Customer Reviews

If the Buddha Came to Dinner: How to Nourish Your Body to Awaken Your Spirit

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an eminently practical and yet authentically spiritual guide to the vital subject of how we nourish ourselves on every level. The author touches us with stories of transformation from her practice and from her personal life.

She gives specific suggestions without pushing the line into dogma. She knows the subtlety of her subject, and she approaches it with a gentle, graceful, but sure hand.

I am greatly inspired by her chapter on Transformational Nourishment. Even the title says it all. We stand with our arms outstretched, reaching for the horizon yet it comes down to the simple day-to-day act of feeding our bodies, hearts, minds and souls.

I have had years of experience trying different diets and I am pleased to say that this book takes all that I know to be true and puts it in clear, useful and inspirational form. It is subtle: you feed yourself in everything you do and think and say and feel. Each breath you take provides further nourishment. Now, which aspect of yourself do you choose to feed, to support, to give life to?

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a realization.

Finally-- a book about food that has absolutely nothing to do with obessing over calories or counting carbs... this is a great book for real people, who think and feel and care deeply about how to take care of themselves on all levels. I think people who have burned out on "diet" books will find this heartfelt approach to food, and to life, extremely refreshing and useful.

If The Buddha Came to Dinner is a wonderful opportunity to connect with the entire wholeness of food and feel great. This book illustrates that, as people, we often eat in our busy lives without connecting to the food. This is easily evident in everything fast these days. The book shows us how to take an opportunity we all have several times a day to connect with food and the spirituality that it feeds.

The book takes you through a very manageable cleanse with many great healthy happy and delicious recipes. Looking at food in this manner has guided me to more clarity, energy, focus, and curiosity in ways to eat refreshingly.

I am grateful to Hale for pointing out a simple and fun way to understand the importance of to whom we feed and how we feed it. This has shown us a way to access a stronger and vivid connection just by looking into what we eat to make us thrive.

I hope there will be more books by this author to come.

This book is a perfect combination of inspiration and information to help anyone use food to create greater physical and emotional health. I love that the book is extremely readable and funny but also is full of detailed, practical, step by step directions on how to make healthful choices and changes. I have already showed this book to my father, my sister in law, the woman who cuts my hair, and our teenage babysitter... every one of them found something in the book that made them say.. "this is exactly what I need!" what a gift!!

I went on the three-week cleanse and have never felt better. Weight loss, while a goal for me, was secondary to how I felt and the concept of nourishing rather than feeding oneself. (I did lose 20 pounds on the 3 week cleanse.) Be warned though - if you choose to cleanse for 3 weeks it requires a time commitment. I found it helpful to actually plan out a week's menu (for shopping, prep and diverisifcation of meals).

Recipes are good and very versatile. I have several friends who are now also interested in "clean" food and love coming to my house for dinner - even the skeptics.

This book is nurturing from the first page. It gently leads you to a pleasantly full stomach and a calm mind amidst the junk food and increasing daily stress of most of our lives. It explains the basic science of good nutrition without getting overly technical and gives you step by step practices to incorporate healthier habits and feel more vitality very quickly. It is ever mindful of the difficulty of always eating the most nutritious food and has many good suggestions for making the best of it. Body and mind live together and this book makes the relationship stronger and healthier than any other nutrition/diet book that I have read.

I just finished reading "If the Buddha Came to Dinner". I thoroughly enjoyed it. One reading isn't enough, I find myself paging through it and stopping at certain sections from time to time. I tried a few recipes and really like them. I just ordered it for a friend of mine. The book speaks to your body and soul.

Many books on health and diet tell us what we should be doing, shaking a proverbial finger at bad meals, sugary desserts and then nag us to stop the madness. If the Buddha came to Dinner promotes enlightened, soulful eating, not following the latest fad in cloaked in scientific research. Eating mindfully means listening deeply to what your mind, body and spirit want to eat and how your mind, body and spirit react to what you do eat. It is not about superficially changing your dietary habits, only to have them come back vengefully once your diet is "over." I recommend this book for anyone who is looking to profoundly change their eating habits while shifting their life trajectory to a more soulful path.

The basic premise of this book is that if the Buddha (or insert your own spiritual role model here) came to dinner, you would probably prepare food with much more care, love, and attention that you would for just yourself -- you wouldn't just dump something out of a can and chow it down in front of the television. The book is about learning to love yourself and nourish yourself in that same way, and realizing that you are deserving of this attention. It is a book not just about food, but about life and learning to live it without just going through the motions. It explains why whole foods are more nourishing for your body, and has some wonderful recipes in the back. I think it is an excellent read for those who are looking for a more mindful way of living.

This book is great. I love the idea of fasting, eating according to my senses and only eating what's in season in my vicinity. But how realistic is THAT for most people? I tried it, but man, here in the high desert, that really limits what I'm eating. This woman teaches and writes beautifully. Her recipes are amazing. Oh, and her website is beautiful, go check it out.