Naming the feeling

The first practical step is the ask. It goes in the gap between the pull and the visit, and it takes about ten seconds. Everything in this chapter is my own method, built on the research earlier in the book.

The pull arrives. You notice it, and this is the hardest part, because the habit has been running without notice for years. If you kept the week of notes from chapter 1, you've had practice. The moment you catch yourself standing up, or opening a cupboard, or thinking about the cheese, is the moment.

Check for hunger first. Would an apple do? If yes, you're hungry. Eat, and skip the rest of this chapter. Eating when hungry is the title of this book and it's never the problem.

If not, ask what's actually going on. Say it in words, in your head or out loud. "What's actually going on?" Then answer with a feeling, in one or two words. I'd keep a short list to choose from, because in the moment the mind goes blank. Bored. Stressed. Sad. Angry. Tired. Lonely. Worried. Flat. Most visits are one of those seven, and "tired" is more common than people expect.

Then name the cause, if you can. "Stressed, the email." "Bored, nothing on." "Sad, Mum." "Tired, bad night." You're not analysing. You're labelling. The label is the whole job.

If you don't know, say that. "Don't know, but not hungry" is a perfectly good answer and it still does the work, which is to separate the pull from the food for long enough to look at it.

Write it down. A line in the notebook or on the phone. Feeling, cause, time. You'll build a record over a fortnight, and the record will show you two things. Which feelings send you to the kitchen most, and at which hours. Most people find, I think, that it's two or three feelings and two or three times of day, and that's a much smaller problem than "I'm an emotional eater".

What the ask does is worth understanding, because it isn't magic and it isn't willpower. Chapter 10 gave the research on suppression. A feeling that's being pushed away leaks out as a visit. A feeling that's been named is in the open, where it can be looked at and answered. The naming doesn't shrink the feeling. It changes your relationship to it, from something you're fending off to something you're holding.

Then, having named it, you may still go to the kitchen. In the first week you often will. That's fine. You've done the ask, and the visit is now a visit with a label on it, which is different from a visit in the dark. The next chapter is about what to do instead, and it'll take a few weeks to become the natural next step.