A mental struggle I'm having

[Guest guest]

Hi, Dawn,

No need to apologize for your reactions to Geneen's book! I think maybe her own hard past with her family may make her as an author more conscious of things like that as possible triggering factors, but I do think she overall allows that each person has her own history, and own "exquisitely good reasons" for overeating. It sounds like your family's way of dealing with stress through eating is definitely a learned behavior, but another thing to consider is that by dealing with stress via eating, your family was not teaching you how to get and give emotional comfort in times of stress. They taught you to eat. This doesn't mean they were "bad" people, just that they were doing the best they could, but it sort of left you clueless about how to comfort yourself when times got tough, except to eat. Sounds like you generalized how you dealt with stress to any emotionally trying time: lonliness, boredom. Not at all unusual.

I always used to tell people I had a perfectly normal childhood and no excuses there for how I ate. Well, as I go along in life, I realize that "perfectly normal" often means kind of emotionally bereft. No one taught me how to do much of anything except bluff my way through hard times by stiffening my upper lip, and drowning my disappointment, hurt, anger, shame, and a thousand other emotions in food. Again, perfectly normal by American standards, and not really abusive, but kind of sad, when you think about it. I was lucky to have one aunt who loved me unconditionally, and when I think back on it, she was more of a mother to me than my "real" mother, who, I'm sure, loved me and did her very best.

There's an old saying from 12-step groups: "Take what works and leave the rest." If what Geneen says about past hurts doesn't fit or work for you, leave it aside. Take from her book what works for you. I also found some things she said didn't ring true for me, and (hate to admit it) I also found her voice annoying on the CDs. Some of this, I think, was due to the fact that I just plain didn't want to accept what she was saying. Parts of IE are HARD to do and keep doing, and I really didn't want to hear, for example, that I should consider stopping eating when I was full, or eating only without distractions. So my juvenile way of disagreeing with her was to tell myself she had a little girl's voice and how in the world could I take anyone seriously who sounded like that? I also didn't really want to give up the food because, hey, I was CLUELESS (still mostly am) about how to handle things if I'm not eating myself into oblivion.

There's another old saying--"Don't throw the baby out with the bath water." Even if parts of Geneen's stuff really isn't true for you, don't let that stop you from hearing the parts that do ring true. The more I read and listen to her stuff, the less I disagree with her, and the more I realize I really often do want to protect myself from having to find a new way to cope other than through food. Funny the games my mind can play on me!

All best,

Laurie

Dawn wrote:

>>>Okay, this feels blasphemous, but I just finished Women, Food and God and find myself irritated. I know, many of you love her, and I did take several good points away from the book, but I also felt pushed and pressured. I was left feeling like, "There must be something in my childhood (I'm only 31/32, so almost has to be my childhood) that I need to find and deal with" But, wait, I thought I had a pretty decent (not perfect) childhood. I feel like she was saying that you overeat because you didn't get the love you needed somewhere, or felt rejected, etc, and that has to exist and be dealt with. That the reasons you overeat are all in your past. Things you learned long ago. What about the here and now? I've only been dealing with weight issues for 11ish years.

While I've spent the last week reading the book, thinking on this, mulling, discovering. I have discovered some hurts in my past, but none that seem like the reason I overeat. I have however felt like I was on a witch hunt, looking for that reason to 'blame' my parents. If you ask me why I overeat, I'd say on a basic level: boredom, loneliness, stress.

Now, I can tell you that the stress eating is a learned technique. My family deals with stress by eating. I have an Aunt who cooks and then feeds the rest of us stressed people. A local grocery store even makes a dip that we literally call, "the evil dip" and when someone is dead, dying or in the hospital, we will grab that and a bag of chips and sit round the table and jointly stress eat. I live 2000 miles away, and when they called saying they had my grandmother in the hospital, the only thing that stopped me from buying the ingredients to make it myself was a trip to Taco Bell for something with similar flavors. Still bad for me, but smaller quantities. Yeah, must learn a different way to handle stress.

Boredom: I have two small children and have found that I have given up most of my hobbies because they won't let me work on them, have tiny pieces and/or must be taken out and picked up every time I want to do them and I don't find it worth it. So, that's the answer to that. I need to find something to occupy myself besides tv, reading and eating.

Loneliness- I've found myself eating quite a bit because of this in the last year. I've done this because I've been alone a lot. My husband travels for work and last year it was 30/52 weeks. I try to do things and keep in contact with other adults, but the evenings by myself get long and since I have the kids, I can't easily get away. I picked up When Food is Love and Love is Food at Target yesterday, read the back and left it there, because I felt like it was going to tell me that I need to work on my relationship with my husband if I'm eating because I'm lonely. Um, it's work, if he's gone and I'm by myself, I'm going to get lonely sometimes but don't feel that that's a reflection of our relationship. I need to find ways to get the contact I crave without food, but I don't feel that my loneliness based eating is connected to my distant past either.

So, if you've made it this far. Any insights? Did I miss the point? Has anyone else felt this way or similar? About their reasons for eating, about the book? I hope I haven't upset anyone too much. It wasn't my intent, I did find the book worth reading, but was also left struggling.<<<