Here are 100 books that Mindful Eating fans have personally recommended if you like
Mindful Eating.
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I’m obsessed with the connections between Buddhist philosophy, meditation, Intuitive Eating, eating disorder and addiction recovery, body liberation, and intersectional social justice work. These connections are everywhere! It may not seem like it, but how we relate to food and our bodies reflects how we feel about all bodies. How we speak to ourselves reflects how we feel about difference, difficulty, and interdependence. Challenging our entrenched beliefs about health, eating, food, and body helps us to ultimately recognize the inherent worthiness of all bodies. This is how we both come to know ourselves authentically and how we change the world for the better.
Few people – perhaps even those of us in the eating disorders field – really appreciate just how common eating disorders and disordered eating are.
In this book, an eating disorder physician calls into question the cognitive distortion that someone isn’t “sick enough” to warrant intervention and eating disorder recovery.
I love how Dr. Gaudiani not only covers the reddest flags of eating disorders, but acknowledges what many of us have come to regard as “normal” but in reality is disordered, dangerous, and harmful.
Patients with eating disorders frequently feel that they aren't "sick enough" to merit treatment, despite medical problems that are both measurable and unmeasurable. They may struggle to accept rest, nutrition, and a team to help them move towards recovery. Sick Enough offers patients, their families, and clinicians a comprehensive, accessible review of the medical issues that arise from eating disorders by bringing relatable case presentations and a scientifically sound, engaging style to the topic. Using metaphor and patient-centered language, Dr. Gaudiani aims to improve medical diagnosis and treatment, motivate recovery, and validate the lived experiences of individuals of all body…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’ve been interested in psychological health since I was in high school and continue to search for interventions and preventions to alleviate mental illness and build mental health. I’m a licensed psychologist and coach focusing on evidenced based treatments, with a special interest in how people connect and the impact of loneliness. Despite a growing population, more people are feeling lonely, including adolescents, and loneliness can often be a root cause of mental suffering. Loneliness is common among individuals with anorexia and other eating disorders as well as chronic depression. Addressing how to connect and how they may be blocking connections can be a complicated but needed process. My work is focused in this area.
This book gives the perspective of a therapist and a former client who is now a therapist herself.
This book can create realistic hope and includes self-disclosures of the author’s own experiences. The authors recognize that eating disorders serve a purpose and it’s not about food. They also emphasize the importance of reaching out to people which is a key factor for recovery.
This is no ordinary book on how to overcome an eating disorder. The authors bravely share their unique stories of suffering from and eventually overcoming their own severe eating disorders. Interweaving personal narrative with the perspective of their own therapist-client relationship, their insights bring an unparalleled depth of awareness into just what it takes to successfully beat this challenging and seemingly intractable clinical issue.
For anyone who has suffered, their family and friends, and other helping professionals, this book should be by your side. With great compassion and clinical expertise, Costin and Grabb walk readers through the ins and outs…
I’ve been interested in psychological health since I was in high school and continue to search for interventions and preventions to alleviate mental illness and build mental health. I’m a licensed psychologist and coach focusing on evidenced based treatments, with a special interest in how people connect and the impact of loneliness. Despite a growing population, more people are feeling lonely, including adolescents, and loneliness can often be a root cause of mental suffering. Loneliness is common among individuals with anorexia and other eating disorders as well as chronic depression. Addressing how to connect and how they may be blocking connections can be a complicated but needed process. My work is focused in this area.
Eating disorder behaviors often reflect a coping skills deficit and this workbook focuses on skills to manage emotions and address the issue of a need to be in control. This workbook offers new ways to overcome distress and negative body image beliefs that keep you stuck in a destructive cycle. This workbook uses multiple exercises to help you learn and practice skills rather than just understanding skills, which makes a difference.
At the root of bulimia is a need to feel in control. While purging is a strategy for controlling weight, bingeing is an attempt to calm depression, stress, shame, and even boredom. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia offers new and healthy ways to overcome the distressing feelings and negative body-image beliefs that keep you trapped in this cycle.
In this powerful program used by therapists, you'll learn four key skill sets-mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness-and begin using them right away to manage bulimic urges. The book includes worksheets and exercises designed to help you…
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
I’ve been interested in psychological health since I was in high school and continue to search for interventions and preventions to alleviate mental illness and build mental health. I’m a licensed psychologist and coach focusing on evidenced based treatments, with a special interest in how people connect and the impact of loneliness. Despite a growing population, more people are feeling lonely, including adolescents, and loneliness can often be a root cause of mental suffering. Loneliness is common among individuals with anorexia and other eating disorders as well as chronic depression. Addressing how to connect and how they may be blocking connections can be a complicated but needed process. My work is focused in this area.
