My passion for food and the body was fed as I studied nutrition at Cornell and Boston University, cooking my way through school in restaurants as varied as the health food co-op to the five-star white linen bistro. I reveled in the sensuality of the dining experience. And I struggled with weight and eating. I wrote about food. I developed healthy and delicious recipes for books and websites. And I struggled with weight and eating. I worked as a clinician, encountering people who suffer the chronic health consequences of lifetimes of overabundance, or the deprivation of body-wasting diseases. And I struggled with weight and eating.
Through my work I noticed that even those whose lives depend upon making dietary changes often cannot do it. Living a healthy lifestyle is much more than knowing what to eat. By the time most of us hit 40, our dietary patterns and our bodies reflect years of emotional and physical life. I have counseled women trapped in a diet-binge cycle. They have come to me with a hatred for their bodies that set the stage for compulsive eating and unhappy lives. I know others who have starved themselves for years and are fashionably thin but have malnourished bodies and sad, deprived spirits. I know many men and women who have struck a dynamic balance between enjoying food and maintaining their weight; each of them has written their own equation for how that balance works. How and what we eat reflect how we feel about ourselves on the deepest of levels. And eating is one of life’s greatest sensual experiences. But finding and keeping the balance of eating well, sustaining health through times of stress, and enjoying food without compulsion is, for many, one of modern life’s great struggles. And it simply doesn’t have to be.
When I was 32, I ended a difficult 10-year relationship. There is a saying in yoga, “When the student is ready the teacher appears.” Yoga came to me at a time of personal transition and seeking. I was single and on my own for the first time in my adult life. Thanks to yoga, for perhaps the first time since childhood, I loved my entire body and didn’t care if it was picture perfect. I found focus, balance, and strength, and remembered who I was under all that need I had to be beautiful and successful. That’s when my own reality project—experiencing judgment-free glimpses of who I am and how to tend myself—began.
As I traveled inward, science marched on. A revolution in the science of nutrition was underway, and the body of research around weight management was growing. New behavioral approaches to weight loss deemphasizing dieting and supporting the adoption of long-term habits were gaining popularity and legitimacy. I found that looking at the new science through the paradigm of yoga worked, and I began to introduce it into my nutrition practice. My patients responded with relief and enthusiasm. They began to care for themselves compassionately, reconnecting with themselves and their passions rather than continuing to bury their emotions under eating and deprivation as they tried to be someone they were not. And they responded by achieving their realistic nutritional goals more easily—getting healthier and getting happier. You will hear their thoughts and stories reflected in the fictional characters I’ve created to help illustrate the Every Bite Is Divine process.
USA Book News Best Books Finalist
Ben Franklin Award Finalist
