annieb123's Review of Mastering Mindful Eating

by Michelle Babb

Transform your relationship with food and develop healthy eating habits with practical advice and 30 nutritious recipes from a registered dietitian.

Discover the art and science of mindful eating!

Eating a sandwich while running from a bear isn’t good for digestion or nutrition. That’s exactly what we’re doing when eating a meal on the run or being distracted by computers, TVs, and our phones. Rather than nourishing our bodies, we are feeding anxiety and poor habits that prevent our systems from functioning well.

Author and registered dietitian Michelle Babb shows you how to practice mindful eating that lets your body access the nutrients from food and turn on its self-regulating system. When you build a positive relationship with food, you reduce binge and emotional eating—and can shed pounds, maintain your healthiest weight, and ensure optimal digestion. Here, you’ll learn how to:

• Bring your attention to eating
• Engage the senses (tune into smell, taste, texture, thoughts) while eating
• Identify your habits and patterns around food
• Eat when you're hungry (and know when you're full)
• Discover foods that taste good (and make you feel good)
• Whip 30 vegetarian recipes designed to engage all your senses

Whether you are trying to lose weight, recover from an eating disorder, or improve your overall state of calm and wellness, this book helps you change your relationship with food and cultivate a positive eating mindset.

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Mastering Mindful Eating is an objective and information dense look at our emotional and physiological relationships with food and eating and how they relate to one another. Released 1st Dec 2020 by Sasquatch Books, it's 208 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats.

Reading the introduction, I found myself nodding along at several points thinking "Wow, I do that all the time". I know that I have had a troublesome (and emotionally loaded) relationship to food and eating which has spanned a large portion of my life. The author makes a lot of valid and sensible (and compassionate) observations about the unhealthy and stressful stigmas associated with obesity and how to begin to disentangle emotions from our eating and develop kind and compassionate habits to help ourselves.

This was an emotionally loaded book for me personally. I found myself touched (and/or teary-eyed) at several points, especially in the first section. Most of the studies referenced and the general discussions are slanted toward the population of the USA, but there are good takeaways for readers living outside the US.

The second section of the book contains a number of recipes to engage the senses. There are recipes to appeal to sight, smell, taste, hearing, and feel. The ingredients are listed in a bullet style format with American standard measurements (no metric equivalents). Step by step preparation instructions follow and are clear and easy to follow. The dishes are well photographed and serving suggestions are attractive and appropriate.

The book does include a resource list, solid bibliography for further reading, and cross referenced index as well as a short author bibliography.

This is a holistic book with fairly broad scope. It's not a complete treatise on either mindfulness/eating or cooking, but does both of them well enough. Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Mastering Mindful Eating

by Michelle Babb

Reviewed by annieb123 on Dec 11, 2020

Reading updates