Foundations: Women, Food, and God

"Overeating does not lead to rapture. It leads to burping and farting and being so sick that you can't think of anything but how full you are. That's not love, that's suffering."

This is a quote from the wonderful book, Women, Food, and God, by Geneen Roth. Her basic premise is one I have borrowed and adapted here, that those of us who are overweight or obese are not wrong, we do not need stricter rules or self-punishment, God knows we don't need lap band surgery. What we need is to entirely change our relationship with food. But this must be done gently and with love in order for it to succeed or, indeed, for it to be at all worthwhile. To create more suffering in the name of ending the suffering we feel around food is not only inherently wrong but self-defeating, since nearly all of us who engage in such cruelty toward ourselves will regain all the weight we lose this way, plus a few pounds.

Roth knows whereof she speaks. She was for much of her life morbidly obese and unable to curb her appetites. She tried all the popular diets and experienced the yo-yoing cycle of loss and gain most of us have been through in our eating lives. What she advocates here is a radical departure from all that, and the proof of its efficacy is her ongoing ability to maintain herself at or near her goal weight.

"The bottom line, whether you weigh 340 pounds or 150 pounds, is that when you eat when you are not hungry, you are using food as a drug, grappling with boredom or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection."

This is a truth deeply ingrained in my philosophy here, that we are using food as a drug (and many of us, not surprisingly, have also struggled with addiction to other substances). When we feel unworthy, we believe that comfort can be found in food. The more unworthy we feel, the more we eat. But what we find is that eating, just like other drugs and diversions (sex, shopping, gambling, exercise), when taken to an extreme actually feeds our self-loathing rather than doing anything to assuage it.

"Replacing the hunger for divine connection with Double Stuf Oreos is like giving a glass of sand to a persons who is dying of thirst. It creates more thirst, more panic. Combine the utter inefficacy of dieting with the lack of spiritual awareness and we have generations of mad, ravenous, self-loathing [people]."

Roth believes that, for those of us who use it this way, food can be our greatest teacher. When I come face to face with my struggle to keep from using food to make myself feel OK, I am in the midst of a great spiritual opportunity. There might as well be a sign on that cinnamon roll saying, "This way to God", the trick being that it's in the not eating of it that I have the opportunity to deepen myself spiritually.

"As long as you are as curious about your disappointment as you are thrilled about your joy, you will not need to use food as a drug. Obsession is an unexpected path because it relentlessly points you back to yourself; whenever you want to eat when you are not hungry or don't want to stop when you've had enough, you know something is occurring that needs your kindness and attention."

In the service of this investigation, she advocates a very specific approach to eating that I have not wholeheartedly adopted. I find that the first of her guidelines, "Eat when you are hungry" leaves me a bit too much leeway to define what "hungry" means. As I outlined in the posts on hunger, my hunger may actually be the expression of many different states of mind, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with my body's need for sustenance. This is why I, while using her tools of investigation around my relationship to food, use a calorie restriction not primarily to lose weight, but to force myself to face my hungers when they are not physical. She also advocates eating without distractions, specifically excluding working at the computer or reading a book while eating. But there is little I like better than eating while reading. I would much rather use a calorie count than give that up.

Don't get me wrong, I am not dismissing her philosophy at all, and I am certain that the guidelines she advocates work well for her and many others; they just weren't right for me. But to my way of thinking, the guidelines are not the most valuable part of this book, not by a long shot. What resonates most thoroughly for me is her advocacy of a wholesale change in our relationship to food. She articulates it here more clearly than I have seen anywhere else. No matter what you decide to do about how and why you eat, this book is one I highly recommend you read.

(This is part of an ongoing series detailing the sources of my inspiration. The list, which will be updated whenever I post a new one, is here).