This book can change your life forever!
Rediscover the magic of eating for pleasure and enjoy a life of balance with the freedom to eat the foods you want without dieting.
Artful Eating will take you on a journey filled with stories, life lessons, practical tools and strategies all rooted in the most up to date scientific and psychological research. Learn how to reprogram your mind to lose weight and achieve the body you desire, by changing your thoughts, behaviours and approach to pleasure.
Successful weight loss is not about what you eat, it's about why and how you eat. We are missing the most vital ingredient in the weight loss battle: the mind. It is our mind that fuels every decision we make about food and by focusing solely on the symptom, the excess weight, we have lost sight of the cause.
There is no strenuous exercise regime, no food elimination, no strict meal plan, just powerful psychological tools and strategies which will create lasting change. You will be amazed at how easy it is to achieve the body you desire and truly deserve.
What did I think?
As a life long dieter, I am always looking for the next amazing diet book to be published. I do always follow the plan and get varying results but one thing is constant: I always morph back into Miss Blobby as cutting out all my favourite food and drink just makes me want them more, resulting in the inevitable binge when I fall off the diet wagon.
So I opened Artful Eating feeling motivated and ready to try anything. It wasn't long before I was nodding my head as everything Karina Melvin has written makes perfect sense. Just making a simple conscious effort to eat half of everything is sure to make the pounds drop off. As Karina says, the flavour and enjoyment is in the first few bites so if your body is crying out for a doughnut, simply have half of one and share the other half with a friend. Your body will be satisfied and you'll feel good sharing too.
Any dieter will know that you have good days and bad days. It's almost its own worst enemy; you have a good day so you reward yourself with a treat, meaning that you have a bad day. This can sometimes result in falling off the wagon completely as you feel so bad that your diet has failed. Karina doesn't encourage us to be good all the time, just good enough. This completely removes the guilt out of eating so you can keep following the Artful Eating plan even when you have what traditional diets call a bad day.
I read Artful Eating with the purpose of reviewing it, so I didn't manage to complete all of the exercises which I think are pivotal to embedding this way of eating in your life. I am definitely going to go back through the book to complete the exercises as Karina Melvin has completely inspired me to become an artful eater. I have already begun trying to listen to my body and eat when I'm hungry - it's actually a lot harder than you think!
The hardest thing for me will be leaving food on my plate. I think back to when we are young: as a baby being a 'good girl' or 'good boy' for eating everything and as a young child being rewarded with a pudding for clearing our plate. We are taught from an early age to eat all of our food in order to get a treat, so no wonder so many people hoover up their meals as if it's a race. This is going to be the hardest habit for me to break but I am absolutely determined to do it.
I love the way the book is set out in sections representing parts of a meal: starter, main course, dessert and digestif. It really helped to instil the mindset that food is there to be enjoyed and therefore eating something you enjoy isn't bad. Although she doesn't profess to be the greatest cook, Karina Melvin has included some amazing recipes in her book that I can't wait to try. Some that caught my eye: four-bean chilli (I love beans and anything spicy), courgette cake (to satisfy my sweet tooth), kitchen sink brown bread (there's nothing better than fresh homemade bread) and mini scones (the perfect treat and super-quick to make).
For me the key things in Artful Eating are:
- Listen to your body and eat when you're hungry
- Respond to your body's cravings by eating what type of food you want
- Taste and savour all of the flavours in your food
- Halve anything you eat
- Always leave food on your plate
- Be 'good enough' and remove guilt from eating
- Think of quality over quantity when buying food
Artful Eating is not like any diet book I have ever read before; you really can have your cake and eat it. It isn't so much a diet plan as a way of life that will change the way you eat forever. Artful Eating is so inspirational and I have every confidence that this amazing book will change my life.
I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.
My rating:
Buy it from Amazon
About the author:
Karina Melvin is a Psychologist, with an MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the UCD School of Medicine, an MA in Addiction Studies and over ten years of formal training within the field of mental health, she has dedicated her work to helping people feel more at ease in themselves. She lectures in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in University College Dublin and practices from her clinic in Sandymount. Her first book, Artful Eating: The Psychology of Lasting Weight Loss, became a bestseller in Ireland.Karina currently runs an online program ‘Artful Eating: At The Table’ (www.artful-eating.com), and hosts the Artful Eating podcast which is available to download from itunes.
Follow the tour:
No comments:
Post a Comment