Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit. Something happens, or nothing happens, and you find yourself in the kitchen. You weren't hungry. You eat something, standing up, fairly fast, and go back to whatever it was. The thing that sent you there is still there. Now you're also a bit full, and a bit disappointed in yourself, and at some point later in the day you'll do it again.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that this makes sense from the inside. Food is close, quick, private and pleasant, and for about as long as it takes to eat it, it does take the edge off. The second is that it can't do the job you've given it. A feeling has its own causes and its own clock, and a plate of cheese and crackers touches neither. What you get is a short break with a snack attached, and you could have had the break without the snack. The third is practical. When you want to eat and you're not hungry, you stop for long enough to name what you're feeling, and then you answer that instead. When you are hungry, you eat. Chapters 15 to 19 cover how.

This book doesn't say that food shouldn't be enjoyed, that any food is bad, or that you should eat less. It isn't a diet, and it makes no promise about your weight. It never asks you to go hungry, and it says more than once that when you're hungry the right thing to do is eat.

Four cautions.

If you regularly eat a large amount of food in a short time and feel unable to stop, often alone, often fast, and feel disgusted or ashamed afterwards, that may be binge eating disorder. The NHS advises seeing a GP as soon as you can, and says it's a serious condition that most people recover from with the right treatment. You can also ring the eating disorders charity Beat. This book isn't a treatment for it, and chapter 20 says more.

If you have, or have had, any eating disorder, including restricting what you eat or making yourself sick, talk to whoever treats you before applying anything here. The advice in this book assumes a person who eats regular meals and wants to stop the extra visits, and it may not suit you.

If the feeling that keeps sending you to the kitchen is low mood, and it's been there most of the day for a couple of weeks or more, that may be depression. See a GP. The habit may still be worth working on, but not instead of that.

And if you take medicines that change your appetite, or have a condition such as diabetes that needs a particular pattern of eating, nothing here overrides what you've been told by the people treating you.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.