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When Food Is Love: Exploring the Relationship Between Eating and Intimacy
In this moving and intimate book, Geneen Roth, bestselling author of "Feeding the Hungry Heart" and "Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating, " shows how dieting and compulsive eating often become a substitute for intimacy. Drawing on painful personal experience as well as the candid stories of those she has helped in her seminars, Roth examines the crucial issues that surround compulsive eating: need for control, dependency on melodrama, desire for what is forbidden, and the belief that one wrong move can mean catastrophe. She shows why many people overeat in an attempt to satisfy their emotional hunger, and why weight loss frequently just uncovers a new set of problems. But her welcome message is that the cycle of compulsive behavior can be stopped. This book will help readers break destructive, self-perpetuating patterns and learn to satisfy all the hungers - physical and emotional - that make us human.
205 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
313 people are currently reading
3056 people want to read
About the author
Geneen Roth
57 books624 followersGeneen Roth's pioneering books were among the first to link compulsive eating and perpetual dieting with deeply personal and spiritual issues that go far beyond food, weight and body image. She believes that we eat the way we live, and that our relationship to food, money, love is an exact reflection of our deepest held beliefs about ourselves and the amount of joy, abundance, pain, scarcity, we believe we have (or are allowed) to have in our lives.
Rather than pushing away the "crazy" things we do, Geneen's work proceeds with the conviction that our actions and beliefs make exquisite sense, and that the way to transform our relationship with food is to be open, curious and kind with ourselves-instead of punishing, impatient and harsh. In the past thirty years, she has worked with hundreds of thousands of people using meditation, inquiry, and a set of seven eating guidelines that are the foundation of natural eating.
Geneen has appeared on many national television shows including: The Oprah Show, 20/20, The NBC Nightly News, The View and Good Morning America. Articles about Geneen and her work have appeared in numerous publications including: O: The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Time, Elle, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She has written monthly columns in Good Housekeeping Magazine and Prevention Magazine. Geneen is the author of eight books, including The New York Times bestsellers When Food is Love and Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. Her newest book, to be published in March 2011, is Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations about Food and Money.
Rather than pushing away the "crazy" things we do, Geneen's work proceeds with the conviction that our actions and beliefs make exquisite sense, and that the way to transform our relationship with food is to be open, curious and kind with ourselves-instead of punishing, impatient and harsh. In the past thirty years, she has worked with hundreds of thousands of people using meditation, inquiry, and a set of seven eating guidelines that are the foundation of natural eating.
Geneen has appeared on many national television shows including: The Oprah Show, 20/20, The NBC Nightly News, The View and Good Morning America. Articles about Geneen and her work have appeared in numerous publications including: O: The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Time, Elle, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She has written monthly columns in Good Housekeeping Magazine and Prevention Magazine. Geneen is the author of eight books, including The New York Times bestsellers When Food is Love and Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. Her newest book, to be published in March 2011, is Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations about Food and Money.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 207 reviews
December 10, 2008
well holy crap. if you've got any kind of messed up relationship w/food, this book will blow your mind. I read it, then read three more by her, then flew to Santa Cruz to do a 5-day workshop with her that was just amazing. It's basically exploring Buddhism via your relationship with eating. She's funny, and clear, and I couldn't put any of her books down.
August 11, 2019
Mucha paja, redundante, oportunista y poco creíble.
June 4, 2013
I really appreciated this book. While I don't have a problem with food, I felt that a lot of what Roth discusses was still applicable to me. The focus of the book is not food specifically, rather all the (unhealthy) things we do to cope with unresolved childhood pain. She discusses compulsive behaviors relative to food, but also relative to relationships. I could relate to Geneen's irrational fears about losing love and the way it made her react in extreme ways to fairly normal circumstances. What I took from the book is a) to become conscious and aware of these behaviors and to realize b) that it is possible to change them. Something I like about Geneen's story is that it shows that this kind of change doesn't come fast. It takes a lot of pain to realize you've had enough of perpetuating something that is no longer relevant and to come to trust that it is not necessary -- you can live without your pain. So, I guess this book is really about letting go of pain to allow adult love into your life.
May 8, 2024
Geneen Roth GETS REAL AF on the complex relationship many people have with FOOD (and dieting, and exercise, and compulsive behaviors of all kinds) and INTIMACY.
