Customer Reviews

Eat by Choice, Not by Habit: Practical Skills for Creating a Healthy Relationship With Your Body and Food

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is written by a 44 year old woman that has been struggling to lose weight for about 8 years. Once I realized that "diets" were not the answer I starting purchasing books that were designed to address the emotional aspects of food to see if maybe that was what was wrong. This particular book seems to be geared toward those that berate themselves for overeating. At lot of this book addresses how everyone needs to love him or herself and be kind to them. If that is not your problem, this book will not be helpful to you.

This book is subdivided as follows:
Being Your Own Best Friend
Play with Your Food
Compassionate Eating in Restaurants
Supporting Others
The Beginning

The author of the book is a nutritionist and a trainer in "Compassionate/Non-violent Communication". This form of communication seems to focus on positive communication in lieu of the negative. The author tells us that moral condemnation and compassion cannot coexist. The focus is on accepting what is, and then changing it.

The author wants us to focus on what we need when we reach for that bagel even though we aren't hungry. She wants us to try to address what need we are trying to satisfy with the food.

The topics covered in this book are interesting. However, I don't think that this book alone is adequate to get someone to change a long-term issue with food. In conjunction with counseling or additional books this may be enough. I view this book as a "booklet" rather than a book. It points you in a particular direction, but doesn't have enough information to actually get you to the end of your journey. If you are looking for a different approach, and don't know if this will work, this book will give you a basis to make that decision. However, I believe that if this approach is for you, additional resources will be required to get you to your goal weight.

I found Eat by Choice to be very insightful and found the concept of applying NVC to eating to be very refreshing and enlightening. I loaned it to a client who has an eating disorder. We had been discussing the concept of paying attention to feelings when the need for the disfunctional rituals arise. We had both read of the idea in Eckert Toole's new book. She came back the next week after reading your book and was thrilled with it. She said it got her through the week and gave her a way to handle her feelings of loneliness that fuel her eating patterns. She was able to sit with the feelings instead of eating them away - for the first time. She and I had each found passages in the book that fit her to the tee and we discussed those passages in therapy. I gave her my copy to keep so I'll have to get another one.

I think Silvia Haskvitz has something very powerful here. In fact those are the words my client used to describe the book's effect upon her - "powerful." She and I both said that our only criticism is that it was too short. Each sentence is pregnant with meaning, so pregnant that I found that I had to read and reread some passages in order to fully grasp what was being said. I can see from reading the book that Sylvia has spent a lifetime developing her ideas. They are well thought out and deep. They are complex ideas, layered in philosophies of nutrition, psychotherapy, NVC, and spirituality just to mention a few. I thought the book was a marvelous marraige of all the disparate disciplines. These ideas are probably second nature to her now but for the neophytes who have not delved into such philosophies, the concepts are likely to be less transparent. I felt that each concept could have filled a chapter all by itself. Hence, I have a wish. Has Silvia thought of making a workbook? Then writing a companion book with each idea expounded upon so thoroughly that one cannot miss the point? This book could be a wonderful prelude to something quite great. Congratualtions! I hope thsi book gets into the hands of more people with eating disorders. It is a gold mine.

I loved this book! Eat by Choice, Not by Habit offers the reader the opportunity to gently look at the relationship we have with ourselves, in particular, with our food choices.

The author wants to inspire each of us to take responsibility for our lives and become more conscious of what we are doing, and how we are meeting our needs. I agree with Ms. Haskvitz that we have the wisdom within to make healthy choices, and her book gives us permission to further access this inner voice, while giving us some practical knowledge and skills.

Buy this gift for your best friend (we all need to become our own best friend), and allow a new chapter to be written in your life, one that will give you a longer, more balanced, and healthier life. You deserve it!
Marcia Breitenbach, founder of [...]

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This book is small (122 pages) but packed with useful information about becoming more of a conscious eater. To do this, the author uses the principles of NonViolent Communication (NVC). NVC teaches you how to become more aware of your needs when you communicate; this book shows you how becoming aware of your needs before and after eating gives you more choices, and more of a chance to meet those needs. It teaches you gentler and more compassionate ways of treating yourself when you have a problem with emotional overeating. There is an emphasis upon real foods, but no specific diet plan is endorsed, as this is a book about what goes on inside your head rather than eating any specific foods.

I have read many diet books, including many on the internal things we tell ourselves around overeating, and this book stands above most of them. It would be very useful for anyone, whether or not you are familiar with NVC.
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This book is amazing. In is helping me to understand why I eat even though I am not physically hungry. I often eat out of boredom, fatigue, and the need to belong and eating just really doesn't solve these other issues. Knowing this helps me not to eat when my body doesn't want to. Great book!

This is one of the only books that I have read about
eating that resonates with my values of choice, health,
self-acceptance / love, and efficacy--rather than a quick fix or beating myself up. To me, this is a way of looking at eating issues with integrity! I loved in the book how you spoke with such compassion as well as invited readers to take
responsibility/have the courage and clarity to go beneath
eating habits.

I loved Ms. Haskvitz's book "Eat by Choice, Not by Habit: Practical Skills for Creating a Healthy Relationship with Your Body and Food." Ms. Haskvitz captures the complexity of these issues and offers concrete, doable, suggestions for making different food choices and for experiencing our bodies differently. If you're looking for an easy-to-read book that offers specific tools, this is the book for you!

Mary Mackenize, M.A.
Executive Director, Flagstaff Center for Compassionate Communication

I just love this book! NVC is new to me. I think it is a great thing to treat ourselves with kindness
when it comes to food.
The book is fun to read.
I'm very happy with it!
I'd recommend it for everyone who is interested in a healthy relationship with food.

Couldn't put this book down. This is by far one of the most helpful books on eating I've ever read. Thank you Sylvia Haskvitz. What a delight and so refreshing to read such clear insight. I often reach for the "feelings" behind why I want to eat/binge (and that can just make me feel more of whatever I'm feeling), but never thought so clearly (until now) about asking myself what "need" is posing as hunger. Awesome book. Very quick read. Great resources too!