Why not? I seem to have lost interest in the kitchen, and in foods, and have gained so much weight, I'm miserable. So, I thought maybe a book in this subject might be in order and would help me to refocus my attention on cooking again for my health. I've always been about simplifying my life and living more mindfully. This book takes it to a whole new level. It is really about learning to love and to trust yourself. Now, I didn't work my way through the exercises, but I am now made more aware of how we should approach food. She provides a lot of insight into personal struggles and easy step by step ways to slowly incorporate some good practices into your life. It is always a good thing to be grateful for the process, and the ways food comes to us. It is always good to be grateful for many things in life, which we usually take for granted.

This author explains the first step is to learn to listen to your body, your heart, and your mind when eating or drinking anything. There are 9 different kinds of hunger...eyes, touch, ears, nose, mouth, stomach, cells, mind, and heart...and she goes into explaining how to determine which is wanting to be fed. Once you read her explanations of each, you will understand, and she tells you how to go about learning to detect which one is calling out for food so you can make wiser choices.

She's not about deprivation. Mindful substitutions are better. Go the middle way with food. It's a wobbly road. Eat the occasional sweet with mindfulness, then abstain from a certain food for just a while for you to feel the effects. Then, go ahead and eat it again, but in a mindful manner. Learn to eat until "satisfied", not uncomfortable-stuffed-full.

Although not mentioned, it seems a journal might be helpful in learning to eat mindfully and learning to discern which hunger is being fed. She suggests some basic Zen meditation to clear your mind and get to the bottom of your spirituality with food and body. After you've figured out which hunger you are feeding, then begin eating with your mind on the food itself (the aromas, the colors, the shapes, the flavors, the feel, swallowing, etc...) at a clean table and in a quiet environment, focusing on the food. This is the meaning of being in the present, and this is eating mindfully. You will enjoy your food more and feel grateful for it.

To break old habits, whether eating patterns or any other bad habits (thoughts about someone, actions, etc..), you STOP! Literally, stop, be aware and don't move! Don't move your mouth or your body! Then make your choice of action with a clear head.

An overabundance of food has decreased our gratitude towards food. We have to remember that health and life are temporary gifts. When we feel our body has betrayed us with sickness (irritable bowel syndrome, food sensitivities, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, weight gain, etc...), those parts of the body need extra help and extra kindness, not extra criticism, and feed the cells what they need. This is considered cell hunger, one of the 9 hungers. We also need to consider our gut microbiome community of beneficial bacteria and be sure to feed it probiotic (fermented foods) and prebiotics (plant fibers) if we want to remain healthy. It's good reading on this subject from page 147 to 150. She talks of the association between junk foods and an altered gut microbiome and diseases.

Parents of young children and teenagers might really enjoy Chapter 6, "Mindful Eating with Children". For smaller children, the parents are responsible for what, when and where (what foods are served...variety of healthy foods...and when and where they are served). The child should be responsible for which food to eat and how much to eat...preferrably with his hands to experience the feel of food, one of the 9 hungers. The child will learn to eat the amount needed, and to eat what the parents eat or cook. She describes a few fun exercises to play with young kids to help them along with discerning the 9 features of hunger as they are growing up.

For helping young teenagers, she lists 8 exercises, that are really awesome ideas, to get them thinking mindfully of food. I have 10 grandkids now that I think would enjoy every one of these exercises. This gives me something to think about for their next sleepover.

The last chapter, page 179, is a summary of tips for mindful eating that might be worth printing out and reviewing on occasion when you feel like you need a refresher. I will probably reread this book a little slower and go through the exercises a little later on. I have never tried meditation, but as I’m reading more and more on the subject, it has piqued my interest. ( )

Jan Chozen Bays provides a solid primer for mindful eating. The seven types of hunger she outlines are a new way (or I guess forgotten way, she would argue) to approach eating, but for the most part not too radical. We're all familiar with the concepts of comfort food and emotional eating, and sayings like, "your eyes are bigger than your stomach." So while she reframed these different relationships to food, nothing (except maybe cellular hunger) seemed too far out there. I also appreciated the conditional behaviors she outlines and the various inner voices - critic, perfectionist, pusher - many deal with.

That said, as many have pointed out, she makes some sweeping generalizations and doesn't include enough scientific data to win over my inner skeptic. Considering she's a physician, I would have expected more medical evidence and less "Would ya believe it?" style anecdotes. But, the book is written in a self-help style, so I suppose that's not warranted. And I'm also already totally on board with mindfulness and mindful eating so I was hoping for something more...technical, I guess.

My other issue is this: In the introduction she talks about binge eating, bulimia, and anorexia as destructive food relationships. What follows, however, largely leaves anorexia out of the discussion or treats it only as an after thought. Even the section on fasting, which is perhaps the best time to enter into that discussion, doesn't get into it. Instead, she focuses heavily on over eating and the need to curb those habits. While many of the methods and exercises she provides seem like they would help, since her focus is so lopsided it makes me wonder whether, in her eyes, over eating is somehow more of a disorder than under eating.

It's a shame for several reasons, not least of which is that I think mindfulness really could help those with anorexia as well. But the exercises she offers don't seem to deal with the particular anxieties and emotional distress specific to that disease.

We ordered this book as part of our growing collection of stress/anxiety/mental health resources that we have available to students in the library. I'll still recommend students give this a try, but it's disappointing knowing that many of them won't find what the book promises. It's impossible to know what a person is struggling with just by looking at them and they're unlikely to come right out and say, "yeah I personally need something that focuses on bulimia/BED/anorexia/etc." At the very least, however, it offers a starting point and some solid basic mindfulness methods. ( )

I was very interested in reading this book, because I am in the midst of trying to redefine my relationship with food after 40+ years of using it as comfort, as celebration, as time-filler — as everything but nutrition, basically. The premise of the book is to teach the reader how to become more aware (more mindful, as the title says) of what he or she is eating, how much, and why.

The book includes narrative to introduce and explain the concepts of mindful eating, as well as exercises that the reader can use to explore the food/mind/body relationship. The exercises seemed very useful, although I cannot evaluate them fully because my advance reading copy did not include the CD that comes with the regular edition of the book. The CD includes the exercises, allowing you to listen to the instructions of the exercise as you perform it. This would seem to be much easier and more effective than reading a sentence or two, putting the book down and performing the task, then picking the book back up and reading the next bit.

This book doesn't really delve into the issues of corporate agriculture or eating locally, such as were raised in books such as "The Omnivore's Dilemma". It's a much more personal exploration of the relationship between food and the eater. Whether you choose to perform each of the exercises in its most minute detail, or simply read the narrative and think about the issues raised, this book is a valuable aid to calibrating your personal relationship with food.

"Mindful Eating" brings a Buddhist viewpoint to examining the reasons one overeats and from there, a method of controlling it. Because this was a ARC, it didn't include the cd of guided exercises so I can't gauge their effectiveness. The discussions in the books were interesting, but if it were that easy to "fix" a lifetime's habit, I would be perfect. Or at least not care. ( )

I gifted this to a food writer before I had the chance to fully "digest" it, but I liked what I read and the style of it's approach. The writer I gave it to told me she enjoyed it immensely. ( )