by Dr. Lauren Outland

In the five years I've been doing my Effortless Weight control program, I can't tell you the number of times someone would describe herself as an "emotional eater."

Just as many times I would doubt them. Because I in my experience, you can turn just about anyone into an emotional eater by doing one of two things.

1. Forbid someone to eat what their body craves, when it needs it. Creating a pseudo famine--the human body doesn't like to be deprived.

2. Run them ragged, so the only nurturing experience they have to look forward to in the entire day is eating. The human body doesn't like to do nothing but work, work, work.

In my (almost never to be humble) opinion, our culture is creating Emotional Eaters. The dieting mentality makes it seem normal to "watch" what you eat, often creating the mini-famines our bodies hate. And our culture also has us running ourselves ragged, working fulltime, while we run our households fulltime too.

If you think this way of thinking and living is a given. It's not. Go to Brazil. People eat whenever they are hungry and spend much more time relaxing and having fun. A huge majority are at their ideal weight. And if I said, "emotional eating" to my Brazilian friends, I'm sure they would look at me blankly. Hmmm. Do ya think there might be a connection?

I can't tell you the number of times food lost almost all emotional charge when my clients honored their physical and emotional needs.

So the question is, do you want to be a victim of this crazy culture, turning food into a drug, or do you want to honor your physical and emotional needs?