GURL!
Roth additionally posits that WE (YOU&ME) FREQUENTLY use COMPULSIVE behaviors as a substitute for emotional FULFILLMENT or as a way to SUPPRESS difficult feelings. She also asserts that if we never STOP AND FEEL. We can’t HEAL.
That’s right!
FEELING IS HEALING.
Roth emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-care and mindfulness to cultivate a healthier relationship with food and with oneself.
YES!
It’s hard to be a person.
This book makes it a little easier.
This book is FIRE 🔥.
This book is SHORT.
This book gets RIGHT ON DOWN TO IT.
The thing that you need to do to break your obsession with food, it’s the same thing you need to do to become more comfortable with intimacy SELF/OTHER/WORLD.
5/5
GURL!
Roth additionally posits that WE (YOU&ME) FREQUENTLY use COMPULSIVE behaviors as a substitute for emotional FULFILLMENT or as a way to SUPPRESS difficult feelings. She also asserts that if we never STOP AND FEEL. We can’t HEAL.
That’s right!
FEELING IS HEALING.
Roth emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-care and mindfulness to cultivate a healthier relationship with food and with oneself.
YES!
It’s hard to be a person.
This book makes it a little easier.
This book is FIRE 🔥.
This book is SHORT.
This book gets RIGHT ON DOWN TO IT.
The thing that you need to do to break your obsession with food, it’s the same thing you need to do to become more comfortable with intimacy SELF/OTHER/WORLD.
5/5
January 21, 2019
I’ve read the wrong book!
I was hoping for a book on how to release emotional eating and all I’ve got was dissapointment. All the theory she talks in about 200 pages could have been comprised in a single essay. There are too many real stories and too little advice.
Clearly a book in which the author tried some sort of self therapy by recalling all of her unfortunate events and choices she made throughout life.
Disappointing because of so many reasons: no clear story line, everywhere and nowhere in the same time, and sometimes even depressingly repetitive.
I was hoping for a book on how to release emotional eating and all I’ve got was dissapointment. All the theory she talks in about 200 pages could have been comprised in a single essay. There are too many real stories and too little advice.
Clearly a book in which the author tried some sort of self therapy by recalling all of her unfortunate events and choices she made throughout life.
Disappointing because of so many reasons: no clear story line, everywhere and nowhere in the same time, and sometimes even depressingly repetitive.
August 11, 2019
Mucha paja, redundante, oportunista y poco creíble.
June 24, 2012
This book is nominally addressing the issue of replacing love and security with over eating. However, its words are applicable to anybody who finds themselves lacking in an understanding of how to love and be love, feels or has been entirely out of control of the love expressed or withheld by those closes to them, and substitutes love/fulfills their need for love with something the CAN control whether that be food, sex, work, or emotional reclusion. It is honest, heart felt, and a very well written. The author share the most intimate moments of fear, love, vulnerability, and epiphany from her own experience allowing the reader to see a change of perspective that can, in turn, help them change the way they think and feel about love.
I was recommended this book by a nutritionist who finds the greatest hurdle for her clients in eating healthy are usually emotional hurdles. But once I read it, I sent copies to half a dozen people I love. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels uncomfortable or dissatisfied with their relationship to love and romance.
I was recommended this book by a nutritionist who finds the greatest hurdle for her clients in eating healthy are usually emotional hurdles. But once I read it, I sent copies to half a dozen people I love. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels uncomfortable or dissatisfied with their relationship to love and romance.
January 11, 2023
• There are many things in life beyond our control, but our eating is not one of them.
• Your body is good, your instincts are wise, you have many choices, you can rely on yourself for the information you need to live lovingly.
• The problem with blame is that it focuses our attention on the person with whom we are dealing instead of on ourselves. The more we focus on what the other person is doing, has done, can do, to make us feel better, the less powerful we feel. Revenge fantasies have their place in the healing process: wanting to hurt the person who hurt us can be an indication that we are willing to fight for and protect ourselves. But healing and growing whole eventually require focusing on ourselves and assuming responsibility for change.
• Victims stop being victims the moment they recognise their power to choose.
• I believed that making him feel bad would make me feel good.
