End Emotional Eating: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Cope with Difficult Emotions and Develop a Healthy Relationship to Food

211 Pages·2012·1.64 MB·English

by  Jennifer Taitz PsyD

“End Emotional Eating may be the beginning for you in a new
relationship with food and your feelings. Who hasn’t had a craving for
food that came from a sense of emptiness, anxiety, or anger? This
book is filled with powerful metaphors, empowering messages, and
mental and emotional exercises that will keep you from eating away at
your feelings. Accessible, intelligent, and compassionate, this book
can help you find a new way of experiencing and using emotions. You
will find wisdom that you can use every day. I highly recommend this
book.”
—Robert L. Leahy, PhD, founder and director of the
American Institute for Cognitive Therapy, professor at
Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-
Presbyterian Hospital, and past president of the
Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.
“If you struggle with emotional eating and want to end the battle, this
is the place to start. Based on solid scientific evidence, the author
offers carefully selected, elegantly described, bite-sized techniques to
release oneself from every aspect of the emotional eating cycle. The
author did the work for us in this impressive, comprehensive work,
and now we just need to begin. I highly recommend this book to
anyone who seeks freedom from unhealthy eating habits and those
who care for them.”
—Christopher Germer, PhD, author of The Mindful Path to
Self-Compassion and clinical instructor at Harvard
Medical School
“It’s a pleasure to see a book with a genuinely new perspective to offer
the countless individuals who struggle and suffer over the simple daily
act of eating. Well-grounded in scientific research, yet also written in a
lively, accessible manner with moving personal stories and plenty of
specific, explicit, practical advice, Jennifer L. Taitz offers plenty of
new food for thought about food. This will be a helpful and valuable
read for anyone who has let his or her eating be guided more by
emotion than nutrition.”
—Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, author of Willpower:
Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
“I have spent my entire career educating people about what to eat to
maintain a healthy weight. But if there is one thing I have learned, it is
that most people who struggle with their weight are not simply
hungrier than their thinner peers. They eat for reasons other than
hunger: sadness, loneliness, anger, and frustration. Emotional eating is
often at the core of the poor choices people make when it comes to
food. Jennifer L. Taitz has made a major contribution to helping those
who suffer from emotional eating. She identifies the basic emotions
that give rise to unhealthy eating habits and offers readers the skills
and tools to end emotional eating once and for all.”
—Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD, founder of F-Factor and
author of The F-Factor Diet
“Why do we eat? Seems obvious, right? —Because we have to eat to
stay alive! But many of us eat to feel better. We eat to push away
feelings of anxiety, sadness, and self-loathing. Jennifer L. Taitz can
help us stop. Her book, End Emotional Eating, helps us understand the
link between emotions and eating. More importantly, it helps us break
those links so that we have more healthy ways to regulate our
emotions and so that our eating is not driven by our emotional state.
The strategies taught in this book are innovative and powerful, and
they have been shown to truly help people end emotional eating.”
—Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, PhD, professor of psychology at
Yale University and author of Women Who Think Too
Much and Eating, Drinking, Overthinking
“Jennifer L. Taitz’s insight, compassion, and far-reaching clinical
experience shine from every page.”
—Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness: The Power of
Meditation
“Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is an effective treatment for a
variety of psychological disorders. Never before has the wisdom of
DBT, as it applies to emotional eating, been so clearly articulated.
Authored by a master clinician and talented writer, this book artfully
describes how to transform your relationship with food and life. I
highly recommend that you read this book if you want to gain a new
perspective on your emotional reactions and change the way you think
about and respond to impulses to eat. This is not a diet book; it is a
book that will provide nourishment for your soul and psyche. A
genuine treat!”
—Dennis Greenberger, PhD, director of the Anxiety and
Depression Center in Newport Beach, CA, and coauthor
of Mind Over Mood
“This is not a weight loss book. It is something much, much better. If
you have tried over and over to control your weight and your eating,
maybe it is time to let go of that agenda. This is a book about changing
your fundamental relationship with food and eating, and importantly,
your relationship to yourself! Imagine that you could come into a
gentler, more compassionate relationship with yourself and with
eating. If you want to explore a kinder approach, this is the book for
you.”
