Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food--includes CD [Paperback]

Jan Chozen Bays (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 3, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1590305310 | ISBN-13: 978-1590305317 | Edition: Pap/Com

The art of mindfulness can transform our struggles with food—and renew our sense of pleasure, appreciation, and satisfaction with eating. Drawing on recent research and integrating her experiences as a physician and meditation teacher, Dr. Jan Bays offers a wonderfully clear presentation of what mindfulness is and how it can help with food issues.

Mindful eating is an approach that involves bringing one's full attention to the process of eating—to all the tastes, smells, thoughts, and feelings that arise during a meal. Whether you are overweight, suffer from an eating disorder, or just want to get more out of life, this book offers a simple tool that can make a remarkable difference.

In this book, you'll learn how to:

   • Tune into your body's own wisdom about what, when, and how much to eat
   • Eat less while feeling fully satisfied
   • Identify your habits and patterns with food
   • Develop a more compassionate attitude toward your struggles with eating
   • Discover what you're really hungry for



Mindful Eating also includes a 75-minute audio CD containing guided exercises led by the author.

Editorial Reviews

From 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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Review

“Jan Chozen Bays should be recruited by the slow food movement.  My favorite mindfulness book from the past year.”—Barry Boyce in Shambhala Sun


"If you give yourself over wholeheartedly to the practices described here, you will be thanking yourself and Dr. Bays for recovering your life and for enjoying the blessings of food in ways that feel liberated and delightful."—from the foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; Pap/Com edition (February 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590305310
• ISBN-13: 978-1590305317
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.6 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Eating Disorders
  • #9 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Addiction & Recovery > Drug Dependency
  • #10 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Customs & Traditions

More About the Author

Jan Chozen Bays, MD, is a Zen master in the White Plum lineage of the late master Taizan Maezumi Roshi. Along with her husband, Hogen Bays, she serves as a priest and teacher at the Jizo Mountain-Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, Oregon. She is also a pediatrician who specializes in the evaluation of children for abuse and neglect. She is a wife, mother and grandmother and loves to garden, play marimba and sculpt Jizo images.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 84 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing find February 15, 2009

By J. Lin

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I came upon this book accidentally in the new cook book section at the Carnegie library. I took a glance and the contents seemed interesting. So on my driving home, I listened to the guided mindfulness exercises CD that came with the book. This was not what I expected--my way home felt like a transformed journey to self discovery: the exercisers were simple, practical; the voice soothing; the effect, however, was profound. I was intrigued by how was it possible that our body would know the foods that we need at a particular point in time? I eagerly plunged into the book and read all about the seven kinds of hungers. I was very pleased for the insight I gained from the reading. This book inspires. The writing is lucid and thoughtful.

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Return To Sanity March 2, 2009

By Mitchell R. Alegre VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

As a consequence of the American search for the perfect healthy diet, we have developed a love-hate relationship with food. Confusion reigns about what foods we are to eat and which we are to avoid. Our reliance on scientific evidence has simply added to the confusion. We can't even agree if we are naturally carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore.

"Mindful Eating," written by physician and Zen teacher Jan Chozen Bays, provides a way back to sane eating. Bays does not prescribe what we are to eat but provides gentle guidance about how to eat. This book provides numerous exercises to help us be present to ourselves and our food.

Bays teaches us to become aware of our seven forms of hunger--eye, nose, mouth, stomach, cellular, mind, and heart hungers. Each hunger satisfies legitimate needs. Bays instructs us with understanding and humor on how to recognize and satisfy each hunger. Her approach is a return to an intimate and joyful relationship with food. Stop dieting. Read this book and discover how to physically, mentally, and spiritually relate with food and return to sane eating.

52 of 61 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Exposition of Mindfulness in Eating April 18, 2009

By Sheryl Canter

Format:Paperback

This book does an excellent job of exploring all aspects of mindfulness in eating. The book's weakness, and the reason I gave it four stars instead of five, is that mindfulness is not the whole answer to emotional or compulsive eating. It's necessary, but not sufficient. In the recovery method I teach, Normal Eating, mindfulness corresponds to Stage 2, "Reconnecting". But then there are two more stages after that. Dr. Bays even gives examples of people who continue to eat emotionally or compulsively despite awareness of the triggers. That's because awareness isn't enough - there's more work to be done.

I don't think Dr. Bays understands the addictive aspect of compulsive eating, as evidenced by the one wrong note the book struck on page 72 about "going unconscious". She says, "The point of mindful eating is not to forbid ourselves to ever use food in this way." I disagree. That's like saying the point of recovery from alcoholism isn't to forbid the alcoholic from ever taking another drink. Uh, actually, yes it is. Compulsive eaters can't eat addictively in moderation any more than alcoholics can drink in moderation.

"Going unconscious", as Dr. Bays calls it, is the essence of what it means to use food addictively, as she well knows because she discusses binge eating in this section. Not using food addictively has to be a "bottom line" if a compulsive eater is to recover - something you never do. I'm not saying people should never eat just for enjoyment. But eating for enjoyment is not the same as "going unconscious" or numbing out with food. I wrote about this at length in a recent newsletter, "Is Eating to Numb Out Ever Okay?":

[...]

Except for this one quibble, I liked "Mindful Eating" very much. Dr. Bays is a Zen teacher, but the book isn't weighed down with details of Buddhism. Her purpose is not to teach Buddhism, it's to teach mindful eating. And she does a superb job of it.

Most explanations of mindful eating encourage people to focus on the food's appearance, smell, and taste. Bays goes much further, encouraging mindfulness in all aspects of the eating experience, emotional and physical. She lists seven "hungers" - seven areas to survey in yourself as you are eating:

1. Eye (what the food looks like)
2. Nose (what it smells like)
3. Mouth (sensations in the mouth - feel, taste)
4. Stomach (sensations in the stomach - growling, fullness, emptiness)
5. Cellular (the body wisdom that gives you a yen for what you need nutritionally)
6. Mind (your thoughts on what you "should" be eating)
7. Heart (how soothing or comforting the food is to you)

This is an excellent summary of the experience of eating - clear, concise, and thorough. If you practice mindfulness in all these areas when you eat, you will fully reconnect with yourself, and this will put you on the path to recovery.

The author is a physician, so the book also is filled with interesting information about the experience of eating on a physiological level. These details don't come off as ponderous or dense because they're presented through interesting anecdotes from Dr. Bays' practice or personal experience.

"Mindful Eating" is readable, insightful, and full of interesting information. I highly recommend it, with the caveat that lack of mindfulness in eating is not the only reason for emotional or compulsive eating. To stop compulsive eating requires some further steps.

Sheryl Canter
Author of "Normal Eating for Normal Weight"