Even if you’re not overweight, your eating habits can affect you. In fact, we’re learning more and more about the effects of nutrition and microbes in the gut on physical and emotional well-being. Before you leave this post, I promise, this will not be a shaming lecture. Really. It won’t.
Most of us had to take a health class or two in school, and we can all draw the food pyramid (I still insist that chocolate cake follows the food pyramid if you add some zucchini!). Then there’s the myriad of fad diets to which we are exposed, all explaining their version of nutrition and healthy eating. It can be confusing, and very misleading.
If you chose to view the lecture series offered by the Culinary Institute of America that were discussed in previous posts, you now know how to cook and to choose healthier options. So, if we all know the core components of nutrition and healthy eating, and have numerous allegedly healthy and successful diet options available to us, why are the diabetes and obesity rates in the United States high and ever-increasing? Why do so many of us gravitate toward junk and fast food? Because it’s not about the nutrition. We eat for a variety of reasons- to be polite, to be social, out of boredom, to mask pain or otherwise avoid dealing with relevant issues… Unless we address these matters, we’re likely to struggle with our food choices and the effect they have on our well-being throughout our lives.
Taken directly from her own website, “Lynn Rossy, PhD, is a health psychologist, author, researcher, and Kripalu yoga teacher specializing in mindfulness-based interventions for eating, stress, and workplace wellness. She developed a mindful eating program called Eat for Life. She is the President of The Center for Mindful Eating and Executive Director of Tasting Mindfulness.”
Dr. Rossy wrote a book entitled, The Mindfulness-Based Eating Solution: Proven Strategies to End Overeating, Satisfy Your Hunger, and Savor Your Life. I like this book because, unlike other mindfulness-based books addressing eating habits, readers do not complain that the book seems to be written by a nutritionist, with a smattering of mindfulness techniques interspersed. Instead, it focuses upon the mind-body connection and addresses the various contributing factors to poor eating habits. In fact, the book was listed as one of the Top 10 Mindful Books in 2016 by Mindful.org. Give it a glance or two. It may be the only “diet” book on your shelf that you actually find useful!