18 Books Like Breaking Free from Emotional Eating

This book is one of the most effective guides to meaningful, lasting change.

James Clear explains how transformation happens through small adjustments practiced consistently over time. His philosophy aligns with a core belief in my own life and work: growth is created by what you do daily, not occasionally.

Clear breaks down the power of systems, discipline, and identity-based habit building. The book proves that success is rarely about dramatic breakthroughs. It is the result of steady, intentional actions that accumulate into extraordinary impact.

Mastering the next right step is the foundation of personal and professional excellence.

I carry Michael Pollan’s decree close to my heart, and his wise words guide my choices around food, moderation and common sense to this day. 

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Words to live by, if ever there were any, and for this recovering emotional eater, Pollan was a much-needed voice of common sense. A great reminder to avoid industrialised, heavily processed foods, and get back to experiencing pleasure at the dinner table, enjoying whole foods that my grandparents would have recognised.

Pollan’s decree guides my decisions in the supermarket and my kitchen constantly. Another essential book discovered along my healing journey as I reclaimed my health.

Yeo’s book has been fundamental in my growing understanding of my own body, as it relates to nutrition, digestion, and how we extract energy from food. 

I have learnt that the measurement of a calorie is simply false—a crude tool at best. For myself, in a perpetual maintenance phase this past-decade (post massive weight-loss the old-fashioned way), this book was also essential reading. Not only is calorie counting overly simplistic; it’s actually pretty useless.

I haven’t once looked at food the same way after finishing this book.

This book is written by a man who is both a foodie and a scientist—always a good thing when I’m seeking sound, common sense advice by someone who also refuses to live a life that doesn’t include espresso, sourdough and the occasional glass of red. Love it.

Thanks to this terrific book, I now have a decent understanding of what my gut microbiome is, and just why eating a ton of different plants every week helps me to feel happier, more energised, and less likely to die. Given my passion for health and maintaining my substantial weight loss forever, I remain indebted to Tim Spector and his very useful book.

When we think prayer is hard, we need a reminder of God’s listening ear. While there are limitless ways to connect with the Lord, Praying God’s Word invites us into conversation when we don’t know what to say.

Scripture is alive and active, and God Himself gives us words when we don’t have any. The thing I loved about this book is that it’s a springboard to get us started with this type of prayer. When I tried praying this way, I felt closer to God because His words were right there.

I love this book’s focus on mothers and daughters. Although people of all genders experience body image concerns, and parenting children of all genders is unquestionably challenging, I found comfort in Amelia’s exploration of the mother-daughter relationship. 

I love her Intentional Feeding Mindset and the gentle way she helps mothers see that they can help instill confidence and resilience in their daughters. As she reminds us, having a female body can be incredibly confusing in our culture, and growing up, learning how to care for that body is essential.

Lawyer Michael Perlin was, for decades, lead author of the seminal, annually updated reference volumes on developments in U.S. mental health laws and precedent commitment cases.

The Hidden Prejudice is written for general readers; many pages are still two-thirds reference footnotes, but Perlin allows himself a more personal tone that makes the core text riveting and disturbing.

Dispelling out-of-date notions that people can only be locked up if they’re physically threatening and dangerous, Perlin demonstrates with stark warning how criteria for detaining people have become shockingly broad, most judges have abandoned any requirement that psychiatrists meet even basic standards of science, average commitment hearings function virtually outside the law, and courts grant psychiatric institutions horrifying degrees of immunity for abuses.

You’ll never again hear calls to expand forced psychiatric treatment in the same way.

The Big Book of Hell is the holy grail of dark humor, packaged perfectly in a comic format. Growing up as a sarcastic kid from Brooklyn, this was the first humor book I read that I felt was aimed directly at my sensibilities. It has a very unique “substance-over-style” aesthetic that is striking and somehow managed to become widely identifiable. It dances around subjects, poking fun at the absurdities of the world it was written in. It really showed me that you don’t need to be a conventionally great artist to publish comics and that there is a market for dark humor comics. The book, which reads almost like a variety show, opened my eyes to ways to play with structure of an individual comic and a whole book.

This is a unique entry in that the cursed place is a framing device, for this collection of mostly disturbing tales. For his first-ever collection of short stories, Palahniuk brings his wretched cast of characters to a haunted house, where each in turn offers his or her own demented tale. They don’t all work, but a number of the stories really stick with you, and this spooky old house at the center of it ratchets the intensity up another level—it’s not a static situation they are in, there, so the plot progresses to its own warped conclusion on this front as well. 

I gotta say, Noel-Anne Brennan needs to be better known.

This book (along with its sequel, The Blood of the Land) makes up a compelling duology featuring Rilsin, the rightful ruler of her country, who pledges the throne to her cousin Sithli in an effort to stop the bloodshed in her land.

But her cousin is insane and could care less about being a good ruler, which means Rilsin may need to break her promise to help her country—except Sithli also holds Rilsin’s baby hostage.

Wonderful, strong characters, an engaging story, super easy to read. What more could you ask for? If you decide to read this, set aside a few uninterrupted hours. You can thank me later. :)