Dut to some life circumstances I have recently became an emotional eater and it's a struggle.

It's especially challenging if you run out of food and start eating "food" to satisfy the craving.

I also found out that I have linked food with reading the newspaper (habit that I picked up from my father) and in the past there were situations when I wasn't hungry but ate because I still had to read some pages in the newspaper and situations where I was hungry but still needed some newspaper with the meal.

I mostly eat alone so it's really easy for me to slip in the newspaper circle.

I gained the realization that, when combining the two factors, I do not enjoy the food as much, nor do I retain much info from reading but they are still times when I "have to" eat & read.

I'll pick up the books.

Well, we're creatures of habit, and of associations, right? So regularly eating while reading the newspaper, for example, is a learned habit--or a conditioned response, re: Pavlov--that we've learned over time. Repeated "submission" to the urge to eat once we've opened the newspaper reinforces the association we have of Newspaper = Eat. In turn, if we can quit these habits for just a couple weeks, the associations weaken, so these automatic actions stop being automatic. This applies to all sorts of food associations we have--always eating at a certain time, for example, or in a certain place. And for the most part they can be kicked with simple diligence.

Of course this is a lot harder when the foods we're eating have emotional significance or have addictive properties. As a reformed sugar-addict, I understand that phenomenon all too well.

Short Story:

I had a house mate a few years back. Once a month she would bake. Regular as clockwork. She would eat up to half of what she baked. Then leave the rest for myself and 2 roommates. I hadn't heard of paleo yet but not much more got eaten. I could have been ok with this setup if not for one thing. She left the dishes for someone else to do.
At that point I moved out, but baking to ease pms didn't seem to be a working plan.

I think a lot of it is culture based and a learned habit. I know a lot of parents who gift bad food to their children for doing well in school or for doing their chores, as well as every birthday, holiday etc. Hell I know parents who give their kids bad food when their ill to make them 'feel better'. An awful lot of my friends eat stuff (certain candy, grilled sandwiches, ice creams, etc) because they remember that their parents used to give them the same thing when they were upset/ill/did well. For most people its a simple case that they associate happiness with sugar which in turn makes it addictive.

re: emotional eating... what i've read suggests that it's a way to tune out, almost like a perverse kind of meditation. food is so cheap and so available and so accessible that it's not hard to indulge in this kind of meditation in order to avoid the present. some solutions i've found useful are to make a concerted effort to be aware of how you feel when you eat. are you eating because you're hungry? or are you eating because you want to avoid thinking? if it's the second one, try to put down the food and grapple with your own thoughts and emotions for a little bit. i have little tics like this, but they're not food-related: i'll bite my nails when i study or when i'm on the phone with my mom because i have a lot of hard feelings wrapped up in both of those. it takes a lot to bring myself back to earth and tell myself that i can be present during this paper, conversation, whatever.

as a side note: i have no doubt that paleo is a great way to live. that said, i also think it can be used (like any diet or workout regimen) as a control mechanism... as an auto-pilot we can turn on when we don't want to think about why we're eating. "as long as it's meat, it's fine." "as long as it's not sugar, eat as much as you want." it can easily justify that kind of perverse meditation/withdrawal from reality.