Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time

Pavel G Somov

Nov 2008 · New Harbinger Publications

About this ebook

Do you use food to comfort yourself when you're feeling depressed or stressed? Do you sometimes eat simply because you're bored? There are so many opportunities to snack and overeat mindlessly, it's no wonder that most diets fail. But mindless eating can lead to health problems, obesity, and a feeling that you've lost control.

Eating the Moment offers 141 mindfulness activities to help you listen to your body, understand why you're eating, and control your cravings if you're eating out of habit or because of your emotions. You won't find any start dates, dieting tips, or meal plans in this book, just practical and meaningful exercises to help you end mindless eating and begin nourishing yourself in healthy and fulfilling ways.

Visit the author's blog at: http://www.eatingthemoment.com/mindstream/ or keep a food journal with the mindful eating tracker: http://www.eatingthemoment.com/mindfulness-tracker/

Ratings and reviews

To benefit, you must do the exercises, not just read them. Somov's book is different from other books I've read on either diet or Buddhism in that his focus seems to be on specific experiments that readers will do on themselves, not on advice or meditation, though both of those appear here, too. ---------- Activities leading to discoveries: I like this better than other books on related topics because it's not just "talk" that will raise our awareness. Somov suggests activities that will show us the root causes of our own particular idiosyncrasies. -For example, he asks that we study a menu's photos and words and to take notes on what stirs us (he offers helpful how-to details). -Another example: He asks that we under-eat one day and indulge another day, with note-taking, then compare and contrast physical sensations. ---------- Needs a companion journal: I wish he had created a slim journal to go with this book, something with the exercises alone, with columns and prompts already written in, with space for our own note-taking, so we could just pick that up and start using it ASAP. ---------- Good example of companion journal: Since I didn't find such a journal (I looked online), I will have to sit down to re-read certain passages, with some clean pieces of paper in hand, to create my own notebook, concentrating without distraction to get the instructions down before I can begin. Not that this will be hard. It's just that I would have purchased a companion journal had there been one. A good example is "The Mayo Clinic Diet Journal," which I have used with success. ---------- Experiential learning is most effective: In my work life, I give workshops and train professionals to do their jobs differently. I recognize in Somov's book some of the success factors of my workshops. He emphasizes experiential learning over knowledge acquisition.

About the author

Pavel G. Somov. Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Pittsburgh, PA. The mindful-eating program presented in this book uses techniques and tools he developed for his clients. He has successfully used similar mindfulness-based interventions with substance abusers in recovery. Somov emigrated from Russia at the age of twenty-one and became a US citizen in 1996. He received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2000