• Hemingway says that the world breaks everyone and some of us are strong in the broken places. The purpose of healing is to be strong in the broken places.
As a child, I created a world of my own because the world I was living was not home to me. I wrote stories about planets with purple rings, poems about feathers and hummingbirds. I wrote my first book when I was twelve. I became a writer.
As a child, I learned to hear the unspoken, to climb behind my mother's face, my father's eyes. I learned to see where others only looked. I became a teacher.
I learned that nothing was as it seemed. I learned that money didn't make anyone happy. I learned about death and violence, cheating, lying, stealing, and I learned about humour, determination, endurance. I broke into ten thousand pieces. Who I am today is a result of the way I put the pieces together.
• The weakest places in me as a child are some of the strongest places in me as an adult. They are strong now because - not in spite of - being weak then.
It's not the wound that determines the quality of your life, it's what you do with the wound - how you hold it, carry it, dance with it or bury yourself under it.
• Life is what happens as you live with the wounds. Life is not a matter of getting the wounds out of the way so that you can finally live. Wounds are never permanently erased. We are fragile beings, and some days we break all over again.
• Wounds are never permanently erased. Being an abandonment person changes from year to year, depending on how conscious I am about that piece of myself. How much I am willing to risk, how patient I am willing to be, how much mercy I can give to the part of me that is forever frightened of being left. The way I work with my fear of abandonment shapes the curves and colours of my life the way a river shapes a canyon wall.
Healing is about opening our hearts, not closing them. It is about softening the places in us that won't let love in. Healing is a process. It is about rocking back and forth between the abuse of the past and the fullness of the present and being in the present more and more of the time. It is rocking that creates the healing, not staying in one place or another. The purpose of healing is not to be forever happy; that is impossible. The purpose of healing is to be awake. And to live while you are alive instead of dying while you are alive. Healing is about being broken and whole at the same time.
• I don't have to eat to make it bearable.
• I have been to so many kinds of weight loss programs, and whenever they get hard, I don't want to do the work. Then I start thinking that the program doesn't work. Then I go on the next one.
An alcoholic who smashes her car and gets arrested for driving while intoxicated doesn't have the luxury of rambling to the next program. Her addiction backs her into a corner where court appearances and shattered relationships follow her like a trail of dried blood until she has to do something about it and them - or die.
Compulsive eaters have no apparent urgency to provoke or inspire them. They don't choose between life and death; they choose between ice cream or drinking a liquid protein shake. Or so it appears.
And while the consequences of being ten or thirty pounds overweight are not the same as driving while intoxicated, compulsive eaters die a little every time they eat compulsively.
The choice is exactly 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 sustain 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 recognise? What images, what nightmares, what words am I most afraid to speak?
• Compulsive eating is the cast, not the wound. Losing the fat brings her to face with the wounds that created it.
But is not the wound that shapes our lives, it's the choice we make as adults between embracing our wounds or raging against them.
Openheartedness, not punishment.
• It is a difference between kicking a child who is in pain or rocking her.
Most people kick because they've been kicked and they don't know how to do anything else. They feel that being kind to themselves, using their pain as a guide, is self-indulgent and cannot possibly lead to change.
Most people rage against their eating. They hate it and themselves. They're tired of spending so much time thinking about their obsession with food. They want to be done, but their impatience to end their misery prolongs it. Hate does not heal anyone, ever.
• I hungered for something that couldn't be bought there - or anywhere. So I left the store with nothing. And with everything: my sense of self was intact.
• I didn't know that eating a meal was an act of kindness and would give my body the fuel it needed to think clearly, move fluidly. I thought it was naughty and therefore exciting to eat sugar-coated donuts for breakfast.
I ate to shove my feelings away. I ate to make myself disappear. I didn't know that I worth anything.
• Treating ourselves with kindness and gentleness and compassion. I still believe that all three of those are necessary parts of breaking free. But there is one ingredient that I didn't mention and it is the glue that holds the other parts together: effort and commitment. Not leaving when it gets hard.
• Your body is good, your instincts are wise, you have many choices, you can rely on yourself for the information you need to live lovingly.
