We raise our glasses in toasts, feast in celebration, and share casseroles in times of loss. And most people have, on occasion, turned to food as a crutch, nervously munching through the cheese plate at a cocktail party or rhythmically crunching popcorn to focus the mind while working on a deadline. It's natural to eat for both physical sustenance and emotional comfort. But there's a difference, experts say, between finding emotional nourishment in food and using food to protect yourself from emotions.

Emotional eating -- eating when you're not hungry and not stopping when you're full -- occurs when you use food as a substitute for participating in your life, says Geneen Roth, author of "When Food Is Love." "It becomes the way you disengage," explains Roth. "It becomes the way you numb yourself, the way you withdraw, the way you protect yourself, the way you hide."

Finding your way back to a healthy relationship with food starts when you reconnect with both your body and your emotions," says Roth. That entails the deep work of learning to recognize and experience your feelings, and the practical work of finding strategies to replace the habit of turning to food for comfort. It also means recognizing and undoing the lessons of a culture that teaches women to mistrust their bodies.

In the following two pages, you'll figure out which particular emotions cause you to eat and find four suggested ways to heal.