Geneen Roth's Women, Food and God

[Guest guest]

" Women, Food and God " summarizes what Geneen Roth learned from her workshop

participants over the past 30 years. I enjoyed reading her descriptions of

workshop participants' reactions to her workshop exercises and ideas. While her

previous book " Breaking Free from Emotional Eating " explains the guidelines to

intuitive eating, " Women, Food and God " describes how people resist using those

guidelines and how they can use their resistance to learn more about themselves

and resolve eating problems.

I need to add that my impressions of this book are colored by my perspective:

I've read every book Geneen Roth wrote. So I love her ideas and style of

writing. I've eaten intuitively for 8 years.I am fairly thin, but want to

improve my health and well-being. I'm a Christian, but I'm open to other's

concepts of God, religion and spirituality.

As a Christian I was confused about Geneen Roth's concept of God and how that

relates to food and eating. Eventually I understood her explanation that people

often begin to eat emotionally after they stop believing that they deserve love

and goodness in their life. They stop believing in what the concept of God

offers and begin to numb their desperation, fears and hopelessness with food.

I especially liked the chapter entitled " Those Who Have Fun and Those Who

Don't " . Geneen observed from her students that " roughly half of them had never

been successful on a diet. They weren't interested in rules or order or being

told what to do. They told me about the nether world of glazy-dazy eating

uninterrupted by restriction ... It became clear that not all bingeing is dirven

by deprivation; in half of emotional eaters, bingeing (or, at the very least,

consistent overeating) is a way of life punctuated by sleep, work, time with

family. "

Then Geneen goes on to differentiate the two most common types of compulsive

eaters: permitters and restricters. I'd heard previously about those categories

in GR workshop CD. However in this chapter Geneen explains why some people LOVE

the 'eat whatever you want' part of intuitive eating but resist 'eat when

hungry, mindfully savor each bite and stop when full', while others fear freedom

to eat anything but feel safer when they obey hunger, fullness boundaries.

Permitters hate rules and boundaries. Restrictors love rules and obundaries.

Permitters numb. Restrictors control.

That difference helped me understand why people are drawn to different intuitive

eating approaches. Some may LOVE legalizing food ala Overcoming Overeating and

Intuitive EAting. Others prefer " Thin Within " , " 7 Secrets of Slim People " and

even Geneen Roth's " Breaking Free from Emotional Eating " , because those books

emphasize the importance of obeying guidelines about hunger/fullnes cues and

eating mindfully. Nevertheless, Geneen emphasizes that we can swing between

permitting and resticting, but " both are subtypes of compulsive eating which is

the metadefense. "

In my opinion the most eye-opening chapter was " It's Not about the Weight and

It's not NOT about the Weight " . There Geneen says:

" Most people are so glad to read about, hear about and then begin any approach

that doesn't focus on weight loss as tits main agenda that they take it to be

license to eat without restraint. 'Aha!' they say, 'Let's eat. A lot. Let's not

stop.'

" The bottom line, whether you weigh 340 pounds or 150 pounds, is that when you

eat when ou are not hungry, you are using food as a drug, grappling with boredom

or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection. Food is

only the middleman, the means to the end. Of altering your emotions. Of making

yourself numb. Of creating a secondary problm when the orginal problem becomes

too uncomfortable. "

" Sometimes people will say, 'But I just like the taste of the food ... I overeat

because I like food.'

(Geneen responds to those comments by saying:) " When you like something, you pay

attention to it ... You want to be present for every second of the rapture.

Overeating does not lead to rapture. It leads to burping and fateing and being

so sick that you can't think of anything but how full you are. That's not love;

that's suffering. Weight (too much or too little) is a by-product. Weight is

what happens when you use food to flatten your life ... It's about your belief

that it's not possible to live any other way--and you're using food to act that

out without ever having to admit it. "

I recommend this book to anyone who knows how to eat intuitively, but still

struggles with intuitive eating; to anyone who loves legalizing foods, but

resists waiting for hunger before eating and stopping when full; to anyone who

has read Geneen Roth's " Breaking Free from Emotional Eating " but still eats

emotionally; and especially to anyone who wants to use their struggles with food

to improve their lives, health and well-being.

SUE