The Mindful Meals Diet uncovers the reasons why diets don't work-ancient genetic food drives and unhealthy eating habits. The genes that permitted our ancestors to survive, during the period when calories were scarce, motivated them to prefer high calorie fats, sweets and more calories. These same 'obesity' genes are out of sync with present day needs, but still drive our food preferences. The Mindful Meals Diet acknowledges our urges and satisfies our genes with healthy types of fat, sweets, and calories. It adopts the diet of the world's longest living and healthiest peoples, by blending the best and tastiest foods from the Mediterranean, Asian and Okinawa diets. However, it is unrealistic to think that our unhealthy eating habits, encouraged by the availability of high calorie foods, can be changed by will power. Because we are creatures of habit and food preference is learned, the only successful way to a long term diet is to develop healthy eating habits. To meet this requirement, the book provides a step by step program of mind/body interventions directed at developing healthy eating habits. These interventions include; mindful eating, relaxation response, self-hypnosis and self guided imagery.