The Joy of Half a Cookie: Using Mindfulness to Lose Weight and End the Struggle with Food

Dear friends, good evening! I am Tom Niklas, a seasoned writer and book reviewer. 😁 Welcome everyone to the ReadVault club, join us in reading 52 books a year together!

Today I am going to introduce a bestselling book called “The joy of half a cookie: using mindfulness to lose weight and end the struggle with food”, written by mindfulness expert Dr. Kristeller. Dr. Kristeller herself had suffered from eating disorders like anorexia and binge eating in the past. Later, through learning mindfulness meditation, she developed a mindfulness eating method that helped herself and many others regain a healthy diet.

The book begins with Dr. Kristeller’s own story. During her college years, Dr. Kristeller was under tremendous stress and would often binge late at night on a whole box of cookies or an entire cake. During the day, she would force herself to diet, creating a vicious cycle.

She then went to Asia to learn meditation and started realizing the inherent connection with food was important. To experiment with this idea, she decided to indulge in her favorite foods for a week, only to find her appetite did not actually spiral out of control. On the contrary, she felt that through meditation, she could naturally sense when to stop eating.

This was an epiphany for Dr. Kristeller. She began guiding her clients in treatment to pay more attention to physical hunger cues, eat at a slower pace, and choose foods they truly enjoyed instead of forcing themselves to eat.

She discovered these mindfulness eating techniques to be highly effective in helping people break free from the painful cycles of dieting and bingeing. After years of research and validation, Dr. Kristeller gradually perfected the mindfulness eating curriculum, benefiting countless individuals in restoring a harmonious relationship with food and their bodies.

In the preface, the author sincerely states her hope that every reader can rediscover a love for delicious foods and the joy of dining through the practices in this book. That they can be free from unnecessary anxiety and distress, and live a vibrant, colorful life. She firmly believes mindfulness meditation can help each person find their own unique path to healthy eating.

Why do we say modern people have lost the art of eating?

Firstly, our taste buds are not fully opened as we eat mindlessly. Many just pick up their chopsticks or cutlery and numbly put food in their mouths without truly tasting each bite. One reader wrote to Dr. Kristeller saying she often ate large mouthfuls while watching TV, with no awareness of what she was eating. She could even finish a whole plate of food with no memory of it. Dr. Kristeller suggests turning off electronics during meals and bringing full attention to the food - savoring its flavors, textures, and temperatures to truly experience every bite.