Women Food and God: A book review

I have just finished reading, "Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything" by Geneen Roth and I want to share some bits that really stuck out to me.  First of all, Geneen Roth has been writing and giving retreats to women regarding their relationship with food for many years.  She herself has lost and gained over 1000 pounds in her life.  When she came upon her new path to 'stop dieting' she found herself and began sharing her knowledge and experiences.

Here are her eating guidelines:

1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment.
This does not include the car.
3. Eat without distractions.  Distractions include radio, television,
newspapers, books, phones, intense or anxiety-producing
conversations, or music.
4. Eat what your body wants.
5. Eat until you are satisfied.
6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.
7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto, and pleasure.

Now, I think I am just going to type out some parts of the book that spoke to me and maybe they will speak to you as well.

• "You will stop turning to food when you start understanding in your body, not just your mind, that there is something better than turning to food.  And this time, when you lose weight, you will keep it off.  Truth, not force, does the work of ending compulsive eating.  Awareness, not deprivation, informs what you eat.  Presence, not shame, changes how you see yourself and what you rely on."
• "You are not a mistake.  You are not a problem to be solved.  But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself."
• "...I have never met anyone for whom years of rejection and hatred suddenly and miraculously turned to love, even after a face-life, lap-band surgery, liposuction.  When you love something you wish it goodness; when you hate something, you wish to annihilate it.  Change happens not by hatred, but by love.  Change happens when you understand what you want to change so deeply that there is no reason to do anything but act in your own self interest."
• "I realize that coming home to your body after a lifetime of being at war with it might not seem appealing, especially if it is uncomfortable to sit or walk within its confines.  But just because homecomings are rocky does not mean you should spend the rest of your life avoiding them."
• "Trust the process, trust your longing for freedom.  Eventually you will stop wanting to do anything that interferes with the increasing brightness you have some to associate with being alive."
• "If you are willing to engage with yourself rather than run from yourself, and if you are willing to be steadfast and not get seduced by the newest greatest diet, you already have what people go to India to get.  Right there on your plate, right smack in the middle of your day-to-day life, you have your way back to the truth."
• Three Journeys of the Food Path:
• The Journey from Yourself - dieting, bingeing, exercising, fasting...your main goal is to fix yourself, to be at your ideal goal weight so you can stop focusing on food.  This journey will end in disappointment 100% of the time.  (Even if you reach your goal weight, you did so with force, deprivation, being untrue to yourself.)
• The Journey to Yourself - "You stop dieting.  You begin eating what your body wants.  You realize your eating isn't about lack of willpower but lack of understanding.  As much as you want to lose weight, you suddenly realize that keeping the weight on - and keeping the problem going - is familiar and comfortable."
• The Journey in God/Food/Life - "You end your search for more and better.  You no longer live as if this life is a dress rehearsal for the next."  "...you slowly realize that you are already whole and that there is no test to pass, no race to finish; even pain becomes another doorway, another chance to recognize where love appears to be absent."

If any of this has spoken to you, I highly suggest you read this or one of her other books.  I really enjoyed reading about her and the experiences of her students.  A lot of it I could relate to and the book really reinforced the journey I began two months ago.  She has talked about the fact that most people don't understand the "Eat what your body wants" guideline because they think that is an excuse to eat cake every moment and every day of their lives.  But if you look at the guideline closer, it says, "eat what your BODY wants" not your mind.  My mind would love cake all the time, but my body would be pissed.  I would constantly be sugar crashing, my stomach would ache, I would be lethargic, unhappy, unhealthy...it wouldn't be sustainable.  At some point, you have to listen to your body signals and, while it may take sometime, one day you will find yourself saying, "I don't want that piece of cake, I want that spinach salad with feta, pumpkin seeds, and raspberry vinaigrette."  And I know this to be true, because I have been craving (and eating) this salad all week!  When I shut my mind up long enough to hear what my body wants, I find myself making better decisions in the long run.

Roth, Geneen.  "Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything".  Scribner  New York 2010.