Notes
This book gives general information about an everyday habit. It isn't medical or dietary advice, and it's no substitute for a doctor or a dietitian who knows you, or for specialist treatment for an eating disorder. The NHS services I mention are those for England as I found them in September 2026.
I've kept sources out of the chapters where I could so they read easily. Here they are by chapter, with the limits I'm aware of. Unless I say otherwise, I read the published summary of each paper and not the full text. I checked each paper for a retraction or correction notice in September 2026 and found none. Where a chapter isn't listed, it rests on my own reasoning. That includes chapters 1, 2, 8, 9, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 21. The client's email, the phone call, the cheese and crackers, the crisps, the toast and everything else in the running example are invented.
Before you start. The description of binge eating disorder, the advice to see a GP as soon as you can, the treatments and the Beat helpline number are from the NHS page "Binge eating disorder", last reviewed in July 2023. The two-week guide for low mood is from the NHS pages on depression.
Chapter 3. Bongers and Jansen, "Emotional eating is not what you think it is and emotional eating scales do not measure what you think they measure", Frontiers in Psychology 7, 2016, article 1932. A review. Bongers, de Graaff and Jansen, "'Emotional' does not even start to cover it: generalization of overeating in emotional eaters", Appetite 96, 2016, pages 611 to 616. Four conditions, two sessions, intake measured by a taste test. Evers, Dingemans, Junghans and Boevé, "Feeling bad or feeling good, does emotion affect your consumption of food? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence", Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 92, 2018, pages 195 to 208. Fifty-six experiments, 3,670 participants, high heterogeneity. The authors call for better experiments and for studies in everyday settings. The argument that the label does work of its own is mine.
Chapter 4. Macht, "How emotions affect eating: a five-way model", Appetite 50, 2008, pages 1 to 11. A review. Verduyn, Delvaux, Van Coillie, Tuerlinckx and Van Mechelen, "Predicting the duration of emotional experience: two experience sampling studies", Emotion 9, 2009, pages 83 to 91. The emotions studied were fear, anger, joy, gratitude and sadness, reported daily. Wagner, Ahlstrom, Redden, Vickers and Mann, "The myth of comfort food", Health Psychology 33, 2014, pages 1552 to 1557. Four studies with sad film clips. The phrase about credit is theirs. Applying all three to the Wednesday email is my extension, and the stopped watch is my image.
Chapter 5. Stone and Brownell, "The stress-eating paradox: multiple daily measurements in adult males and females", Psychology and Health 9, 1994, pages 425 to 436. One hundred and fifty-eight adults, eighty-four days of diaries. Eighty-two per cent of participants were consistent in the direction of their response. Adam and Epel, "Stress, eating and the reward system", Physiology and Behavior 91, 2007, pages 449 to 458. A review proposing a model, which the authors say is only beginning to be tested in humans. The two-needs description of stress is mine.
Chapter 6. Moynihan, van Tilburg, Igou, Wisman, Donnelly and Mulcaire, "Eaten up by boredom: consuming food to escape awareness of the bored self", Frontiers in Psychology 6, 2015, article 369. A diary study and two experiments. The effects in the experiments were strongest in people high in a trait the authors call objective self-awareness. Havermans, Vancleef, Kalamatianos and Nederkoorn, "Eating and inflicting pain out of boredom", Appetite 85, 2015, pages 52 to 57. Thirty participants in each of two experiments. What I say about the phone is my own observation.
Chapter 7. Verduyn and colleagues as above. The chapter says where I read beyond the finding.
Chapter 10. Verduyn and colleagues as above. Evers, Stok and de Ridder, "Feeding your feelings: emotion regulation strategies and emotional eating", Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36, 2010, pages 792 to 804. Three studies, taste tests, laboratory setting. The suggestion that naming a feeling makes it easier to hold is mine and is close to the reappraisal condition without being the same thing.
Chapter 11. Van Strien, Konttinen, Homberg, Engels and Winkens, "Emotional eating as a mediator between depression and weight gain", Appetite 100, 2016, pages 216 to 224. Two hundred and ninety-eight fathers and 294 mothers over five years, self-report questionnaires. The chain was found in the mothers and not the fathers, and the overall effect of depression on weight was not significant. The dropped plate and the replacement sentence are mine.
Chapter 12. Evers and colleagues 2018 as above, for the finding on restrained eaters. The older research I refer to is the work of Herman and Polivy on restraint, which I haven't cited specifically here. The argument that permission removes the rule that feelings break is mine.
Chapter 14. Van Strien and colleagues as above. Everything else is my reckoning.
Chapter 19. Gollwitzer and Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 2006, pages 69 to 119. The rule and its parts haven't been tested together, and what I say to expect is my expectation and not a finding.
Chapter 20. NHS pages on binge eating disorder and depression, as above. Everything else in the chapter is my own suggestion.