Ugh. Reading this book was like having pins stuck in my eyeballs, I really hated it.

It is filled with 'tips' on how to eat less or mindfully. The tips and suggestions are ridiculous to my mind and I did not enjoy this book at all. Some of his suggestions are eating standing up, eating sitting on the floor, buying chocolate covered beetles, eating with chopsticks with the non dominant hand, eating with a clothespin on your nose to not smell the food, etc.

I don't recommend this book at all and am glad I got it secondhand from Amazon for 4 bucks, had I paid the full price, I'd really be upset. ( )

A nice compliation of exercises and advice on mindful eating. One nice thing is that you can take what works for you and leave the rest. I really like the format that broke the ideas into short quickly read sections. ( )

The practice of mindfulness, of being aware of the present moment, is used to treat a multitude of health and psychological difficulties. In this book the author, a private psychologist who regularly evaluates people considering gastric bypass surgery, promotes mindful eating. With a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo, he has developed his mindful-eating program based on effective techniques for his clients. That being said, his 141 exercises apply not only to very overweight individuals but also to anyone desiring to adopt a more conscious and healthy eating lifestyle.
The book is arranged flexibly so as to be read cover-to-cover or randomly. If readers choose to skip around, the exercises are labeled with either an AB (an awareness-building level) or an HM (a habit-modifying level) or both. The exercises are based on four reasons why people engage in overeating: the mindlessness of environmental triggers, of the eating process, of feeling full, and of emotional eating.
One example of mindfulness is in the discussion of cravings control. By using mindfulness, by merely noticing something without becoming attached to it, individuals can achieve “disidentification.” With a food craving specifically, mindfulness reveals that the craving is a transient state of mind, not the mind itself. “Yes, it is a part of you, but it’s not all of you,” points out the author. No one should strive to block thoughts of food but instead should recognize them as mere sensations. In short, the author maintains, “mindfulness is a form of controlling by letting go of control.”
Some of the exercises are off-beat in order to break automatic behavior associated with food. The author asks readers to pack together pieces of a carrot cake and hurl the chunks at a tree. Although afterwards a carrot cake might scream “eat me,” it might also start to signal “throw me.” The author suggests that to broaden this exercise, readers need to invent creative manners to interact with favorite foods “so that stuffing your face with it is no longer the only fun option at your disposal.”
As a final exercise, the author suggests developing a personal eating philosophy, including the purpose of eating and when to start and stop eating, but he does not dictate any specific terms, recognizing that individuals’ goals will differ. Much more than just a workbook for obese people, this collection of exercises will be useful for many of us who want to loose ten pounds.

by Beth Hemke Shapiro

Copyright Foreword Magazine, Volume 12, no. 1 ( )