Women, Food, and God

Yes I know, it seems that everywhere you look in the Internet, people are talking about Geneen Roth and Evelyn Tribole as if they are virtual deities. Still, I thought I would dive in to what they have to offer. I have a Kindle and Geneen Roth's original book Feeding the Hungry Heart is not available as an eBook yet, so I opted for her newest book, Women, Food, and God.

This was my first 'ED read' and it was a lot better than the sappy self-help rubbish I had been anticipating. I think the best thing about this book is that it made me realise that I am not alone. Women (and men, though they don't get a look in) from all walks of life suffer. All of us think our problem is the food, and all of us are wrong.

Essentially, she says that everyone has core beliefs about themselves and their world, and those core beliefs play out on your plate and in your relationship with food. Disordered eating is a way to avoid feeling feelings, and also a way to avoid "the freshness of life itself", living life to the full (what she calls the "inclination to bolt").

Basically, the only way to overcome this is to commit to showing up again and again, refusing to escape our bodies when life gets hard and overwhelming. This often involves sitting with our emotions, feeling them completely, and understanding that feeling emotions won't kill us. Many people have what she calls "frozen pockets of pain" within them that they have refused to think about, so when they come to that emotion in the present, they flinch in memory of the past. And eat. Or don't eat.

I wrote down a number of quotes, but the one that really struck a chord for me was this: "Our bodies are the entry point to the essence of ourselves beyond it."

It wasn't perfect. The last two chapters referred incessantly to her 'guidelines', which at least on the Kindle version are on the very last page. Also, not being a religious or explicitly spiritual person, all her talk of God was a little difficult to get past - it seemed a bit sentimental in that typically American way. However, it did get me thinking about my emotions in a way that my therapist had been gently nudging me towards, so I would recommend it.