Book selection: “Eating Mindfully”

“Eating Mindfully” was one of the first books to apply mindfulness techniques to eating. Since its publication, new research has emerged linking mindful eating with weight loss and an increased ability to manage emotional eating tendencies. Interest in mindful eating has skyrocketed, and thousands of readers have discovered how slowing down and enjoying food can transform the way they eat. This second edition of “Eating Mindfully” includes new tips and easy-to-use strategies for staying present when eating, savoring food, and controlling cravings. Author Susan Albers has added a new chapter highlighting recent studies on mindful eating and what mindful eating may mean for the national obesity crisis. This straightforward, entertaining guide offers a complete explanation of the four pillars of mindful eating, help for emotional eaters, and mindful eating tips readers can use during every meal, every day.

What would it be like to really savor your food? Instead of grabbing a quick snack on your way out the door or eating just to calm down at the end of a stressful day, isn’t it about time you let yourself truly appreciate a satisfying, nourishing meal?

In our modern society, weight concerns, obesity rates, and obsession with appearance have changed the way we look at food—and not necessarily for the better. If you have ever snacked when you weren’t hungry, have used guilt as a guide for your eating habits, or have cut calories even when you felt hungry, you have experienced “mindless” eating firsthand. This mindless approach to food is dangerous, and can have serious health and emotional consequences. But if you’ve been mindlessly eating all your life, it can be difficult to make a change. When it comes down to it, you must take a whole new approach to eating—but where do you begin? Practicing mindful eating habits may be just the thing to make that important change. In fact, it might just be the answer you’ve been searching for all these years.

Review

“In this new edition of Eating Mindfully, Susan Albers gives more advice to those who truly care about what they eat. This book will help the consumer understand that the choices we make each day about what we buy have differing impacts on the world around us and on our own health. Hers is a reasoned voice in an environment where the fast food industry is still urging us to buy cheap food, not revealing the hidden costs. If you want to be healthy and care about a healthy planet, this is a book that will help you.”
—Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a United Nations Messenger of Peace

“Albers guides you with compassion and great insight through a journey into your eating habits. How you eat will be transformed and your relationship with food will be revolutionized.”
—Margaret Floyd, NTP, author of Eat Naked

Eating Mindfully is a must-have book for people who want to deepen their mind-body connection through the experience of eating. It is chock-full of practical skill-building steps and written in a genuinely compassionate manner that will inspire you. Inner peace begins with compassion from within, not from perpetual food fights at the dinner table or within the battleground of your mind. This book will show you how to tap your innate ability to make peace with your eating. Eating Mindfully is a welcome respite.”
—Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD, coauthor of Intuitive Eating

“This is a simple and powerful book—one that takes the reader on a journey within to find solutions to their own individual eating difficulties.”
—Denise Lamothe, PsyD, HHD, author of The Taming of the Chew

The practice of mindful eating is like going on an archeological dig through layers of symptoms to the truth underneath. Albers has given us an excellent map! Her book makes clear that problem eating can be a great teacher if only we stop to listen. I highly recommend this gentle, respectful, practical guide.”
—Lindsey Hall, author of Bulimia: A Guide to Recovery and Anorexia Nervosa: A Guide to Recovery

“We eat to live, yet some of us lose perspective and control of our relationship with food. Albers, drawing upon the powerful integration of Eastern wisdom and Western science, guides us along a practical journey of mindfulness pointing to acceptance of our bodies and ourselves.”
—Thomas F. Cash, PhD, professor of psychology at Old Dominion University and author of The Body Image Workbook

“Susan Albers explores crucial spiritual dimensions that are so often overlooked in our relationship with food. Readers will easily identify the habits that trap them in cycles of mindless dieting, bingeing, and chaotic eating and help them cultivate a compassionate relationship between mind, body, thoughts, and feelings.”
—Rita Freedman, PhD, author of Bodylove: Learning to Like Our Looks and Ourselves