When Food is Love, by Geneen Roth

This could be a life altering book, if we let it.  Geneen Roth has grand insight into the compulsion of overeating, and I want to share some brilliant excerpts:

"Love and compulsion cannot coexist.  Love is the willingness and ability to be affected...and to allow that effect to make a difference in what you do, say, become.  Compulsion is the act of wrapping ourselves around an activity, a substance, or a person to survive, to tolerate and numb our experience of the moment.  Love is a state of connectedness, one that includes vulnerability, surrender, self-valuing, steadiness, adn a willingness to face, rather than run from, the worst of ourseelves.  Compulsion is a state of isolation, one that includes self-absorption, invulnerability, low self-esteem, unpredictability, and fear that if we faced our pain, it would destroy us.  Love expands; compulsion diminishes. Compulsion leaves no room for love-which is, in fact, why many people started eating: because when there was room for love, the people around us were not loving. The very purpose of compulsion is to protect ourselves from the pain associated with love."

"We become compulsive about food because we have something to hide. Something we believe is worse than being fat or eating compulsively. The process of breaking free from compulsive eating is one of keeping steady with food so we can discover what we are hiding. But until we believe that compulsive eating means something, until we stop shrugging it off as an acceptable obsession that can be fixed with will power, a protein shake, or the cut of a surgeon's knife, until we realize that compulsion is the cast, not the wound, until we realize we are dying, we will not have the information we need to decide to live."

"....compulsive eaters die a little every time they eat compulsively. The choice is the same for all of us-alcoholics, drug addicts, cigarette smokers, compulsive eaters: Do I want to live while I'm alive and embrace what sustains me or do I want to die while I'm alive and embrace what destroys me? If I choose life, where do I need to heal? What are my secrets? what pieces of me have I been unwilling to recognize? What images, what nightmares, what words am I most afraid to speak?"

“Compulsion is despair on the emotional level. The substances, people, or activities that we become compulsive about are those that we believe capable of taking our despair away…. Compulsive behavior, at its most fundamental, is a lack of self-love; it is an expression of a belief that we are not good enough.”

Ms. Roth tells the story of a friend (Clara) who had a eight-year old client:  "who had been on a diet for two years and had gained fourteen pounds in the process. In desperation, [the child's mother] consulted Clara; Clara asked what her daughter's favorite food was. 'M&Ms,' the mother replied.

'Good. I want you to leave here and buy enough M&Ms to fill a pillow case. After you've done that, give the filled pillowcase to your daughter and let her eat the candy whenever she wants. As soon as the supply is diminished, refill it. Make sure she always has a full pillowcase of M&Ms. Take her off the diet, let her eat whatever she wants when she is hungry, and call me in a week'...[the girl] carried the pillowcase of M&Ms around with her for eight days. She slept with it, she set it beside the tub when she took a bath, she put it in a chair when she watched television. And, of course, she helped herself to M&Ms whenever she wanted them. Which, the first few days, was very often. In fact, after her mother brought three more pounds of M&Ms on the third day of this sugar-coated experience, she was ready to sue Clara. In a hysterical phone call, she told her that her child was eating more candy than ever before and how the hell was she supposed to lose weight doing this? Clara reassured her that her daughter was reacting to the years of deprivation and that when she believed, really believed, that she could eat whatever she wanted and that her mother was not waiting to snatch her pillowcase away, she would relax and begin eating from stomach hunger. On the ninth day, the pillowcase stayed in the bedroom. By the end of five weeks, her daughter had forgotten the M&Ms and had lost six pounds."

 Geneen Roth spent most of her young adult life dieting: losing and gaining 1000 pounds over the 20 some years she dieted. She conducted an experiment and completely gave up dieting, resulting in losing all her excess weight over a course of several months, and she has maintained her natural weight for over 30 years. She then became an author and speaker, and has held workshops and retreats all over the country for many years instructing others how to become free of the the tyranny of food obsession. She developed 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, 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.”

I like this lady!