The Mindful Diet: How to Transform Your Relationship with Food for Lasting Weight Loss and Vibrant Health

From the renowned Duke Integrative Medicine center, The Mindful Diet is the first book to combine health psychology with cutting-edge nutrition research to deliver an up-to-the-minute method for eating mindfully and breaking the yo-yo diet cycle.

It’s easy on occasion to eat too much, eat too quickly, eat for comfort, or choose junk food. But for increasing numbers of people, this behavior is the norm, not the exception. Every year millions of Americans vow to lose weight and get healthy but aren’t able to overcome the largest roadblock to these changes—ingrained eating habits. Most diets don’t address the roots of unhealthy behavior, and they also can damage self-worth as those trying to lose weight repeatedly cycle through success and relapse. Now, for the first time, two leading experts from Duke Integrative Medicine offer a new paradigm for eating and health—a step-by-step program that dismantles old patterns, provides new tools for making healthy choices, and fosters deep, internal motivation.

Grounded in scientific research, The Mindful Diet examines how what we choose to eat and drink affects our body on a biochemical level, and how we can become aware of our own internal signals through the practice of mindfulness. Instead of an all-or-nothing approach to eating, in which dieting becomes an exertion of willpower, The Mindful Diet focuses on the many variables that drive our habits—including stress, unhappiness, and even unconscious beliefs—and provides a roadmap for sustainable change. Loaded with concrete meditation exercises, behavioral techniques, nutrition advice, and meal-planning charts, this book provides the tools to avoid cravings, stop emotional overeating, and figure out when you are full. Lasting weight loss and healthy living begin in the mind: now you can learn how to re-program your body, make healthy choices, lose weight, and keep it off for life.

Ruth Wolever, PhD, is a clinical health psychologist, the Director of Research at Duke Integrative Medicine, an advisor to the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the Duke School of Medicine.

Beth Reardon, MS, RD, LDN, previously the Director of Integrative and Functional Nutrition at Duke Integrative Medicine and Senior Nutrition Advisor for Caring.com, currently has a private practice in the Boston area.