You are what you eat, but why are you eating so much? Your moods! Why can't you stay with a reasonable exercise program, and why is obesity at epidemic proportions in our society today? Negative moods hold the explanations.

Feeling down? Wish you had more energy and less stress? If this describes you some or most of the time, you are probably among the millions today who respond to increasing stress and low moods with food - a candy bar, or perhaps a cup of coffee and a sweet. Such "emotional eating" may temporarily boost your spirits, but this effect is a short-lived quick fix that perpetuates chronic overeating and obesity. Moreover, the same negative moods that have grown to substantial proportions in society today, sap your resolve to exercise.

In this breakthrough book, an acclaimed mood researcher tackles the problem of overweight and inactivity from the perspective of mood. Thayer compellingly argues that it is our moods, beyond nutritional needs, that signal our bodies to desire food we really don't need in order to replenish our energy and to lower stress levels. Consciously or unconsciously, we constantly seek "calm energy" to face the challenges of the day. Eating is often our first response to a bad mood, as opposed to other, less-fattening forms of self-medication, like listening to music or just slowing down. But, as Thayer explains with clarity and abundant scientific research, we would do much more to raise our spirits in the long run by something as simple as a ten minute walk. Various forms of exercise are proven mood regulators in ways this book describes in detail. Sound like common sense? Perhaps, but if the choice is exercise or a snack, the snack usually wins out unless we understand our moods. This understanding is the real key. We must see why we eat too much before we can control what and how much we eat. From this we learn the reasons for the inevitable failures at diet and exercise.

This provocative new approach to understanding and fighting overeating offers practical advice and biological explanations for your cravings and moods, and it shows how both are indicators of energy and stress levels. Thayer describes how most people's daily energy cycles function, and he explains how you can apply this in scientifically proven ways to fight the urge to eat when you are down and to achieve the optimum goal of "calm energy."

Snacks. Sex. Shopping. Smoking. Whether we realize it or not, all of us have strategies for self-medicating ourselves when we feel threatened or overwhelmed by tension or tiredness. But why do people respond to pressure in such different ways? And what really helps most to reduce tension and increase energy, a brisk ten-minute walk, twenty minutes of meditation, or two hours of watching TV?

In this fascinating new book, Robert E. Thayer serves as an expert guide through the latest scientific research into moods and mood management, revealing which behaviours energize and empower us, and which sabotage our best interests. (Just five or ten minutes of walking, for example, can enhance mood for an hour or more, while sugar snacking, Thayer shows, causes more tension than it reduces.) Far from a shallow quick fix book, Everyday Moods: Energy and Tension brings readers to a new understanding of the underlying biology of their daily cycles of energy and tension, and offers powerful recommendations for breaking self-destructive habits and leading a richer, more enjoyable life.

This book explores the interplay between physiological and psychological states in light of increasing evidence that they exert subtle, long-term influences not only on mood, but also perception, judgement, and cognitive processes in general; these, in turn, affect behaviour. Drawing on his own data from subjective assessments of mood and research by others, the author addresses questions such as what determines a person's mood and its changes; what is the relationship between mood and sugar snacking, smoking, coffee drinking, late-night worry, depression, and insomnia; what effect do exercise, time of day, nutrition, and sleep have on mood. This book will be of interest to researchers in personality, clinical, and physiological psychology and to laypersons interested in the topic.