The Joy of Half a Cookie

ldquo;If you take it to heart, which means if you incorporate its various practices into your daily life, you will find that this book is an ever-giving gold mine. As its valuable and freeing recommendations are internalized, eating in a happy and healthy way for you and mindfulness will become synonymous. This approach can transform your relationship to food, to your body, to your mind, and to life.”
--Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction), and author of Full Catastrophe Living and Mindfulness for Beginners

“If you have suffered from food addiction, please give yourself the gift of reading this book. In her pioneering work, Dr. Jean Kristeller offers a pathway to healing that is based on a contemporary understanding of self-regulation and powerful mindfulness-based strategies that will change your relationship with eating, and more. These clear, accessible teachings and practices turn struggle on its head, call forth our deepest wisdom, and reveal the possibility for finding great joy in living.”
--Tara Brach, Ph.D., author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge 

“The Joy of Half a Cookie is really about reclaiming the joy of life. With a lifetime of successful counseling and research experience, Kristeller provides the tools that people can use to move their focus to living instead of obsessing about food. This program’s flexible, specific, and novel tools help lose weight in a painless way.”
--Brian Wansink, Ph.D., New York Times-bestselling author of Mindless Eating  
 

From the Hardcover edition.

Échantillon de lecture

PART ONE

The Science of Mindful Eating

CHAPTER ONE

An Introduction to Mindful Eating

Imagine what it would be like to lose weight without the struggle and without giving up your favorite foods, to be able to enjoy a glass of wine, a warm dinner roll, a slice of pizza, or a piece of chocolate without experiencing that familiar tug-of-war between your desire and your willpower. Think of how freeing it would be if you could truly savor a delicious treat without guilt and without worrying that, once you start, you won’t be able to stop.

Is this possible? Could this become your reality? Yes, it can. Mindful eating will show you the way.

Before coming to my mindful eating workshops, the majority of women and men had lost anywhere from a few pounds to 50 pounds or more multiple times, depending on their body size and the type of diet they’d chosen. Depending on the plan, they had counted calories or points, feeling virtuous when they met their calorie goal—often 1,200 calories and sometimes as little as 500—and feeling awful when they missed, whether by only a little or by hundreds or even thousands of calories (though, by that time, they’d stopped counting). Some tolerated this good food–bad food approach for only a few days. But for others, it had worked well, at least for a while.

But then, inevitably, there came a point when they just couldn’t stand to live like that anymore. Their old eating habits returned gradually, and so the pounds on the scale. Many couldn’t even count the number of times this had happened to them. Often, they’d tell me that they just needed a little more self-control or willpower. One participant stands out clearly. On the first day, she told me, “I’m really good at ‘no.’ I say ‘no’ to so many things that, every once in a while, I want to consume all of it and never stop. And so that’s what I do. Instead, I want to be good at ‘yes.’ I want to make friends with food.”

She eventually learned to do just that, and now, in the pages of The Joy of Half a Cookie, it’s my intention to show you how to do the same.

Say “Yes!” to Joy

Do you believe that forbidden foods—especially desserts, fried foods, snack chips, and cookies—contain an addictive combination of sweetness, fattiness, and/or saltiness, making them impossible to consume in small amounts? Assuming you’re not too hungry, could you savor only half a cookie, a handful of corn chips, or a few spoonfuls of ice cream and put away the rest for another time? Could you put half a chocolate bar in your desk drawer—and then ignore it? Or would you be continually tempted to have just a little more?

As you read these words, you might be telling yourself, “That’s impossible. No one can stop at just a few chips or a few bites of dessert.” By the end of this book, after you’ve spent some time with the practices described in the second part of The Joy of Half a Cookie, it’s my experience that you’ll know it’s possible because you’ll have experienced this kind of freedom for yourself.

It doesn’t matter how much out of control you might feel around certain foods at the moment. You can gain freedom. You really can.

That’s because this is not like any other plan you’ve ever tried. In fact, when you embark on this plan, you are not going on a diet. Rather you are creating—and staying with—a new way of relating to food, to eating, to yourself, and to your body.

Based on the successful Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT) program I developed with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and have adapted into shorter workshops that I teach around the world, The Joy of Half a Cookie is about using mindfulness practice to give yourself permission to enjoy the foods you love, to choose the foods you enjoy, and to leave food on your plate if you don’t want it or no longer feel like eating.1 It’s about self-care, self-nourishment, self-acceptance, kindness, exploration, and curiosity. It’s about cultivating your inner gourmet rather than martialing your inner police force.

It has grown out of more than 30 years of experience and research in trying to help people learn to come into balance with their eating by linking their awareness with their desires. The underpinnings of this approach began decades ago with the understanding of how we can link our minds and bodies together, despite external pressures to do otherwise. It also draws on many years of research done both by myself and by a number of remarkable mentors and colleagues who’ve shared their wisdom and whose contributions I’ve attempted to honor in this book. Meditation practice, when made available to everyone, really can help us connect with the inner wisdom that leads us to handle complex choices, rather than trying to make them too simple, as many diets do.

Mindful eating is therefore about an entirely different way of looking at our relationship to our eating and food, one that pulls together a wide range of science-based perspectives on how our bodies and minds regulate themselves. It isn’t about willpower or rigid self-control. Instead it’s about creating balance through self-care and self-regulation. What’s the difference? With willpower or self-control, you still want to keep on eating, but you force yourself to stop. With self-regulation, you check in mindfully, realize you’re not hungry any more or aren’t enjoying the food so much, so you simply decide to let it go. There’s no struggle. You can always have more later, and you’ll actually enjoy it more.

The core building blocks for the foundation of MB-EAT came together over a number of years, during my graduate studies and continuing beyond. The program now includes four core elements:

   • Meditation and mindfulness
   • The power of tuning in to your body and mind
   • Embracing, rather tha…