Jan Chozen Bays provides a solid primer for mindful eating. The seven types of hunger she outlines are a new way (or I guess forgotten way, she would argue) to approach eating, but for the most part not too radical. We're all familiar with the concepts of comfort food and emotional eating, and sayings like, "your eyes are bigger than your stomach." So while she reframed these different relationships to food, nothing (except maybe cellular hunger) seemed too far out there. I also appreciated the conditional behaviors she outlines and the various inner voices - critic, perfectionist, pusher - many deal with.

That said, as many have pointed out, she makes some sweeping generalizations and doesn't include enough scientific data to win over my inner skeptic. Considering she's a physician, I would have expected more medical evidence and less "Would ya believe it?" style anecdotes. But, the book is written in a self-help style, so I suppose that's not warranted. And I'm also already totally on board with mindfulness and mindful eating so I was hoping for something more...technical, I guess.

My other issue is this: In the introduction she talks about binge eating, bulimia, and anorexia as destructive food relationships. What follows, however, largely leaves anorexia out of the discussion or treats it only as an after thought. Even the section on fasting, which is perhaps the best time to enter into that discussion, doesn't get into it. Instead, she focuses heavily on over eating and the need to curb those habits. While many of the methods and exercises she provides seem like they would help, since her focus is so lopsided it makes me wonder whether, in her eyes, over eating is somehow more of a disorder than under eating.

It's a shame for several reasons, not least of which is that I think mindfulness really could help those with anorexia as well. But the exercises she offers don't seem to deal with the particular anxieties and emotional distress specific to that disease.

We ordered this book as part of our growing collection of stress/anxiety/mental health resources that we have available to students in the library. I'll still recommend students give this a try, but it's disappointing knowing that many of them won't find what the book promises. It's impossible to know what a person is struggling with just by looking at them and they're unlikely to come right out and say, "yeah I personally need something that focuses on bulimia/BED/anorexia/etc." At the very least, however, it offers a starting point and some solid basic mindfulness methods.

‘Preparing the Guide to Mindful Eating with Recipes, our aim was to create a set of easy to use and useful transformation tools that will help the reader examine the eating habits and patterns within every day’s life. Mindful Eating Exercises will help with over-eating, eating too often, eating too little, eating junk food, food allergies, etc. The Guide to Mindful Eating is designed to raise awareness around food. The food quality can replaces the quantity, and the awareness can become our guide and protector. With the awareness the self-respect will follow.’ Said Nuit

A Guide to Mindful Eating Vegetarian Chef was Mirjana Musulin.

Mirjana got her inspiration to help others understand their nutritional needs from her-own bad experience. A few years back, due to an accumulated stress caused by moving her house, changing her job, and the broken heart experience, she simply stopped eating.

‘I didn’t take care of myself, I didn’t cook for myself but was indulging in fast unhealthy food, having trouble eating or even swallowing it. As a result of this lack of proper nutrition, I was feeling lousy, I didn’t sleep well, I was nervous, exhausted at work, and without any energy whatsoever. After half a year of this unhealthy regime I was completely depleted of energy.’

After finding no help with various doctors, Mirjana has decided to take her nutrition seriously and the results were miraculous.

Nuit and Mirjana joined forces and are now sharing their experiences with us within this eBook: Guide to Mindful Eating with Veggie Recipes that is available through the Artof4elements website.

Let me start by saying that I'm a big fan of Jane Goodall. I like what I know of her scientific work, I am in line with her advocacy, and she seems like a pretty cool person overall. And of course, if you liked that disclaimer, you're probably not going to like the rest of this review. Because I was quite disappointed in this book.

It's pure advocacy, of course, which isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for me (though it is an obstacle). But it's not a very robust work, at all. My major complaint, and I can't believe I'm about to say this, is her truly shoddy use of science. Again and again, she makes sweeping claims that lean very heavily on scant evidence. Besides which, that evidence is either poorly laid out or obviously faulty. She cites certain claims that I know to be problematic, and she isn't just citing them in passing, or as part of an otherwise well-supported claim. There are other citations that I'm not as familiar with, but in this context, I find it difficult to put any confidence in them. So in the end, though I agree almost entirely with her conclusions, I didn't draw much insight or inspiration from this book. She's preaching, not just to the choir, but to only its most enthusiastic, least skeptical members. If you are one, you should love this. If you're not, I'd advise you to skip it.

Also, the subtitle is thoroughly misleading. This book is much more about consumption (of food, granted) than about eating. Yet another disappointment, though a much smaller one.