Stop Eating Your Heart Out: A Review

 

How I got this book: Received it from the author for an honest review.

Read from: April 6th-8th

My rating: 5 Stars

Emotional eating. We all do it at one point or another. Sometimes we eat mindlessly, when we're bored or sitting in front of the TV. I know I'm guilty of  it. I don't find it all that surprising that there were many instances where I could think of myself just sitting in front of the tv eating. One of the most ironic instances is me eating dinner and watching The Biggest Loser. 

Now, I'm not overweight by any means. But, I have gained weight in the past year or so. Some people tell me that I was too skinny before, and they like the look of me with "meat on my bones" but I know that I weigh more than I would like. And I also know that some of my weight gain is caused by overeating and not enough exercise.

Stop Eating Your Heart Out: The 21 Day Program to Free Yourself From Emotional Eating gives readers tools and tips to work on triggers and issues that surround their eating habits. I believe it's meant to be done by doing one exercise a day, one day at a time, but since I was reading this for review I didn't have that time to take. I did however do some of the exercises as I went along. They are simple, but some of them can be emotionally charged, so you may want to make sure your prepared for that.

There are lots of different tips and techniques to try. Some of the most interesting to me personally are the ones involving energy techniques. I think that these could not only be helpful for overeating but in other areas of my life as well.

Now, I do have to admit that at the first mention of a higher power/spirituality, I became a bit skittish. I'm not a religious person and don't like to be preached to. I know that religion and spirituality are different concepts but sometimes people can blend the two and the line becomes blurred. Beck was very open about her discussion of spirituality and higher power in terms of self work and what that means in regards to overeating. She made some important distinctions which I greatly appreciated.  She stated that spirituality unifies and religion separates, and that spirituality lies beyond religion.

I took this to mean that religion has a set of rules that you must follow or be left out of the group, and spirituality is more free form. You can be spiritual in whatever way makes you feel comfortable.  You don't have a set of rules that you have to follow or anyone dictating what you need to do.

Interestingly, this book also references another book that I read a little over a year ago called Zero Limits by Joe Vitale. The concept of self work is the same, but there are less varied techniques. (I think that's one reason I was less happy with that book because I felt that it just kept repeating the same things over and over.)

The book often references the Twelve Step Program, similar to AA but alcohol is replaced with food. It's not completely the same, but it has a foundation using that. This book is more individualized though. You get all the tools to use but you don't necessarily have to do them any certain way and you don't have to use them all if you don't want to. 

This is an excellent resource for someone struggling with overeating or other food issues. It also has a list of other valuable resources that you can refer to if needed. In addition to helping people resolve their issues with food I think this could be used more generally to increase positivity in your every day life as well.. 

I'm grateful to the author to sharing her book with me so that I could write this review.