Fain teaches that self-kindness can help quiet the shame that traditional diets instill and help to establish a harmonious relationship with food.
by Jean Fain, LICSW, MSW
Fain tells us that the secret to sustainable weight loss is not counting calories or depriving yourself at the dinner table, but it is about cultivating awareness and self-acceptance wherever you are.
With this diet, Fain, a Harvard Medical School-affiliated psychotherapist, prescribes a practical program for transforming the way you think and feel about food and your whole self — a shift that, paradoxically, inspires physical change.
Combining loving-kindness, self-hypnosis and other winning weight-loss strategies, The Self-Compassion Diet is available in two complementary formats to help you naturally progress toward genuine self-acceptance and a healthy, sustainable weight.
With more than 30 different tools, including quizzes, breathing exercises and visualizations, the book explores four powerful weight-loss methods. The audio edition guides you through 11 key practices described in the book. Used together, this combination can speed learning and boost success.
Additional topics include: how to appreciate the everyday activity of eating and learn to trust your body’s signals that it is nourished; a guided visualization for developing mindful eating habits; and a meditation for getting to know the diet coach who knows you best — your compassionate “inner advisor.”
Fain teaches that most dieters try to kill cravings and break habits with self-discipline, but that self-kindness can help quiet the shame that traditional diets instill and help to establish a harmonious relationship with food.
The book and audio CD offer a treasury of heart-opening, mind-body teachings and practices for improving the way you live, breathe and eat.
$19.95 book, $16.95 CD — Sounds True, Inc., P.O. Box 8010, Boulder, CO. 80306.
Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 30, Number 2, February/March 2011.
April 13, 2012
Book review