Eating mindfully - Dr Susan Albers

This breakthrough book introduces acceptance and awareness of one's eating behaviours, new exercises steeped in Buddhist practices for healing unhealthy eating patterns, and a means for restoring tranquillity to meals. The author presents readers with the four foundations of mindful eating - mindfulness of the mind, the body, the feelings, and the thoughts. She does not encourage a diet of deprivation, but instead provides a checklist for the wide variety of mindless eating approaches, which include fasting, dieting, and restricting certain foods, rapid eating, eating when not hungry or when tired, and food rituals. Straightforward exercises grounded in cognitive behavioural research teach readers to accept and be aware of the pain, anxiety, fear, depression, and stress that often leads to unconscious eating. These step-by step instructions and meditation exercises help cut through the mind's chatter, letting the reader become aware of their own harmful and destructive eating behaviours. In "Identifying Hunger," one waits ten minutes after asking the question, "Am I Hungry?" all the while noting sensations and attractions, such as taste or feeling, versus stomach growling. By practicing these kind of brief exercises, readers learn to become fully aware and nonjudgmental of their relationship to food, weight, and health.