As I read the book, I related to her words on so many levels. I truly believe many of us live our lives as if food is the enemy, or even worse, we are the enemy when it comes to food. Some excerpts:
"Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic. The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being.
Although the very notion that hatred leads to love and that torture leads to relaxation is absolutely insane, we hypnotize ourselves into believing that the end justifies the means. We treat ourselves and the rest of the world as if deprivation, punishment, and shame lead to change. We treat our bodies as if they are the enemy and the only acceptable outcome is annihilation. Our deeply ingrained belief is that hatred and torture work. And although I've never met anyone—not one person—for whom warring with their bodies led to long-lasting change, we continue to believe that with a little more self-disgust, we'll prevail.
But the truth is that kindness, not hatred, is the answer. The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value, and possibility. To change your body, you must first understand that which is shaping it. Not fight it. Not force it. Not deprive it. Not shame it. Not do anything but accept and—yes, Virginia—understand it. Because if you force and deprive and shame yourself into being thin, you end up a deprived, shamed, fearful person who will also be thin for ten minutes. When you abuse yourself (by taunting or threatening yourself), you become a bruised human being no matter how much you weigh. When you demonize yourself, when you pit one part of you against another—your ironclad will against your bottomless hunger—you end up feeling split and crazed and afraid that the part you locked away will, when you are least prepared, take over and ruin your life. Losing weight on any program in which you tell yourself that left to your real impulses you would devour the universe is like building a skyscraper on sand: Without a foundation, the new structure collapses...
I tell my retreat students that they need to remember two things: to eat what they want when they're hungry and to feel what they feel when they're not. Inquiry—the feel-what-you-feel part—allows you to relate to your feelings instead of retreat from them."
Roth's Eating guidelines are simple, yet wise:
Eat when you are hungry.
Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety-producing conversations or music.
Eat what your body wants.
Eat until you are satisfied.
Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.
Eat with enjoyment, gusto and pleasure.
But what about the overwhelming urge to eat when you are NOT hungry? Roth insists it is usually because there is something we are feeling that we don't want to feel. Her solution is to stop, breathe, and allow ourselves to FEEL the feeling (realizing we won't die from the feeling). Examine the feeling in the third person. The feeling often results from patterns formed in our childhood, and we need to realize we are no longer that powerless five-year-old. We are adults with many more tools than a child possesses. We have wisdom and knowledge at our disposal. And that isn't enough and we still need relief from an overwhelming feeling of loss, sadness, frustration, etc., rather than using food, we can employ other distractions: take a walk, read a book, etc. I think PRAYER is the best. Turn to God when we want to eat outside of hunger (a left-over "jewel" I picked up from Gwen Shamblin's Weigh Down "method"), praying something like, "God, I want to devour this entire pan of brownies. I am not hungry. I am struggling with something, and I need your grace and strength right now." Of course, I have not actually IMPLEMENTED that for years, but "Women" has reminded me that I am not alone in my battle against my food idolatry. I have the Almighty One on my side. He is my source of comfort, not the brownies, nachos, bag of black licorice, or super-sized fries.
I want to live a life fully committed to Jesus, not to my need for distraction, enjoyment, entertainment or comfort. I can't serve both Him and food. He is a jealous God.
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