Lynn Rossy - Savor Every Bite: Mindful Ways to Eat, Love Your Body, and Live with Joy

When we bring a mindful attention to what we truly hunger for, we enter a path of authentic healing. Savor Every Bite is an outstanding guide to transforming our relationship with food and learning to nourish our spirit.

Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance and Radical Compassion

A beautiful and poetic guide to awakening our senses, inhabiting our bodies, and opening our hearts to the richness of life. I highly recommend!

Shauna Shapiro, PhD, author of Good Morning, I Love You

Savor Every Bite hits all the right notes. Its goal is to teach readers not only how to recover from dysregulated eating but how to enjoy life more. Rossy does this by laying out a path to whole-body engagement using thoughts, feelings, and senses. Guiding the reader through a five-step process and simple, targeted practice exercises, this empowering book makes change seem less frightening and more doable.

Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, MEd, award-winning international author of eight books on eating, weight, and body image (https://www.karenrkoenig.com)

This book takes a compassionate look at our lifetime relationship to food and eating. We find ways to identify the authentic need behind our cravings. Rossy gives us doable practices to bring a mindful pause to our food choices and a mindful attentiveness to our bodies, too. I was also impressed by how we can find the Dharma on a table or in a mirror.

David Richo, PhD, author of Triggers: How We Can Stop Reacting and Start Healing

I love these bite-sized chapters and embodied practices. You can read all you like about mindfulness, but it wont take root until you feel it in your body. Lynn Rossys Savor Every Bite helps you do just that with compassion, the benefits of her personal experience, and the backing of scientific data!

Jenna Hollenstein, MS, RDN, nutrition therapist, meditation teacher, and author of Eat to Love

Savor Every Bite is a handbook to life that is taught one bite at a time. Its five-step approach to mindful eating is an essential guide to discover the present moment. The book provides a life-affirming, health-supporting approach to stop worrying about food and start enjoying eating. This much-needed Health at Every Size (HAES) mindful eating book is filled with delicious bites of insight, compassion, and wisdom that you will savor reading.

Megrette Fletcher, MEd, RD, CDCES, mindful eating pioneer, diabetes care and education specialist, author, and cofounder of The Center for Mindful Eating

Savor Every Bite is an engaging, well-written, and easy-to-digest guide filled with thoughtful practices that will not only help you change your relationship with food, but your life overall. Rossy is a well-recognized expert in the field of mindful eating, and she doesnt hold back in sharing her wisdom with her readers.

Alexis Conason, PsyD, CEDS-S, founder of The Anti-Diet Plan and author of The Diet Free Revolution

Anyone who has ever fought, planned, gobbled, tried to control, or in any way felt at the mercy of food will appreciate the kindness and sanity with which Lynn Rossy approaches this topic. Leaving the dictates of diet and helplessness behind, Rossy gives the reader permission to listen to their own body and engage in a vital and intimate relationship with the food they eat.

Deborah Adele, author of The Yamas and Niyamas

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

NEW HARBINGER PUBLICATIONS is a registered trademark of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright 2021 by Lynn Rossy

New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

www.newharbinger.com

Cover design by Amy Daniel; Acquired by Jess OBrien; Edited by Kristi Hein

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rossy, Lynn, author.

Title: Savor every bite : mindful ways to eat, love your body, and live with joy / Lynn Rossy, PhD.

Description: Oakland, CA : New Harbinger Publications, Inc., [2022] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020048836 (print) | LCCN 2020048837 (ebook) | ISBN 9781684037469 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781684037476 (pdf) | ISBN 9781684037483 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Food--Moral and ethical aspects. | Cooking.

Classification: LCC TX357 .R66 2022 (print) | LCC TX357 (ebook) | DDC 641.3--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048836

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048837

To all beings who live in bodies that they need to feed and care for.

May these practices guide you in the art of eating, moving, and living with joy.

Contents

Introduction

When we were born, we were delivered without operating instructions. And somewhere along the way, the most instinctual acts we performsuch as eating and moving our bodieshave become quite complicated and confusing. This little book does not provide a set of rules for you to follow; rather, youll find short, powerful practices in how to become present with your own internal wisdom and knowing heart. Inside of you is the teacher for almost all you need to know. Your body is the expert. Your heart is the guide. You can relearn how to listen to their soft and gentle voices pointing you toward nourishment and restoration.

Modern society, conditioned largely by the diet culture, has taken us away from this inner knowing and replaced it with its ever-changing advice about how to eat, how to look, and how to succeed in being the perfect self. Modern society functions on a belief system that promotes being thin as the only healthy size, endorses weight loss as the road to happiness, dictates foods you should and should not eat, and harshly judges people who dont match a particular image of beauty. But the diet cultures motto could well be seek but do not find, as there is always something more or different you need to do in order to be okay. It is the mind-set of not enough, no matter what you do or how you look.

The journey you take by reading and practicing with this book will help you end the struggle with food, your body, your emotions, and your entire life, as you learn to acknowledge, understand, and love the whole person who shows up to the dining table. Learning to be present with yourself, just as you arewithout judgment, and with kindness and curiosityis the skill, called mindfulness, that you will use to help yourself make decisions and take actions that lead to greater well-being and happiness.

Mindfulness practice is simple but not necessarily easy to do. Strong conditioning will pull you into old habits of acting and thinking. As with any habit youre trying to change or develop, you will fall into familiar patterns. This is not a problem; its a process. You can pick yourself up with tenderness, brush yourself off, and use the experience to learn more about yourself and what you consider to be important. Through the process you will learn to trust your inner wisdom about what you want to eat, when you need to move, when it helps to laugh, who you need to connect with, and whatever else is called for to realize your highest good.