The Tao of Eating: Feeding Your Soul Through Everyday Experiences with Food

If you have been struggling with on and off dieting and food obsession, this book is a great tool to start on the road to normal eating. The book is not a diet book but a way of living. Many people I know, including myself, read this book more than once as it provides such valuable tools of self discovery. This book is for the individual that has had enough of the diets and wants to come to a sense of peace about their relationship with food and the daily choices they make. I highly recommend this book if you are ready to find a peaceful way to live for the rest of your life.

Too bad for exercise/diet/etc. obsessed people who will never see this book! And too bad, too, for people who have chosen other things to be obsessed by. The author shows a way out, for those of us who will listen. It may not be the ultimate book on the subject, but it does seem to be one giant step for humankind. I don't know why we have to fight about what makes life worth living, or why so very many people in our world think that deprivation is the only way to exist, but I'm glad I'm not alone in disagreeing with that!

Three cheers for Dr. Harper!Finally someone who is not afraid to go against the societal stream and denounce widely held beliefs about eating and dieting. Truly a voice "crying in the wilderness" showing the way to freedom and a fuller life. Eating is such a key part of living that to help individuals see it as a positive part of life instead of another challenge will truly help them along the path to becoming more "soulful" and ultimately more content and fulfilled in their lives. I continue to struggle with employing the Tao of Eating and ignoring the voice of society that controls eating with rules and calorie counts, but this book gives you practical help to get on the right path to eating and stay there. It is about time we address a society that is spinning out of control in this area, even if it is one reader at a time.

Finally, some comfot and joy for men and women who have lost the ability to eat naturally and "soulfully." A disgruntled reader above lamented the lack of feminist discussion in the book. As a feminist, I agree that many of women's problems with food are based on the exploitive culture we live in, but I also know quite a few men who struggle with weight and with food, if not so much about body image as about health and aging. This book isn't trying to analyze the many historical and societal reasons why people have lost the ability to eat peacefully and naturally, it's trying to provide a very real, day-to-day, method for restoring soulful eating for most people. Obviously, it's not a textbook for serious eating disorders or any other kind of disorder. But it's a great source of wisdom for the average eater who needs to restore insight, instinct and reason to their daily meals. This book needed to be written--thanks for writing it, Dr. Harper!

Readers might think that a book like this is only for women --NOT TRUE. It's a great book for EVERYONE, including men, who would like a better relationship with food and more pleasure and depth in their everyday life. Men also get too caught up in what they should and should not eat and Dr. Harper frees us from that way of thinking. Not only does she encourage us to stop dieting -- she goes a step further and shows how dieting limits our experience of life and is harmful - "Rule-bound" eating interferes with "soulful" living. Diets fool us into thinking we are doing something good for us, but in reality they are keeping us from knowing and accepting ourselves, others, and our lives. This book is a lot more than just a book about eating --its about a whole way of approaching life and all of our relationships. It requires us to really think about the choices we make. I think Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, Soulmates, and The Soul of Sex, sums up the far-reaching value of this book. He says, "Linda Harper's book on food, eating, and NOT dieting is the BEST BOOK ON FOOD I have ever seen. It's radically comforting for those of us who keep trying to eat properly. And it is a rare book that gets the idea of soul care exactly right. Read this book, eat well, and you will discover the wonder of living soulfully."