In Decoding Anorexia, a past sufferer of anorexia and a scientist, discusses the neuroscience and biology that underlies the disorder. She notes the reasons for the call to starvation and the characteristics of the people who are at risk for this disorder. She demystifies the disorder by offering a clear science-based explanation that includes the biological and environmental factors that can lead to the disorder. Understanding biology can be helpful in understanding the ups and downs of recovery and why it’s a difficult journey.
Decoding Anorexia is the first and only book to explain anorexia nervosa from a biological point of view. Its clear, user-friendly descriptions of the genetics and neuroscience behind the disorder is paired with first person descriptions and personal narratives of what biological differences mean to sufferers. Author Carrie Arnold, a trained scientist, science writer, and past sufferer of anorexia, speaks with clinicians, researchers, parents, other family members, and sufferers about the factors that make one vulnerable to anorexia, the neurochemistry behind the call of starvation, and why it's so hard to leave anorexia behind. She also addresses: * How environment…
I’ve spent my professional life as a psychologist delving into the inner workings of the “self.” After working with thousands of clients over the past twenty-five years, I’ve come to understand the liabilities and limitations of the mind’s constructed sense of personhood. These books, including the one I wrote, attempt to address the ages-old question of “who am I?” from a different perspective than that of conventional conceptual identity. They transmit something to us about the core consciousness of our make-up that we may know intuitively but do not encounter often in western discourse. If you’re a truth seeker, curious about your essential nature, then I’m sure you’ll find them compelling.
When I crave a razor-sharp account of my “self” as an emanation of living consciousness, I go to Rupert Spira. This tiny book is deceptive in that it contains vast universal truths condensed into short, meditation-like chapters. The writer in me loves how each word is absolutely precise. I’m impressed with Spira’s impeccable languaging of something as elusive and unfathomable as primordial awareness. My mind gets a good workout from this book, while it simultaneously relaxes into its teachings.
Everybody is aware, all seven billion of us. We are aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. All people share the experience of being aware, but relatively few people are aware that they are aware. Most people's lives consist of a flow of thoughts, images, ideas, feelings, sensations, sights, sounds, and so on. Very few people ask, "What is it that knows this flow of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions? With what am I aware of my experience?"
The knowing of our being-or rather, awareness's knowing of its own being in us-is our primary experience, our most fundamental and intimate experience.…
I’m a world historian with a special interest in religion. In particular, I’m excited by the possibility that traditional religious ideas and practices can be useful in our modern, often secular, society and in our individual lives. So often, I read books about religion that make their subject accessible to readers today, but at the cost of turning religion into a modern thing and removing its transformative potential as an alternative way to think about life. I keep these five books close by on my shelves because their creators use sympathy, grace, and sharp analysis to make religion accessible even while also keeping it true to itself.
Did you know that today’s “mindfulness” movement—which promises everything from greater corporate productivity to more passion in the bedroom—originated in nineteenth-century resistance to the British Empire?
After the conquest of Burma, meditation—previously something mostly the domain of wilderness hermits—became a technique everyone could use to strengthen Buddhist Burmese society against cultural imperialism. Burmese teachers brought this practice to America, and Americans came to Burma to learn it directly.
It was fascinating to follow meditation’s journey in these pages from a tool of resistance against globalization to a technique brought around the world by globalization today. This book helped me appreciate the strange history of mindfulness meditation.
Insight meditation, which claims to offer practitioners a chance to escape all suffering by perceiving the true nature of reality, is one of the most popular forms of meditation today. The Theravada Buddhist cultures of South and Southeast Asia often see it as the Buddha's most important gift to humanity. In the first book to examine how this practice came to play such a dominant and relatively recent role in Buddhism, Erik Braun takes readers to Burma, revealing that Burmese Buddhists in the colonial period were pioneers in making insight meditation indispensable to modern Buddhism. Braun focuses on the Burmese…
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
I remember experiencing a true nervous breakdown once in high school. I had to leave campus in tears, filled with familiar sorrows and emotions I didn’t recognize as my own. Something was happening and I couldn’t put my finger on it, and it was utterly disorienting. Luckily, a spiritual mentor lived right down the street. She was quickly able to diagnose my experience. “You’re a very strong empath,” she said. I had to learn what that meant, so I devoted many years to learning as much as I could about the empathic experience from psychological, physiological, anthropological, and metaphysical lenses alike.
There is nothing about this masterful book I don’t absolutely adore. This title, as well as her husband Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, are rooted in Buddhist psychology. However, one needn’t be a Buddhist to approach their works—I mean, I’m a Pagan Witch and American Hindu, for goodness’ sake!
