Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I liked this book’s general philosophy to eat until you are full and to eat only when you are hungry. Simple enough, right? I realised that, when I am at my ideal weight, this is indeed how I eat. I am more in tune with my body and have trained myself to listen to its cues on an unconscious level. When I bulk up and am focusing on losing weight, this obsession with food brings it to a conscious level and makes me think or want nothing but stuffing my face (and with chocolate, cookies, chips and other such stuff).
I have a lot of resentment towards my most recent weight gain. After I had my son, Travis, in January 2008 I lost the pregancy weight and was in my regular clothes by my 6 week appointment. And then I developed post partem depression. The medication and the illness made me balloon (thanks also to emotional eating!). I was still miserable with the medication and decided to stop medication as I would rather be thin and miserable than fat and miserable. This was July 2009 and I have yet to be able to shake the flab. I’ve gone to the gym, Weight Watchers, journaled, joined online groups, tried to learn to run but nothing is taking. I need to find my currency other than “when you ask people who are yoked to disordered food eating about their motivations for turning to food, they say things like ‘I want peace. Quiet. To forget about myself for a while. To go into another zone'” (Roth, page 72). Also known as emotional eating!
So I’m trying Roth’s idea to eat what my body wants. Thankfully she put in the caution that if you are eating everything in sight for more than a few weeks, you are using her Guidelines as an excuse to binge. At first I gained a few pounds but I’m slowly starting to get the hang of it again. I only hope I can maintain the momentum – especially with a girls weekend two days away!
