Most books about emotional eating tend to focus on how to strengthen self-restraint or how to identify what triggers it. The former can make the problem worse, while the latter may be different each time it occurs. Both approaches fail to help emotional eaters understand why they feel compelled to do something that they don't want to do in the first place. This understanding is the key to changing this behavior.

Howard Farkas, who has more than two decades of professional and teaching experience as a clinical psychologist specializing in emotional eating, explains the underlying motive that drives the behavior: emotional eating is not a passive failure of self-control, but an active impulse to reject the control of dieting. This defiant need "to be bad" usually leaves the person feeling guilty and anxious about their eating, and recommitting to their diet until the cycle repeats, and the compulsive eating recurs.

8 Keys to End Emotional Eating provides a detailed plan for breaking this pattern. By explaining the root cause that drives the desire to binge, Farkas offers practical skills to help you learn to change your mindset about dieting and end the impulse to binge. His road map for the future will help readers maintain healthy eating habits for years to come.