—Kelly G. Wilson, PhD, cofounder of acceptance and
commitment therapy and associate professor at the
University of Mississippi
“Highly recommended. End Emotional Eating provides a sensitive and
thoughtful account of how emotions and eating become entangled in a
multitude of unhelpful ways, together with clear guidance for
unraveling them and moving forward using a blend of ancient and
modern approaches.”
—Christopher G. Fairburn, MD, professor of psychiatry at
the University of Oxford and author of Overcoming Binge
Eating

Publisher’s Note This publication is designed to provide accurate and
authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with
the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological,
financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling
is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books Copyright © 2012 by Jennifer L. Taitz New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
5674 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609
www.newharbinger.com
All Rights Reserved Acquired by Melissa Kirk; Cover design by Amy Shoup; Edited by Clancy Drake Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taitz, Jennifer.
End emotional eating : using dialectical behavior therapy skills to cope with difficult emotions and develop a healthy relationship to
food / Jennifer Taitz.
p. cm.
Summary: “Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) expert and clinical psychologist Jenny Taitz presents End Emotional Eating, a
comprehensive guide to overcoming the emotional eating issues that are at the root of most overeating and binge eating difficulties”--
Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60882-121-1 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-60882-122-8 (pdf e-book) -- ISBN 978-1-60882-123-5 (epub) 1. Eating disorders--
Treatment. 2. Dialectical behavior therapy. I. Title.
RC552.E18.T35 2012
616.85’26--dc23
2012008372
Contents
Acknowledgment
Foreword
INTRODUCTION:MARSHMALLOWS AND MINDFULNESS
CHAPTER 1: UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONS AND EATING
CHAPTER 2: ACCEPTING THE IDEA OF ACCEPTANCE
CHAPTER 3: MINDFUL MOMENTS
CHAPTER 4: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
CHAPTER 5: SURFING URGES AND DEVELOPING REALISTIC
CONFIDENCE
CHAPTER 6: MINDING YOUR MIND
CHAPTER 7: COPING WITH DIFFICULT EMOTIONS WITHOUT A
SECOND HELPING
CHAPTER 8: CULTIVATING SELF-COMPASSION
CHAPTER 9: TASTING VALUES
CHAPTER 10: ENDING WELL AND BEGINNING AGAIN
References
Acknowledgments
I
thank divine grace for the sequence of events resulting in this moment.
With gratitude and sadness, I honor the memory of my maternal
grandparents, Emil and Sylvia “Ceiba” Seletz. What a blessing just to meet
humans like them, let alone have them in my family. From my birth until their
death they showed me unparalleled adoration. My grandma was a model of
selfless love and generosity. My grandpa was a neurosurgeon and accomplished
sculptor who taught me that patience and precision matter most. As I matured I
dreamed of finding a path on which I could emulate his manner of healing
mental difficulties using science and wit; this eventually led me to pursue
training in clinical psychology. My grandma and grandpa made people many
would not notice feel as though they were Nobel Prize winners and showed me
that loving and learning matter more than all else.
My parents have generously raised and supported me and were kind enough
to encourage me when I announced I would write a book. My mother, Jo, has
modeled that a woman may embrace her career and also live fully. My father,
Emanuel, told me that if I am passionate about something, I will find success. I
feel lucky to have people in my life who take my dreams seriously!
I extend a lot of love and thanks to my sisters, Michelle, who was aptly
critical on edits and often hospitable with dinner invitations during this process,
and Rebecca; my aunt, Sonia Taitz, a brilliant and funny author who kindly
edited a lot of this book; my uncle Paul; my uncle Jimmy; and my paternal
grandparents, Simon and Gita, courageous Holocaust survivors who lived
purposefully. Kate Ballen feels like family and is a generous friend and talented
author.
