I read a LOT of books regarding eating, the relationship we have with eating, and eating disorders. My own relationship with food is quite distorted, so any possible light anyone can shed on the matter to help me see things clearer is not only interesting, but very helpful to me. Sometimes I can't quite believe how many self help books there actually are today, to the point where you go around and around in circles with the same advice and it just ends up being counter productive.Now in my time, I've read books such as 'Purge' by Nicole Johns, 'Thin' by Grace Bowman, and 'Wasted' by Marya Hornbacher, so having a book such as this which can really open up a whole new different perspective is great.
Geneen has featured on Oprah to talk about her book, and here are two very different viewpoints from two women with very different careers.
New York Daily News reporter Brooke Parkhurst says the following:
“Your relationship to food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation, and, yes, even God.”
That’s a lot to chew on—especially considering I just ate a rib-eye, an arugula salad and several wedges of brie for dinner…
WARNING: Do not read Geneen Roth’s latest, greatest, Oprah-approved, New York Times #1 best-seller after a large, Tuesday-night meal alone.
To simultaneously digest the steak and the book proves to be too much for my body. I begin thinking,
“You would have been satiated after five ounces—why’d you eat eight? Did you really need those slices of triple-cream? Brooke, put down the brie. Step away from the cheese. Okay, listen you two-bit hussy, an extra sliver is not going to bring Hubby home from work…”
Roth, and her seventh tome about compulsive eating, Women Food and God, take a quick, comfortable position in your brain. I want to say that they reside in your consciousness just as easily as a slice of late-night pizza fits into the palm of your hand after a Saturday-night bar crawl, but, I don’t think Geneen would appreciate the fatty, impulse-eating analogy.
The truth is, the minute you crack open Women Food and God, you instantly look within and examine your relationship with food. (You might even step on the scale—or try to squeeze into your skinny jeans— though I don’t think Geneen necessarily promotes either of these.)
My connection with food, truth be told, has been relatively healthful. Mother fixed me and the family nourishing—even elegant—meals, three times a day, six days a week (Sunday meant moussaka at the Greek diner across from church) and I subsequently grew up to adore everything about food, the kitchen and mealtime.
But, then again, that’s not really the point, is it? The important part is the childhood, the early adulthood, the person, the moments behind the recipes I write and the dinner parties that I host.
While I’ve never really struggled with my weight, I am very aware that now, at age 30, as a wife and a mother to an 11 month-old, I weigh twenty pounds less than I did in college. How’s that possible? Well, I’m happy.
At twenty-one, studying in Rome, Italy—immersed in a different culture, speaking a different language, wondering what the heck I was going to do when I “grew up”—I didn’t have a very good sense of self. I was confused. I was angry at everyone else who seemed to have a clear path in life. While I appreciated the fact that my parents gave me the opportunity to explore a different country and explore my talents (if I even had any?!), I wasn’t terribly content. And so I slurped down plates of pasta. I tore into foccaccia. I never went a day without a bowl of gelato.
After Italy, I moved to New York. I knew virtually no one and I hated my job. Guess what I did? I ate—Chinatown crispy beef, Nolita pasta, Midtown steaks, downtown Mexican and always dessert. I joined a gym and knew that would solve everything.
But, of course, a gym membership didn’t do much of anything but suck up my time and $100 per month. The hours that should have been spent examining why I was unhappy and how I could change my life and my relationship with food, I spent on a treadmill taking me nowhere.
The happy— and ironic— evolution of my food story is that I lost the weight after meeting and falling in love with my husband, a chef. We have absolutely experienced our difficult moments—and we’ve also probably eaten more than our fair share of foie gras, pimento cheese and Mississippi Mud Cake… But, in the end, I think he nourishes me and I nourish him so that food is not a crutch. We’re happy; we eat just enough.
Geneen and Women Food and God have taught me that my relationship with food, with myself and with my past must continually evolve. I’m far from enlightened. (Remember all that cheese I senselessly ate??) But, by sitting down and reading her little gem of a book, I’m on the right path. Have I found God? Well, God’s in the details—and in the perfect, tiny sliver of brie.
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