• The problem with blame is that it focuses our attention on the person with whom we are dealing instead of on ourselves. The more we focus on what the other person is doing, has done, can do, to make us feel better, the less powerful we feel. Revenge fantasies have their place in the healing process: wanting to hurt the person who hurt us can be an indication that we are willing to fight for and protect ourselves. But healing and growing whole eventually require focusing on ourselves and assuming responsibility for change.
• Victims stop being victims the moment they recognise their power to choose.
• I believed that making him feel bad would make me feel good.
• Hemingway says that the world breaks everyone and some of us are strong in the broken places. The purpose of healing is to be strong in the broken places.
As a child, I created a world of my own because the world I was living was not home to me. I wrote stories about planets with purple rings, poems about feathers and hummingbirds. I wrote my first book when I was twelve. I became a writer.
As a child, I learned to hear the unspoken, to climb behind my mother's face, my father's eyes. I learned to see where others only looked. I became a teacher.
I learned that nothing was as it seemed. I learned that money didn't make anyone happy. I learned about death and violence, cheating, lying, stealing, and I learned about humour, determination, endurance. I broke into ten thousand pieces. Who I am today is a result of the way I put the pieces together.
• The weakest places in me as a child are some of the strongest places in me as an adult. They are strong now because - not in spite of - being weak then.
It's not the wound that determines the quality of your life, it's what you do with the wound - how you hold it, carry it, dance with it or bury yourself under it.
• Life is what happens as you live with the wounds. Life is not a matter of getting the wounds out of the way so that you can finally live. Wounds are never permanently erased. We are fragile beings, and some days we break all over again.
• Wounds are never permanently erased. Being an abandonment person changes from year to year, depending on how conscious I am about that piece of myself. How much I am willing to risk, how patient I am willing to be, how much mercy I can give to the part of me that is forever frightened of being left. The way I work with my fear of abandonment shapes the curves and colours of my life the way a river shapes a canyon wall.
Healing is about opening our hearts, not closing them. It is about softening the places in us that won't let love in. Healing is a process. It is about rocking back and forth between the abuse of the past and the fullness of the present and being in the present more and more of the time. It is rocking that creates the healing, not staying in one place or another. The purpose of healing is not to be forever happy; that is impossible. The purpose of healing is to be awake. And to live while you are alive instead of dying while you are alive. Healing is about being broken and whole at the same time.
• I don't have to eat to make it bearable.
• I have been to so many kinds of weight loss programs, and whenever they get hard, I don't want to do the work. Then I start thinking that the program doesn't work. Then I go on the next one.
An alcoholic who smashes her car and gets arrested for driving while intoxicated doesn't have the luxury of rambling to the next program. Her addiction backs her into a corner where court appearances and shattered relationships follow her like a trail of dried blood until she has to do something about it and them - or die.
Compulsive eaters have no apparent urgency to provoke or inspire them. They don't choose between life and death; they choose between ice cream or drinking a liquid protein shake. Or so it appears.
And while the consequences of being ten or thirty pounds overweight are not the same as driving while intoxicated, compulsive eaters die a little every time they eat compulsively.
The choice is exactly 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 sustain 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 recognise? What images, what nightmares, what words am I most afraid to speak?
• Compulsive eating is the cast, not the wound. Losing the fat brings her to face with the wounds that created it.
But is not the wound that shapes our lives, it's the choice we make as adults between embracing our wounds or raging against them.
Openheartedness, not punishment.
• It is a difference between kicking a child who is in pain or rocking her.
Most people kick because they've been kicked and they don't know how to do anything else. They feel that being kind to themselves, using their pain as a guide, is self-indulgent and cannot possibly lead to change.
Most people rage against their eating. They hate it and themselves. They're tired of spending so much time thinking about their obsession with food. They want to be done, but their impatience to end their misery prolongs it. Hate does not heal anyone, ever.
• I hungered for something that couldn't be bought there - or anywhere. So I left the store with nothing. And with everything: my sense of self was intact.
• I didn't know that eating a meal was an act of kindness and would give my body the fuel it needed to think clearly, move fluidly. I thought it was naughty and therefore exciting to eat sugar-coated donuts for breakfast.
I ate to shove my feelings away. I ate to make myself disappear. I didn't know that I worth anything.
