From the author: The original is on “Psychology and psychotherapy for life”, Take a look, you will find there more interesting and useful things for yourself. If you want to easily lose weight and maintain the result, then it is important to distinguish between hunger and emotional needs, which can be confused with it (hunger). For example, some overweight people confuse the sensations of physical hunger with the experience of loneliness. Why? Because both of these sensations - hunger and loneliness - are felt in the stomach, and they both mean lack. Note - many emotional experiences in our culture are closely related to food, whether it is grief or joy. Add to this the fact that, in the process of raising children, they are taught to understand body signals in a way that is convenient for adults. “How come you don’t want to eat? It’s time…” It’s no wonder that some people, in such conditions, have difficulty identifying subtle differences in sensations in order to reliably distinguish one from the other. After all, the feeling of hunger is a signal that the body needs food as a source of energy and building materials. And the experience of loneliness is a more complex phenomenon, consisting of ideas about what communication should be like, the experience of communication itself and its (experience) evaluation. When the experience of communication does not coincide with ideas, an evaluative feeling “I don’t have enough” arises. If a person confuses these feelings, then, experiencing loneliness, he may eat instead of communicating with old friends or looking for new ones. But no food will satisfy the need in communication, and the person will still feel this feeling of lack. And - continue to eat again and again, remaining “eternally hungry”, and ultimately gain excess weight. What to do in this case? Learn to distinguish between physical hunger and the experience of loneliness - once. Two is to act on the reason that caused this feeling of lack.... First ask such a person to remember when he was in a trusting relationship, or when he was with good friends, and he felt hungry because he had not eaten for a while, and track these sensations in great detail...Then ask him to remember how he felt when he ate food that was good for him, but was lonely and felt an urgent need to be with other people, and that he track these feelings in great detail. Finally, ask him to consider (compare - approx. . mine) these two experiences to carefully note the differences between these two sensations. When we can clearly identify the differences between these two situations, it will be natural and easy to eat when hungry and find a friend when lonely. Steve Andreas "Six Blind Elephants"».