Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food by Jan Chozen Bays

Product Details

Synopsis

Here is an accessible and encouraging exploration of how and why to apply the Zen art of mindfulness to transform our “issues” with food. Whether we are overweight (as are two-thirds of American adults today) or suffer from an eating disorder, learning to eat mindfully can liberate us from the suffering we experience with food. Practiced for centuries in the Zen tradition, mindful eating is an approach that involves bringing one’s full attention to the process of eating—becoming fully present to the tastes, smells, thoughts, and feelings that arise during a meal. Preliminary research funded by the National Institutes of Health indicates that mindfulness is effective in treating eating disorders.

Dr. Bays, a physician and Zen teacher, offers a wonderfully clear presentation of what mindfulness is and how it can help us create a healthier relationship with food. In Mindful Eating she shows us how to rediscover the simple act of eating, thereby gaining control of our eating problems from the inside out. Along the way she reviews the relevant research, offers medical information, and presents numerous practical exercises drawn from her workshops. Through mindful eating we not only overcome our issues with food, but we can reawaken our sense of pleasure and satisfaction. This book shows us how.

Mindful Eating also includes a 70-minute audio CD containing guided exercises read by the author.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.

Persuasively arguing that Americans have become obsessed with the constant pursuit of satiation, often to the detriment of their health, pediatrician and Zen teacher Bays calmly and systematically explains how a thoughtful approach to eating and drinking can positively affect one's weight and overall health. Through a series of guided exercises and meditations (and an accompanying CD), Bays encourages readers to examine their eating habits and relationships with food. Bays blames the "Seven Hungers"-of eye ("boy those donuts look good"), mind ("I really should eat more grapefruit") heart ("this apple pie reminds me of my grandmother") and so on-for shaping our unhealthy and/or irrational eating patters; our inner perfectionists, critics and pushers only add to the cacophony, and Bays gives readers tools for silencing these discouraging voices. Bolstered by third-party research and a wealth of anecdotes, Bays's case for introspection over ice cream binges should connect with many. Though she doesn't promise instant results, Bays offers readers a guide to lifelong health through a measured attitude toward food; hers may well be the healthiest, most sane diet book to hit shelves in a while.
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Biography

Jan Chozen Bays is a Zen master in the White Plum lineage of the late master Taizan Maezumi Roshi. She serves as a priest and teacher at the Jizo Mountain–Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, Oregon, and is also a pediatrician who specializes in the evaluation of children for abuse and neglect.