• Treating ourselves with kindness and gentleness and compassion. I still believe that all three of those are necessary parts of breaking free. But there is one ingredient that I didn't mention and it is the glue that holds the other parts together: effort and commitment. Not leaving when it gets hard.
August 23, 2011
Is okay...the information is good but the delivery is redundent...spending a dollar to save a dime. Meaning little meat and a lot of fluff...so yes the information is good but I is a pain in the boring butt to get it.
November 17, 2016
El libro que más me ha trascendido este año, realmente ha tocado una parte muy muy profunda (considerando un trastorno BED), altamente recomendado a todos aquellos que están luchando cada día con algo similar...
November 23, 2018
My therapist wanted me to read this. It was super short & relatable...made me realize some things about myself. Definitely worth the read if you have an eating disorder or any kind of food issues.
March 26, 2025
الكتاب مفيد للناس اللي عندها مشاكل مع الأكل أو food disorders
ف بالنسبة لي مكنش مفيد اوي وف أمثلة كتير من حياة الكتابة + حياة أشخاص تانيه عندها نفس المشكلة ف ده كان ممل وبيخليني ف كنت بجري ف الصفحات
اخدت منه شويه افكار للفيديو اللي بحضره ل حلقة هنزلها قريب اوي ع قناة "فيلم عميق" ع اليوتيوب لو حد مهتم ممكن يعمل subscribe علشان يعرف اكتر 😍 👇
https://youtube.com/@film3mek
ف بالنسبة لي مكنش مفيد اوي وف أمثلة كتير من حياة الكتابة + حياة أشخاص تانيه عندها نفس المشكلة ف ده كان ممل وبيخليني ف كنت بجري ف الصفحات
اخدت منه شويه افكار للفيديو اللي بحضره ل حلقة هنزلها قريب اوي ع قناة "فيلم عميق" ع اليوتيوب لو حد مهتم ممكن يعمل subscribe علشان يعرف اكتر 😍 👇
https://youtube.com/@film3mek
February 7, 2010
This book was absolutely excellent. I would recommend it for anyone struggling with an eating disorder, particularly compulsive overeating, and I would also recommend it to anyone who is getting sick of dieting (aren't we all?)
I really like how Roth gives us stories about herself and about people she has worked with. I find it much easier to read than just trying to read straight facts. Thankfully, Roth gives plenty of life to her book instead of just boring psychobabble.
The psychobabble part is awesome though. I found myself startled more than a couple of times with how much I could relate to what Roth was saying. I'm now making my husband read this book so that he can understand my thought processes better.
I'm not giving concrete examples of what I learned from this book because there is SO MUCH I learned that it would be impossible. Just read this excellent book - it is surely helping to free me from the shackles of constant dieting. What a relief. I'm onto Roth's over works next.
I really like how Roth gives us stories about herself and about people she has worked with. I find it much easier to read than just trying to read straight facts. Thankfully, Roth gives plenty of life to her book instead of just boring psychobabble.
The psychobabble part is awesome though. I found myself startled more than a couple of times with how much I could relate to what Roth was saying. I'm now making my husband read this book so that he can understand my thought processes better.
I'm not giving concrete examples of what I learned from this book because there is SO MUCH I learned that it would be impossible. Just read this excellent book - it is surely helping to free me from the shackles of constant dieting. What a relief. I'm onto Roth's over works next.
January 23, 2016
I struggled to finish this. I guess for those who have an actual eating problem, perhaps it would be helpful. Since I myself do not suffer from an abnormal relationship with food, I found this very challenging to read. I thought that it would help me understand others who suffer from such since I am studying nutrition and will have to help people regarding this topic. But the author just kept repeating the same issues and concepts chapter after chapter it didn't feel as if any progress was being made at all. It was as if I was reading someone's sporadic diary entries over a period of time with no connection to each other whatsoever. Couldn't finish it.
January 2, 2015
Fantastic book. Spoke to me deeply
Read
June 18, 2022Not a how-to guide, but more of a memoir about Roth's journey with compulsive eating, helping others to break free of compulsive eating, and unpacking the layers of trauma beneath the compulsion, which extended well past the point where she stopped dieting and started a career as a weight-loss guru. As she was helping others, she had to continue to find out the ways that she still was in need of healing herself. I like that she states that healing is really a never-ending process. I've grown suspicious of any path that suggests otherwise.
