Savor Ever Bite: Mindful Ways to Eat, Love Your Body and Live with Joy by Lynn Rossy, PhD takes you by the hand and teaches you how to eat mindfully. More than that, it shows you how to be more mindful in all of life because you can’t simply choose one area to be mindful in and expect an improved relationship with food.

Regarding eating, Rossy lays out five steps for becoming more mindful:

Step 1: Slow down and explore your senses

Step 2: Soothe (instead of eat) your emotions

Step 3: Surrender limiting thoughts

Step 4: Smile and create your own happiness

Step 5: Savor every moment

Think about these steps and how much sense they make. I’ve never met anyone who overeats or eats mindlessly who doesn’t tell me that they eat too quickly and get so absorbed in doing so that the whole world drops away. Rossy tells us that we need to employ all our senses to have a richer, more “savorful” life. 

Another major problem for dysregulated eaters is eating due to stress or distress. Soothing emotions is exactly what is needed to avoid turning to food to manage the blues or the blahs. This book gives you strategies to self-soothe that are far more effective than food ever could be for this particular job.

Because what we believe generates our feelings and behaviors, Rossy zeros in on making sure that we have healthy, rational beliefs. Most dysregulated eaters have no idea how off base their thinking is and that changing behavior around food starts with thinking about it and their bodies more sensibly.

She lays out practices that bring joy and happiness, teaching you how gratitude, smiles, self-praise and even physical postures can all lighten your mood and make you feel more positive. She sets out what the true keys to happiness are. In Step 5, Learning to savor every moment, she helps readers connect to authentic desires and to savoring every aspect of living, so that eating becomes just one more delight.

If you follow her simple exercises and practice them consistently, I don’t know how you could not become more mindful. Doing them will lead you to a more effective and enjoyable way of being with yourself and in the world. It will transform your relationship with food and your body. Now, who wouldn’t want all that?

Best,

Karen