The Hunger Habit

Why We Eat When We're Not Hungry and How to Stop

By: Judson Brewer MD PhD

Narrated by: Judson Brewer MD PhD

A program proven to heal our relationship with food and our bodies from New York Times bestselling author of Unwinding Anxiety.

Sometimes it feels as if there are as many ways to struggle with food as there are foods to eat. Craving, habit, emotions, boredom, stress, anxiety, or just the simple fact that a box of donuts seems to be omnipresent in the break room (free food!) can lead to feeling out of control around food. While anxiety feels like something that happens to us, the pull of food seems like something we should be able to handle. After all, we have to eat! But it’s not that simple. The result of this constant struggle—and then giving in or giving up—is a toxic cocktail of shame and self-judgment that makes it feel like it is impossible to change our behavior.

The Hunger Habit is based on Judson Brewer’s deeply researched plan proven to help us understand what is going on in our brains so that we can heal the guilt and frustration we experience around eating. This is not a diet book pretending not to be a diet book. The step-by-step program focuses on training our brains to tap into awareness to change our relationship with food and eating—shifting it from fighting with ourselves to befriending our minds and bodies. There is no willpower, calorie-counting, or restricted eating. Setbacks are a good thing! The key is to learn how to work with our brains rather than resisting our impulses, and to adopt an attitude of self-kindness rather than self-judgment.

Grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience and Brewer’s several decades of clinical practice as a psychiatrist, The Hunger Habit is both accessible and compassionate. It will finally help you break out of food jail and reclaim your life.

©2024 Judson Brewer (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Stop fighting with food and read this book!” —Arianna Huffington, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Thrive

“If you're looking to heal your relationship with food, the solution rarely lies entirely in changing what you eat. Jud Brewer empowers us to let go of our unhelpful habits and trade them in for helpful, long-lasting ones using cutting-edge neuroscience, practical mindfulness, relatable stories, and real-life examples. This book isn't about restrictive diets or obsessions – it's about finding hope, empowerment, and real, lasting recovery.” —Molly Carmel, author of Breaking Up With Sugar

“Judson Brewer offers a potent recipe for healing unhealthy eating habits: Blend together an understanding of how the brain works with the power of awareness itself. For the countless humans who struggle with craving, this book is filled with life giving insights and tools!” —Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance and Radical Compassion

life changing!

This book helped me learn to work with cravings and taught me skills to listen to my body.

Right now: Listen to this book

Thanks to this book, I can now:
1) Feel where my stomach is in my body
2) Tell the difference between emotional and physical hunger
3) Hear a spoonful of peanut butter

Very helpful.

The personal reading by the author, conveying his expertise in a clear and compassionate way, teaching us how to learn rather than dictating what to do.

Everything is in the head

I love dr Brewer’s books. It is not a book it is a well thought, researched and written program to help you reprogram your emotional eating habits.

7 years ago I stopped smoking with another book, with no effort, no pain and not lookinguu back. I was smoking 3 packs a day for 21 years. So you tell me if this is achievement. That’s how I learned that it is all in the head.

Dr Brewer’s book will help everyone who is ready to listen and willing to change. I loved it, and start to applying what I learned.

Nuggets of wisdom

Pleasant, positive, success in taking control back. Great job relating to processing our health in simple ways. Enjoyed.

Awareness is key

Great information with actionable steps on how to shift my eating habits. I feel much less anxiety around food habits and am much more aware.

practical guide to mondful eating

Judson Brewer is the closest thing I have to a guru. I appreciate his scientific approach to mindfulness.

In this book he has created a step by step guide to mindful eating with specific practices along the way. I followed his advice to read the book slow while taking notes and I am happy I did.

By taking your time with the book you can put to practice the practices he describes and see how they impact your life.

Thank you Dr. Brewer for helping me enjoy eating again.

Truly no willpower required; I finally feel in control.

So many of the concepts in this book are familiar to me (mindfulness, awareness, curiosity, kindness, self-compassion, RAINN), but there was something critical missing—a framework to help me apply them in a way that would actually lead to lasting behavioral change. This book provides that framework. The general idea is that all of our behaviors are assigned a reward value by the brain…and the brain will naturally choose to repeat behaviors with higher versus lower reward values. Thus, the key to healthier eating isn’t to force ourselves to ignore our cravings…it’s to update the reward values of different eating habits. How do we do that? By being fully aware of the positive and negative consequences of our behaviors WITHOUT judging the behaviors themselves as positive/negative or trying to forcibly change them (Judd often repeats throughout the book that “what we resist, persists”, and I’ve found this to be true). When you do that, you start to build up a “data bank” of information on the consequences of different behaviors that, once large enough, helps the brain see that your old eating habits are hurting, not helping you—they aren’t truly meeting your needs. This naturally leads to searching for better alternatives. The key (or one of many keys in this book) is: none of this happens cognitively. Knowing intellectually that a certain eating behavior is not helpful does nothing. In fact, it might actually hinder your progress if you “know you shouldn’t” but feel unable to stop and thus fall into a spiral of shame and self-judgement. The “knowing” this book is designed to cultivate is much deeper than that. It’s sub-conscious. Automatic. It’s not about ignoring what you want. It’s about training your brain to want the things that will actually meet your physical/emotional/psychological needs. If you’re like me, this may seem impossible. But I say this from experience: it’s not just possible, it’s guaranteed…if you truly give it a chance. It won’t always feel easy or fun (although sometimes it will!) and it won’t be immediate. But the best part is, you won’t have to wait to see “results” on a scale or in the mirror to have confidence that the methods in this book work. You will start to feel subtle shifts in how you think about food, yourself, and the project of eating well almost as soon as you start applying them. For example, before you notice a decrease in your bingeing behavior (or even your desire to binge), you may notice that using curiosity and kindness helps you to be less self-critical before/during/after a binge. As a result of being less self-critical, you may notice that the feelings of shame that drive you to keep eating once you’ve started are less intense. Because those feelings are less intense, you may find it easier to pay attention to your body and mind while you’re bingeing (instead of your usual mindless eating). Because you’re paying closer attention, you may find that when you inevitably get to the uncomfortable point of over-fullness, the feeling really sinks in…so much so that the next time you have the desire to binge, your brain automatically recalls that feeling and you actually feel slightly nauseous. It might not be enough at that point to prevent you from bingeing again—after all, that remembered feeling of over-fullness is just one “data point”. But it will be evidence that the process is working. Your brain is slowly but surely updating its reward values. And this doesn’t just apply to eating behaviors. Perhaps more importantly, your brain will start to see how much better it feels/how much more effective it is to use curiosity, kindness, and awareness in moments of discomfort (versus self-judgement and shame) and update those reward values, too. When that happens, it will become easier and easier to apply the methods in this book…until one day you wake up and realize you’re no longer afraid of your cravings because you finally feel in control.

Life changing

I’m a big fan of Dr.Brewer and his work This book drove home how my brain works and how I can train, practice and learn in ways that change my habits and my life. Can’t recommend this highly enough. Thank you Dr. Brewer. I love that you narrated the book yourself!

This book Changed my life

I’ve been a fan of Dr. Judson for years and always loved his approach to anxiety/ mindfulness. But this time by reading this book it finally clicked for me. I loved this book so much I got it in hard copy as well! Highly recommend for everyone