The basic message is that compulsions are a way to distance us from ourselves, and the hard but immensely rewarding work is to stay with yourself and not try to escape into food, love, or anything else. I agree.
I was reflecting as I read on how things have changed in the last years; when I was growing up the food obsessions mainly centered around gaining or losing weight, but now in addition to that there are all the health fads, the vegan, raw food, paleo, carnivore diets, the food sensitivities, and so forth. There is so much moralizing around that, the pressure to "eat clean" and so forth. Everyone seems to have their own idea of what is the one and only true way, and many of them are in direct opposition to each other. How can that be? It's just a new version of the religion wars. And as with religion, I believe that the real truth lies beyond all such superficial differences.
The "health-food" variety of obsession is more what I've been dealing with, because although I never got into the weight loss game, I was definitely a compulsive eater. And my guilt was more about eating things that were unhealthy, than things that were fattening. But even though I tried to be "good," to eat clean according to my best understanding of what that meant, I had urges to binge on things I knew were "bad," like cookies and potato chips and croissants -- and even to eat too much of healthy things, using them to distance myself from my feelings. But I shoved my awareness of the unhealthiness of these urges aside and tried to tell myself they didn't matter, I was good enough, I needed a little fun now and then.
Recently my body started saying "no" and throwing out symptoms that forced me to reconsider my habits. To continue ignoring and abusing my body further, I would have had to ignore really uncomfortable things, and really abandon my true self and its feelings, and I guess I just decided I didn't want to do that any more. I decided to do what Roth says, to make a commitment to staying with myself, instead of going with whatever false savior of the moment was calling for me. To start noticing how I feel, and having faith in my ability to heal, to be nourished, to be filled, instead of panicking that I can never be satisfied and reaching for the nearest comfort food.
Eliminating certain foods was necessary as a step to reduce their hold on me, but it couldn't be just about not eating gluten or sugar or whatever because the real issue was that I was using those things to escape from myself. I could have continued trying to escape from myself using carrots or almond milk and those would eventually have become problematic as well.
Anyway, I think it would be interesting to address those issues -- or maybe it's really just another version of the same thing. I am interested to read more on this topic from other angles. Food and psychological health are definitely intertwined and i want to know more about healing practices.
The basic message is that compulsions are a way to distance us from ourselves, and the hard but immensely rewarding work is to stay with yourself and not try to escape into food, love, or anything else. I agree.
I was reflecting as I read on how things have changed in the last years; when I was growing up the food obsessions mainly centered around gaining or losing weight, but now in addition to that there are all the health fads, the vegan, raw food, paleo, carnivore diets, the food sensitivities, and so forth. There is so much moralizing around that, the pressure to "eat clean" and so forth. Everyone seems to have their own idea of what is the one and only true way, and many of them are in direct opposition to each other. How can that be? It's just a new version of the religion wars. And as with religion, I believe that the real truth lies beyond all such superficial differences.
The "health-food" variety of obsession is more what I've been dealing with, because although I never got into the weight loss game, I was definitely a compulsive eater. And my guilt was more about eating things that were unhealthy, than things that were fattening. But even though I tried to be "good," to eat clean according to my best understanding of what that meant, I had urges to binge on things I knew were "bad," like cookies and potato chips and croissants -- and even to eat too much of healthy things, using them to distance myself from my feelings. But I shoved my awareness of the unhealthiness of these urges aside and tried to tell myself they didn't matter, I was good enough, I needed a little fun now and then.
Recently my body started saying "no" and throwing out symptoms that forced me to reconsider my habits. To continue ignoring and abusing my body further, I would have had to ignore really uncomfortable things, and really abandon my true self and its feelings, and I guess I just decided I didn't want to do that any more. I decided to do what Roth says, to make a commitment to staying with myself, instead of going with whatever false savior of the moment was calling for me. To start noticing how I feel, and having faith in my ability to heal, to be nourished, to be filled, instead of panicking that I can never be satisfied and reaching for the nearest comfort food.
Eliminating certain foods was necessary as a step to reduce their hold on me, but it couldn't be just about not eating gluten or sugar or whatever because the real issue was that I was using those things to escape from myself. I could have continued trying to escape from myself using carrots or almond milk and those would eventually have become problematic as well.
