Here is an innovative way to deal with overeating The desire to eat unnecessarily has little to do with genuine hunger. It is usually a conditioned response that is activated by a number of factors. The three main factors that set off the response are: the presence of outside stimuli that suggest eating, the need to change unpleasant emotional states, comfort food, and genuine eating situations that get out of hand. I will discuss the outside stimuli first. I can recall sitting in front of the television, happily engrossed in a show, when a food advertisement came on. Within a very short time I would experience a strong desire to eat something, anything. The same thing happened whenever I visited a coffee shop. I would go in intending only to have a cup of coffee. But the presence of those delicious cakes and sweets would set off the craving in me to eat food that I usually didnt need. Like most, I simply blamed the food for causing the craving and left it at that. When the time came to do something about my ever-increasing weight I knew that it would be an absolute waste of time and energy for me to go on yet another diet or exercise program. I know from experience that these approaches require more will-power than I can muster to make them work over the long term. I suspected that if I could do something about getting rid of the desire to eat unnecessarily I would stand a much better chance of success. These are the steps I took to do this.