We all have something to learn from this book. This book gets to the heart of the human emotional experience. I found that it presents “shadow work” in a manner that’s encouraging, not frightening, and teaches emotionally sensitive souls—whether or not they identify as empaths—how to successfully manage emotions, confront traumas, and put an end to negative behavioral cycles with kindness and wisdom prevail. This is one of the rare books I will regularly return to and forever treasure.
“May this very important and enticing book find its way into the hearts of readers near and far so that it can perform its mysterious and healing alchemy for the benefit of all.” —John Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are and Professor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School
The Transformative Power of Mindfulness
Alchemists sought to transform lead into gold. In the same way, says Tara Bennett-Goleman, we all have the natural ability to turn our moments of confusion or emotional pain into insightful clarity.
Emotional Alchemy maps the mind and shows how, according to recent…
As a thirty-year meditator, certified meditation leader, and award-winning author, it’s my job to keep up on the latest books about mindfulness and Zen practice. Despite seeing new volumes being published regularly, I return to these books as great sources of solid practice information. Each of these authors explains meditation in accessible terms, easy for readers to follow and understand. I can’t remember who said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, but they are right. The books I’ve suggested offer clarity. They help readers begin or continue their practice and understand how and why meditation is worth their time.
I recommend this book not because the author runs, as do I, but because she connects the physical body with freedom and insight. She has felt the stillness during movement. You are fully in the moment and everything is one. I met Vanessa Zeuisei Goddard, by chance when my husband and I visited Zen Mountain Monastery where she was practicing and where Ed had practiced years before. The retreats were between sessions, on a break from silence, so she and I were able to talk. To speak with someone who is both on the meditative path and who meditates while she moves gave me the courage to move forward with my work on my own movement meditation book. I step into the lineage, a tradition her lovely volume follows.
Learn how to bring the power of stillness into your running practice with meditations, guidance, and inspiration from a long-time runner and Zen practitioner.
Running is more than just exercise. Running is a practice, a moving meditation, that brings the power of stillness to all the activities in our lives. Vanessa Zuisei Goddard combines her experience leading running retreats with her two-decade practice of Zen to offer insight, humor, and practical guidance for grounding our running, or any physical practice, in meditation.
When we see running solely as exercise and focus on improving our times, covering a certain number of…
I believe that creativity and mindfulness are critical qualities for a well-lived life. This is something I learned through personal experience as a former lawyer who returned to my childhood dream of creating art and stories. Mindfulness—a kind, nonjudgmental awareness of what is happening in the present moment in and around you—helps people of all ages practice self-compassion, appreciate the world and others, and see life as an adventure. I write and illustrate picture books to share these concepts through storytelling, teach mindful creative classes, and am a certified meditation teacher through The Awareness Training Institute and the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
I love the simple and approachable pebble meditation practice shared in this kid-friendly mindfulness guide, which emphasizes our interconnectedness with nature.
I truly believe that mindful skills like self-awareness and emotional regulation are critical to living a happy, meaningful, and compassionate life, and the sooner children can begin practicing them, the better.
This book offers a fun, easy, and beautiful meditation practice for all ages.
A playful, illustrated guide to one of the best known and most innovative meditation practices for young children experiencing stress, difficulty focusing, and difficult emotions
Developed by Thich Nhat Hanh as part of the Plum Village community’s practice with children, pebble meditation is a playful and fun activity that parents and educators can do with their children to introduce them to meditation. It is designed to involve children in a hands-on and creative way that touches on their interconnection with nature. Practicing pebble meditation can help relieve stress, increase concentration, nourish gratitude, and can help children deal with difficult emotions.…
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
As a thirty-year meditator, certified meditation leader, and award-winning author, it’s my job to keep up on the latest books about mindfulness and Zen practice. Despite seeing new volumes being published regularly, I return to these books as great sources of solid practice information. Each of these authors explains meditation in accessible terms, easy for readers to follow and understand. I can’t remember who said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, but they are right. The books I’ve suggested offer clarity. They help readers begin or continue their practice and understand how and why meditation is worth their time.
In this straightforward meditation manual, Bhante G. (as he is affectionately called) sets forth the hows and whys of mindfulness meditation. When I first learned to meditate, I found this simple but profound book the most accessible of the many books available. My husband and I were so impressed with Bhante’s wisdom that we brought him to Columbus, Ohio to teach a weekend retreat for our local mindfulness group. He was warm, caring, and funny. His personality comes across in this small, but mighty book.
Mindfulness in Plain English was first published in 1994, is one of the bestselling — and most influential — books in the field of mindfulness. It’s easy to see why.
Author Bhante Gunaratana, a renowned meditation master, takes us step by step through the myths, realities, and benefits of meditation and the practice of mindfulness. The book showcases Bhante’s trademark clarity and wit as he explores the tool of meditation, what it does, and how to make it work.
This book is:
A best-selling introduction to mindfulness
Full of practical advice on developing a meditation practice…