Anyway, I think it would be interesting to address those issues -- or maybe it's really just another version of the same thing. I am interested to read more on this topic from other angles. Food and psychological health are definitely intertwined and i want to know more about healing practices.
August 20, 2019
okay wow this book was so good. i just loved how much insight it gave me into why i do the things i do, surrounding my relationship with food. i have had a bad relationship with food & my body my whole life, and my recent therapist suggested i read this book. i cried a lot as things were said that just MADE SENSE to me & words flowed from the book that gave me new understanding as to why i do the things i do. i soaked it up & ended the book by writing a whole list of statements explaining my relationship with food, as found through this book.
July 21, 2024
Listen to this as audio while driving. It’s a WHOLE lot of calling me out, in a good way!! It’s a lot to take in so I’ll definitely be returning back to it at some point
October 7, 2025
I learned a lot from it. Understanding where some of my behaviours come from. I recommended several times already.
June 26, 2017
p.20 – Food and love. We begin eating compulsively because of reasons that have to do with the kind and amount of love that is in our lives or that is missing from our lives. If we haven’t been loved well, recognized, understood, we arrange ourselves to fit the shape of our situations. We lower our expectations. We stop asking for what we need. We stop showing the places that hurt or need comfort. We stop expecting to be met. And we begin to rely on ourselves and only ourselves to provide sustenance, comfort, and pleasure. We begin to eat. And eat.
p.23 – Love and compulsion cannot coexist. Love is the willingness and ability to be affected by another human being 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, and a willingness to face, rather than run from, the worst of ourselves. 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.
The very purpose of compulsion is to protect ourselves from the pain associated with love.
p.24 – It is my belief that we become compulsive because of wounds from our past and the decision we made at that time about our self-worth – decisions about our capacity to love and whether, in fact, we deserve to be loved.
We make decisions based on our pain and the limited choices we had at that time. We make decisions based on how we made sense of the wounds and what we did to protect ourselves from being more wounded in that environment.
p.25 – At every moment, we are choosing either to reveal ourselves or to protect ourselves, to value ourselves or to diminish ourselves, to tell the truth or to hide. To dive into life or to avoid it.
p.103 – We eat the way we live. What we do with food, we do in our lives. Eating is a stage upon which we act out our beliefs about ourselves. As compulsive eaters, we use food to somatise our deepest fears, dreams, and convictions. Something is wrong when we find ourselves reeling into paroxysms of despair from eating a piece of garlic bread or three eclairs. Something is wrong when we feel we have to deprive ourselves of foods we love because we believe we would abuse them – or ourselves – if we allowed them in our lives. Something is wrong and we are using food to express it.
p.188 – Compulsion does not develop in a vacuum; it begins in relationship. Compulsion is what we restored to when we felt we didn’t matter to people who mattered to us.
p.199 – We are compulsive because of the way we feel about ourselves. There is a quality to the way we live our lives that is either compulsive or not compulsive. It is not about food or drink or drugs or work, although we may engage in those things compulsively. The hallmark of a compulsion is the inability to know when we’ve had enough. Of anything. Food, work, love, success, money. The hardest part about compulsion is that when the behavior ends, the emptiness does not.
p.202 – Not leaving when it gets hard. We wouldn’t be compulsive eaters if we knew how to stay when it got hard. But we have to practice. We have to pretend we know how to live. Making a commitment to a way of eating or to a relationship is the same: the commitment is to a way of living in the world. The commitment is to staying with yourself, not another person, not an eating program – and arranging your eating, work, relationships, and spiritual life according to your priorities. Doing what you need to do to let the life within you unfold and not letting yourself be seduced by glamour, money, fame, thinness, or the illusion that you can live a life free of pain.
p.23 – Love and compulsion cannot coexist. Love is the willingness and ability to be affected by another human being 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, and a willingness to face, rather than run from, the worst of ourselves. 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.
The very purpose of compulsion is to protect ourselves from the pain associated with love.
p.24 – It is my belief that we become compulsive because of wounds from our past and the decision we made at that time about our self-worth – decisions about our capacity to love and whether, in fact, we deserve to be loved.