I experienced the clinical psychology equivalent of winning the lottery when
I met Dennis Tirch and began my long-standing collaboration working with him
and Robert Leahy at the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy (AICT) in
New York City. AICT is an internationally known practice and training institute
where advances in CBT are discussed and used therapeutically.
I would like to thank the following influential thinkers: Marsha Linehan,
Aaron Beck, Sharon Salzberg, Debra Safer, Christopher Fairburn, Steven Hayes,
Daniel Gilbert, Roy Baumeister, Zindel Segal, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, and the
countless others whose wisdom I simply organized in the pages ahead.
I am enormously grateful to Melissa Kirk, Jess Beebe, Nicola Skidmore,
Clancy Drake, and all of the people at New Harbinger who offered me this
opportunity and provided pointed direction.
The following people have been both friends and mentors: Batya Rotter, Ana
Benitez, Geoff Platt, Tova Gozdzik, Lisa Napolitano, Simon Rego, Ilyse
Dobrow Dimarco, Jonathan Kaplan, Laura Oliff, Danielle Kaplan, Annalise
Caron, Dennis Greenberger, Kelly Wilson, John Forsyth, Josh Pretsky, Dan
Goodman, Linda Dimeff, Rene Zweig, Lata McGinn, Irma Hilton, Kelly Riley,
and Poonam Melwani.
Balancing and binding postures in yoga continuously help me cultivate
perspective, stamina, patience, and balance and experientially introduced me to
the mental elements I label today as “mindfulness” and “acceptance.” I thank my
many teachers, including Steve Ross and Scott Harig. I have learned a lot about
living according to my values from my many spiritual influences, including the
Adler family, Judy Millman, Yehuda Sarna, and Shlomo Einhorn.
I acknowledge my wonderfully inspiring patients, and you, the reader, for
allowing me to move a bit closer to what really matters to me.
Foreword
O
ver the past two decades, the emergence of the third wave of behavioral
therapies has resulted in new, empirically supported treatments such as
dialectical behavior therapy (Linehan 1993a, 1993b), acceptance and
commitment therapy (Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson 1999), and mindfulness-
based cognitive therapy (Segal, Williams, and Teasdale 2002). These therapeutic
approaches expand upon earlier treatments. The second-wave therapies (such as
cognitive behavioral therapy) added to the first-wave therapies (such as
behavioral therapy) by calling attention to the role of cognitions. The third-wave
treatments then added a metacognitive component, an awareness of thinking
itself. These treatments emphasize the development of mindfulness, or the ability
to experience the present moment with nonjudgmental awareness.
In End Emotional Eating, Dr. Jennifer Taitz clearly introduces key concepts
and principles from these recently developed treatments, including adaptations
that have been made specifically for individuals with eating disorders. The text
further offers useful and easy-to-understand exercises taken from these therapies,
so individuals struggling with emotional eating can readily benefit from them.
This may lead to decisions to initiate treatment with local practitioners who have
been trained to deliver these therapies—an especially important consideration
for those with serious eating disturbances. Others >might choose to share the
book with their therapists to work on some of the proposed exercises together.
As a clinical investigator and psychotherapist applying dialectical behavior
therapy for binge eating disorder and bulimia, I appreciate Dr. Taitz giving
clinicians such a useful, thoughtful, and easy-to-read resource that provides
therapists and clients with a deeper understanding of often difficult-to-convey
concepts from the expanding field of eating disorder treatments.
What individuals suffering from emotional eating—or clinicians treating
these disorders—will find so inviting about End Emotional Eating is how
accessible it is as a guide to dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and
commitment therapy, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. For example,
not only does Dr. Taitz explain fundamental concepts in comprehensible terms,
but she also adds personal anecdotes—such as sharing her experience during a
five-day “silent” meditation retreat led by Dr. Marsha Linehan in which a short
exchange with Dr. Linehan led to significant shifts in Dr. Taitz’s own