Words to Eat by - by Karen Koenig (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book will teach you how to use word power rather than willpower to increase your motivation and overcome your struggles with eating and body care. It explains how self-talk ties thought to action or inaction and how what we say to ourselves is shaped-for better or worse-by our families, culture and personal history. It illustrates how unconscious, unhealthy self-talk leads to poor decision-making around eating, fitness and general self-care and how conscious, healthy self-talk promotes a positive relationship with food, body and mind.

Words to Eat By details key elements of constructive, smart self-talk. You'll learn how to distinguish trash thoughts from treasure thoughts, why external motivators don't work long-term, and which internal motivators will fast track you to success. It includes hundreds of examples of exactly what to say and not say to yourself in challenging food situations-eating alone, with family, friends, dates and mates, at parties, restaurants and buffets-and how to get and keep your body moving. Reflective questions help you zero in on which self-talk you want to change, while case studies illustrate how other troubled eaters have transformed their self-talk and their lives.

Written by a national expert, award-winning, international author and seasoned clinician who is also half-a-lifetime recovered from weight-loss dieting and binge-eating, this book introduces you to the nitty gritty of your eating and self-care problems and teaches you how to speak to yourself with the love, compassion, encouragement and hope needed to jump start or sustain your recovery.

Review Quotes

"Words to Eat By is transformative! It guides the reader toward conscious and compassionate self-talk, on a journey toward trusting their wise inner voice, rather than the internalized voice of diet culture. The result-a positive and happy relationship with food and body." -Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S, FAND, Co-author of Intuitive Eating and The Intuitive Eating Workbook, Author of The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens and The Intuitive Eating Journal-Your Guided Journey for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food

"Words to Eat By helps us illuminate all of the ways that we harm ourselves with our thoughts and then gently guides us to transform those thoughts into caring, compassionate words of wisdom and guidance. The ultimate guide to self-talk that creates peace with your food and your body." -Lynn Rossy, Ph.D., Author of The Mindfulness-Based Eating Solution and Savor Every Bite: Mindful Ways to Eat, Love Your Body, and Live with Joy

"Karen Koenig's Words to Eat By is a compassionate, straight-talking, and quietly inspirational guide to understanding how a person at any age can, via coaching and practice, learn, to eat, move, think, feel, and be in ways that embody mindfulness, self-caring, self-nourishment, and reasonable health. If you are willing to accept even the possibility of an upward spiral of constructive, nourishing, realistic self-talk-followed by self-compassion and pride in one's progress as eating and self-caring become healthier-followed by energy, hope, and commitment, then Words to Eat By offers the authoritative wisdom and specific guidelines you can immediately put into practice." -Michael P. Levine, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Kenyon College; Fellow, Academy for Eating Disorders