Shrink Yourself : Break free from emotional eating forever! by Roger Gould MD is very enlightening.  Gould uses his years of working with overweight patients to discover why we overeat and how to put the brakes on.  I think it can be summed up as we overeat when feeling powerless.  Maybe we feel powerless over finances or work or a relationship.  But guess what? The overeating trance is not a fix for our feelings.  If we can create a pause between the feelings and the overeating we can choose to do something different.  We can instead do something to increase our power. Allow yourself to feel the feelings. I highly recommend this book.