Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food Author: Jan Chozen Bays MD | Language: English | ISBN:
B00CS5KMAI | Format: EPUB
Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food Description
The art of mindfulness can transform our struggles with food—and renew our sense of pleasure, appreciation, and satisfaction with eating. Drawing on recent research and integrating her experiences as a physician and meditation teacher, Dr. Jan Bays offers a wonderfully clear presentation of what mindfulness is and how it can help with food issues.
Mindful eating is an approach that involves bringing one's full attention to the process of eating—to all the tastes, smells, thoughts, and feelings that arise during a meal. Whether you are overweight, suffer from an eating disorder, or just want to get more out of life, this book offers a simple tool that can make a remarkable difference.
In this book, you'll learn how to:
- Tune into your body's own wisdom about what, when, and how much to eat
- Eat less while feeling fully satisfied
- Identify your habits and patterns with food
- Develop a more compassionate attitude toward your struggles with eating
- Discover what you're really hungry for
Mindful Eating also includes a 75-minute audio program containing guided exercises led by the author.
- File Size: 527 KB
- Print Length: 207 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1590305310
- Publisher: Shambhala Publications; Pap/Com edition (July 20, 2011)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CS5KMAI
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,039 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #15
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Buddhism > Zen - #27
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Eating Disorders - #57
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Diabetes
- #15
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Buddhism > Zen - #27
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Eating Disorders - #57
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Diabetes
This book does an excellent job of exploring all aspects of mindfulness in eating. The book's weakness, and the reason I gave it four stars instead of five, is that mindfulness is not the whole answer to emotional or compulsive eating. It's necessary, but not sufficient. In the recovery method I teach, Normal Eating, mindfulness corresponds to Stage 2, "Reconnecting". But then there are two more stages after that. Dr. Bays even gives examples of people who continue to eat emotionally or compulsively despite awareness of the triggers. That's because awareness isn't enough - there's more work to be done.
I don't think Dr. Bays understands the addictive aspect of compulsive eating, as evidenced by the one wrong note the book struck on page 72 about "going unconscious". She says, "The point of mindful eating is not to forbid ourselves to ever use food in this way." I disagree. That's like saying the point of recovery from alcoholism isn't to forbid the alcoholic from ever taking another drink. Uh, actually, yes it is. Compulsive eaters can't eat addictively in moderation any more than alcoholics can drink in moderation.
"Going unconscious", as Dr. Bays calls it, is the essence of what it means to use food addictively, as she well knows because she discusses binge eating in this section. Not using food addictively has to be a "bottom line" if a compulsive eater is to recover - something you never do. I'm not saying people should never eat just for enjoyment. But eating for enjoyment is not the same as "going unconscious" or numbing out with food. I wrote about this at length in a recent newsletter, "Is Eating to Numb Out Ever Okay?":
[...]
Except for this one quibble, I liked "Mindful Eating" very much. Dr.
I have had a bad relationship with food. Whether it has been guilty overeating or anxiously counting calories, I have been "tethered" to food. Even though, through discipline, I am now fit and at a healthy weight, food runs my life. Most people would assume that with all my thoughts about food, and my excitement at mealtime, I would really enjoy eating, but I don't. I realized that most meals pass me by in a blur, as I quickly and tensely inhale as much food as possible, until my body is bloated and my mind foggy. After reading this book, I realized I haven't really enjoyed a meal since I was young.
Mindful Eating is a book about eating with full awareness. Being mindful means simply being aware of the moment, what is going on inside of us, and outside of us, without judgment or opinion. Chozen-Bays applies mindfulness to eating. Rather than battling or obsessing with food, the goal is to be fully aware of the process of eating, and actually enjoy it. She provides helpful tips to accomplish this. She identifies 7 types of hunger, including eye hunger, mouth hunger, and heart hunger. She gives tools to discern if we are really hungry, and where the hunger is coming from. It is possible that our stomachs are hungry, but often, we eat for emotional reasons (heart hunger), or out of habit (mind hunger), not because our bodies need food. She provides tools to satisfy each type of hunger. Sometimes it might be slowing down, giving the body time to recognize fullness. Other solutions might not even involve food. For example, food cannot satisfy heart hunger, so the solution to this hunger is to emotionally connect with someone. She also provides 6 general tips to eat mindfully, including eating more slowly.
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