I love Geneen Roth‘s work. When I was first diving into my “food stuff,” her books were a lifeline that enabled me to unhook from food and weight pain.
Geneen’s latest book, Women, Food and God, is brilliant. That’s what I’ve heard from everyone who’s read it. (It’s on my reading list, too.) Many women in our friends’ forum have been writing about it in the forums and talking about the a-ha moments they’re experiencing.
Here’s what I love about Geneen’s work, and why I recommend it to anyone who is struggling with food and weight baggage.
It’s a philosophy that we share here at First Ourselves. In our forums and programs, women are learning together and breaking free from their food pain, easing the isolation by doing the work with other kindred spirits. If you’re looking for a place where “women who love Geneen” have gathered, follow these links to learn more about our free friends community and get regular free support, our private support forums where you can talk with other women, and our programs to unhook from sugar and untangle from overeating. (You can find more about my kick your sugar habit classes here.)
Then there’s the “Yes but how?” question. How does this approach heal your relationship with food? We call that process growing human(kind)ness, and we offer workbooks to share these 6 tools with you.
5 reasons why I love Geneen Roth – and 5 truths we embrace at First Ourselves:
- We believe in your essential goodness. When we are entrenched in painful patterns like overeating, bingeing, and chronic dieting; when we find ourselves constantly doing the things we don’t want to do (hello bingeing on an entire cake), we start to believe that we are our faults. That we are our mistakes. We lose sight of our essential goodness. The real work in healing from food is not eating differently. It’s seeing ourselves differently. When we remember our essential goodness, we start to trust ourselves again. We believe that we know how to take care of ourselves – which translates into different behavior. When we recognize that we are not the bingeing self, we find the ability to stop the bingeing. It is no longer who we are. We create spaciousness to respond differently to the siren song of fresh baked cookies.
- Food is your greatest opportunity. If you’re like me, you’ve probably run from your food and weight pain. You’ve denied it, ignored it, put it off (I’ll start on Monday/next week/after the holidays), and indulged in it (bingeing, overeating, stuffing yourself with too much food, sugar bingeing.) What Geneen and I both encourage you to do is to stop running. Stop running from the pain and turn towards it. I know, I know – it sounds crazy and counterintuitive. But embracing and opening to your pain is what heals it – and frees you from your suffering. You may look at all your food pain and say it is your greatest flaw, your greatest challenge, your greatest struggle. I say it is your greatest opportunity. It is your opportunity to find your inner goodness, your journey home to freedom.
- It’s not really about the food. Have you heard the phrase “kill the messenger?” When a messenger brought the king a message he didn’t like, it was common for the king to kill the messenger. We do the same thing with our bodies and food. We blame the messenger – our fat bodies; the food we fear; the food culture we live in; our cravings and insatiable desires for food – because we don’t like the message. Our poor bodies are simply responding exactly to how we treat them. Our patterns of eating are simply responding perfectly to the beliefs and thoughts we hold in our heads. We change our bodies and our eating patterns by changing our thoughts and beliefs. Not controlling our thoughts – but sitting with them to see, “Is this thought true?” and feeling the feelings underneath the thought. We separate from our mental stories about ourselves, about food, about our goodness to find freedom from our painful patterns.
- False beliefs are the real sticking point. Food is not the enemy. Our bodies are not the enemy. They are the mirror showing us where we are stuck. We can blame the mirror, hate the mirror – or we can look into the mirror and see what’s really there. If we’re willing to look, the mirror shows us our false beliefs, our deeply entrenched pain – how we don’t trust ourselves, how we judge ourselves, how we criticize ourselves, how we expect ourselves to be perfect, or how we hate ourselves when we fail, or how we expect others to constantly let ourselves down, or how we believe that we let ourselves down. We use our food pain to uproot those false beliefs and “remove the barriers to love” as Rumi said.
- We trust in the power of unconditional love and compassion to heal our wounded hearts – and our food pain. The reason we get stuck in food and the reason we run and the reason we try and control everything we put in our mouth is that we are terrified. We are terrified to sit with the pain that we are trying to desperately to outrun. We are so desperate for tenderness, for our care and tender holding – for the tender holding of our pain. And what we are most terrified of is mercy – which is why we keep chastizing ourselves and whipping ourselves into shape and scathing ourselves with our inner critic. We are terrified that if we forgive ourselves and show ourselves compassion that we are giving ourselves license to keep indulging in our painful behaviors. We think that holding ourselves kindly – instead of healing the painful patterns – will perpetuate them. How wrong we are. It is compassion that softens are hearts and makes us responsible – able to respond. It’s what helps us find the inner goodness and courage and wisdom to let go of the bingeing, the comfort eating, the obsession with the scale, the attempts to control, the fear – and find freedom. It’s how we come home.
