
Type 11. Peter Pan and the Peanut Butter Cookie.
If you eat to make yourself feel carefree, like a child, you have Type 11 emotional hunger. You eat to keep yourself from facing the challenges of growing up.
Type 12. That Stranger In Lycra Wearing Your Face.
If you overeat because you fear getting thin, either consciously or unconsciously, you have Type 12 emotional hunger.
Experience has shown me that you can't treat all of these very different motivations in the same way—each requires a distinct strategy. For instance, if people have talked down to you all your life, you might have become sensitive to that behavior, and your hunger gets triggered whenever someone belittles or patronizes you. You eat to give yourself comfort, to lessen the sting of insult.
First you shut down, and then you eat. Your strategy will involve finding the appropriate behavior to address the grievance directly. On the other hand, if you overeat because you want to avoid sexual intimacy, you have a very different set of motivations, and you'll need to do a different type of work.
I suggest you read over this list several times. Try to think of times that these types of emotional hunger drove you to eat. The more you are familiar with these different types, the easier it will be to recognize them in the future, which means you'll have more control!
Now that you've read this article and thought about it a little, it's time for you to personally evaluate how it applies to your life. Below are some questions and activities that you should answer and do before the next article is posted. Taking these questions and activities seriously will help you get a better understanding of emotional eating.
