From Bagels to Buddha: How I Found My Soul and Lost My Fat

by Judi Hollis

"Judi's life-changing story allows the reader to join her on a journey to self-acceptance."—Wynonna Judd In this delightfully funny book, Dr. Hollis shares her path to permanent weight loss and demonstrates how little it has to do with what you are eating or what's eating you. It will teach you to start eating to nurture your true inner being to know when enough is enough. By changing how you behave, how you interact with others, how you face your own dark side, and by accepting life on life's terms, losing your fat and keeping it off is finally within your reach. Judi Hollis, PhD is a licensed family therapist who is maintaining her own seventy-pound weight loss. She opened the nation's first eating disorders unit and has been featured on CNN , Inside Edition , and Oprah . She is the author of Fat Is a Family Affair , Fat & Furious , and Hot & Heavy .

Genres: Self Help

300 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2012

About the author

For more than thirty years, Dr. Judi Hollis has been featured on CNN, Extra, Inside Edition, Oprah, Sally, and Leeza among others. Self magazine voted her treatments among the top ten in the nation. She has been a licensed family therapist for more than 30 years and is maintaining her own 70-pound weight loss. Her difficult message of promoting internal spiritual connection and deep personality change is the only valid and lasting approach to weight loss.

Reviews

[Sara Saulcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it to be a good book overall. I have long had difficulty with regulating food intake. I appreciate this personal narrative of how she learned to make use of the techniques of Buddhism. It is an approach that I would like to further incorporate into my own life. I did feel like it read more like a memoir of her learning to engage with Buddhism than how Buddhism helped her with her lifestyle changes. Some of that, I think, was necessary to help us understand the underlying issues with which she was dealing. I think that it's a good resource, but somewhat limited for those of us seeking to use what awareness has to offer to help us get to and maintain a healthy weight.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Judi is a funny and sassy lady. This book was not great writing but gave me some good nuggets to ponder as I continue to work on my relationship with food. Read Fat is a Family affair a long time ago. I wish I could personally meet her and just chat. It took her years to find peace with food and her body which just makes me feel better about where I am at.

[Brand E with a Why · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like Eat, Pray, Love, you might kinda like From Bagels to Buddha. The book has its funny moments, and a couple thought-provoking gems. Unfortunately, I kept being annoyed by the author's sense of entitlement (and she is very conscious of it, perhaps to a fault) and her spiritual yo-yoing. I was entertained about 50% of the time, hence 3 stars. Oddly, the back cover reads very much like a self-help book--promises to show you how to discover that which is holding you back, etc. And I guess this is in line with the author's other books, but I didn't find this so much to be a self-help book, but rather about how the author tried to help herself.

[Shannon Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first half of the book, watching the author's journey into meditation and Buddhism, seeing her mental processes as she recognized her "true self." By the end, it pretty much just sounded like a set of journal entries from a travel blog around Asia, without any particularly poignant comments on overeating other than that it's a life long journey. Pretty disappointed. It definitely belongs in the autobiography/memoir section, rather than self-help!

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

About what you would expect.

This book is the story of a journey. It holds no new secret to weight loss or Buddhism. With that said it was, for me, a compelling read that I have enjoyed. She is very relatable in her journey, and it ends up being a good read. I did get a little restless in the middle, but coming to the end, feel quite satisfied in the story.

[Karen Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soul seeking

I appreciated her honesty about her mindset, opinions, beliefs and her self centeredness; now I know I'm not alone. After all these years in recovery I have yet to surrender, completely, to the food obsession. Judi's book reminds me that it is indeed a journey.

[Carol Malnati · Rating 4 out of 5]

I breezed through this book. It was Buddhism 101 for me and I loved it!

[Gail Park · Rating 3 out of 5]

good, helpful advice on mindful eating.