Hi Karly, I’ve just started reading Geneen’s book “Women, Food and God” and I have to say it speaks to me, I have so much of my own baggage from childhood but have always figured the best way was for me to ‘suck it up and get over it’ – I think I’ve spent my life knowing its there, but not
Actually sitting down with myself and ‘feeling’ what I carry with me on a daily basis. I have never been overweight, but always had body image issues, today I am about 8kg overweight for the first time in my life. And I refuse to look at my cottage cheese thighs in the mirror. What would like to know is, for eg when I am hungry (honestly hungry) and for some reason I want to have fries instead of a healthy meal, is that also regarded as ‘food pain’? Will I naturally be inclined to eat healthier after my internal self work?? its frustrating for me at this point because I don’t want to be overweight and I’m scared that if I follow Geneene’s teachings I will fall deeper into the weight darkness!
I am just really frustrated at this point. I loved this book and had several aha moments…I feel like Ive been “diagnosed” .. but now what? I can never find anything on what to do what to physically do to get over/through this.
Oh, I hear you. I’ve often read books and felt – “A ha! I know what my problem is now.” Then there’s the, “Yes, but how???” question. Enlightenment is so easy if I’m just reading about it….doing it? Not so easy.
For me, it starts with awareness. Really dropping below the story line (my anxiety, feelings, the sense of, “I always mess up with food” the fear, etc.) to see, “What’s here? What’s present?”
When I am present, I can see the true feelings underneath the surface challenge with food. I will literally sit with my hand on my heart and realize, “Oh, there’s sorrow. Sadness.” Or fear – there’s fear that I’ll never be healed.
I literally put my hand on my heart and feel these feelings. I offer them kindness – “I care about this fear.” I offer them compassion. I offer myself compassion. When I do this, I stop resisting what I wish I could change – my feelings or even my very challenges with food.
I stop running and I sit. I sit and I care, and with my caring, my feelings soften. This space opens up and I feel more able to respond. So I can say, “Okay, I’m feeling sad because I’m x many pounds overweight and I’m sad because this food pain makes me feel so ashamed.” I care for that pain, and with my caring I notice my desire, for example, to eat to soothe that pain (which we know makes no sense – to eat to soothe our pain of being overweight? but when we’re hurting we do *all* kinds of things that don’t make sense.) I notice that desire and I don’t feel so hooked to act upon it.
Then I can say – okay, given how I’m feeling, given what I’m needing, how do I want to respond? I find that caring for my feelings and turning towards them (instead of resisting, fixing, runnign away) changes how I then approach them.
When we feel cared for, listened to, and held – which is what we’re doing when we say, “I care about my fear,” our hearts soften. It’s not about my trying to manufacture anything or force anything, but trusting my own desire to grow and heal. Trusting my own wisdom.
And then it’s a matter of discovery. If I am no longer resisting my food stuff, but am looking at it as a teacher, something to open me up, then how can I approach it so that it can open my heart?
I talk about this more in our free friends area – join here – http://www.firstourselves.com/membership/
There are some audio talks there that talk about this process in more detail.
I also get into the yes but how question in Untangled, which you may enjoy – http://www.firstourselves.com/overeating-support/
Much love to you, Karly
I am almost finished reading Geneen’s book and it has truly been an eye-opener.
When I am fretting about my weight, my finances, my relationship, my work, sick loved ones. Geneen’s book stopped my snowball thinking in its tracks when she wrote ” …It’s not the (eating) Guideline that needs to be examined, it’s her argument with reality. It’s not her eating that is killing her, it’s her refusal to accept the situation. page 184.
The minute I stopped the noise in my head, immediatly felt more relaxed and at peace and most of all relieved that I didn’t go to the cupboard for support!
What a great story, Kathy! I loved how you were able to separate from your thoughts without turning to food. Brava for you.
Are you familiar with Byron Katie’s work, called The Work? It is powerful in silencing the voices that have us arguing with reality. It has been greatly helpful to me.
You can learn more about her approach on her webiste below. Or read an indepth explanation in her book Loving What Is.
http://www.thework.com/
XO, Karly
I did attend Geneen Roth’s last retreat and your Daily Encouragement has been invaluable. I Have seen the similarities in Geneen and your teachings. I’m immensely grateful to both of you. Love, Gina