We make decisions based on our pain and the limited choices we had at that time. We make decisions based on how we made sense of the wounds and what we did to protect ourselves from being more wounded in that environment.
p.25 – At every moment, we are choosing either to reveal ourselves or to protect ourselves, to value ourselves or to diminish ourselves, to tell the truth or to hide. To dive into life or to avoid it.
p.103 – We eat the way we live. What we do with food, we do in our lives. Eating is a stage upon which we act out our beliefs about ourselves. As compulsive eaters, we use food to somatise our deepest fears, dreams, and convictions. Something is wrong when we find ourselves reeling into paroxysms of despair from eating a piece of garlic bread or three eclairs. Something is wrong when we feel we have to deprive ourselves of foods we love because we believe we would abuse them – or ourselves – if we allowed them in our lives. Something is wrong and we are using food to express it.
p.188 – Compulsion does not develop in a vacuum; it begins in relationship. Compulsion is what we restored to when we felt we didn’t matter to people who mattered to us.
p.199 – We are compulsive because of the way we feel about ourselves. There is a quality to the way we live our lives that is either compulsive or not compulsive. It is not about food or drink or drugs or work, although we may engage in those things compulsively. The hallmark of a compulsion is the inability to know when we’ve had enough. Of anything. Food, work, love, success, money. The hardest part about compulsion is that when the behavior ends, the emptiness does not.
p.202 – Not leaving when it gets hard. We wouldn’t be compulsive eaters if we knew how to stay when it got hard. But we have to practice. We have to pretend we know how to live. Making a commitment to a way of eating or to a relationship is the same: the commitment is to a way of living in the world. The commitment is to staying with yourself, not another person, not an eating program – and arranging your eating, work, relationships, and spiritual life according to your priorities. Doing what you need to do to let the life within you unfold and not letting yourself be seduced by glamour, money, fame, thinness, or the illusion that you can live a life free of pain.
May 5, 2020
In all honestly I actually only read half of this book. I struggled to relate at all to what Geneen Roth was saying most of the time, because the book focuses so much on traumatic childhood experiences as root causes for dysfunctional eating and relationship patterns. Certainly experiencing childhood abuse or neglect at the hands of your parents is not the only explanation for disordered eating, and I am looking for something that will speak to a more wide range of experiences, inclusive of mine.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 15, 2015
"The problem with fantasy is the greatest benefit of fantasy: it prevents us from living in the present moment. But the present now is different from the present then."
This book was a little better written than Roth's first book, and it contains so much wisdom it's almost unbelievable. There are a few points she made here that will stick with me for a long time.
This book was a little better written than Roth's first book, and it contains so much wisdom it's almost unbelievable. There are a few points she made here that will stick with me for a long time.
November 17, 2008
This book brought up some good points. It felt more like a catharsis for the author and less like it was just for the reader but perhaps if I had gone through what she's gone through, I'd be happy to have someone tell "my" story and give me hope to break free. Worth a read, for sure.
April 7, 2016
Geneen Roth is vulnerable and honest. I was surprised by how easy it was to relate to her story even though it is so different from mine. Anyone with a troubling relationship to food should give this a go.
October 29, 2011
I read this book many years ago, and it was one of many that finally showed me that there was a way out of the trap of eating for emotional reasons. Some extra fluff, but the crux of the book is solid.
May 8, 2021
Stopped reading when I got to this overwrought masterpiece:
"The refrigerator could never break my heart. But Brad could."
This became a catchphrase for a weekend of camping. And, as my friend noted, the fridge can totally break your heart.
"The refrigerator could never break my heart. But Brad could."
This became a catchphrase for a weekend of camping. And, as my friend noted, the fridge can totally break your heart.
March 13, 2022
Muy redundante con el tema de la mala relación con sus padres, cada dos páginas lo repite. Sino creciste con malos padres, sino fuiste abusada o violentada de alguna forma, no veo que puedas encontrar el porque de tu mala relación con la comida (en mí caso por ejemplo).
March 10, 2008
Clear and easy to read. The author is painfully honest about her issues with food.
May 28, 2008
This book helped me change my life..
April 26, 2016
Great book on emotional eating. There was a little too much of her love life and relationship ups and downs for me but still a good message.
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