Jennifer Lovejoy, PhD, Vice President, Clinical Development & Support

The latest book by Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God, is appropriately subtitled “An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything.” Roth’s premise is simple: the way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about life.  As such, eating provides a wonderful mirror for how we relate to every aspect of our lives, including our spirituality.  The book is packed with real-life examples from Roth’s workshops with women who struggle with food – overeating, under-eating, or simply obsessing about food - many of which are very touching and easy for many women to relate to.

One of the things I liked best about the book was that Roth identifies mindful eating as a powerful strategy to apply to your relationship with food. She makes a point throughout the book that “what you most want to get rid of is itself the doorway to what you want most.” For many people, the desire is “I just want this extra weight to go away.” Upon being told that the solution is to squarely confront our feelings about eating and weight, our natural instinct may be “RUN!” Unfortunately, ignoring the way we mindlessly down boxes of cookies or bags of chips is not really going to help the problem go away. While it may be difficult and painful to face the true reasons we overeat, doing so in a mindful, non-judgmental way with a high degree of compassion for ourselves is a powerful step toward healing.

Similarly, while we may not like our bodies (or at least certain parts of them), it’s worth remembering that our bodies are what allow us to feel the pleasure of the warm sun on our skin, hold our loved ones, and, yes, enjoy the sensual pleasure of eating delicious foods.  I find, as does Roth, that many people today are out of touch with their bodies. We live in our minds, and body is just an inconvenient thing that develops aches or pains and gains weight. But the body is also what allows us to sense hunger and fullness, and when we are out of touch with those feelings, we are no longer able to accurately judge when we want to eat because we are truly hungry (vs. when we are sad, bored, angry, stressed, etc) nor when we should stop eating because we are physically full. Eating, with enjoyment, when you are physically hungry and not when you aren’t is a key long-term strategy to maintain a healthy weight. Note the emphasis on “enjoyment” – if you only eat when you are physically hungry but are eating like a rabbit and hating every minute of it, it’s probably not going to be a life-long sustainable approach to eating.

Finally, if you are not someone who’s interested in spiritual matters, don’t be put off by the title of the book. Roth does discuss spirituality but it is not the major focus of the book.  Nonetheless, consideration of “spiritual hunger” has been important to many overweight individuals I’ve worked with over the years. As Roth puts it: “We don’t want to be thin because is inherently life-affirming or loveable…We want to be thin because thinness is the purported currency of happiness and peace and contentment in our time.” Unfortunately, being thin doesn’t really guarantee any of those things (witness the many skinny celebrities whose misery is often the subject of tabloid stories). And being thin definitely doesn’t address inner feelings of emotional or spiritual emptiness. Fortunately, for most of us, the solutions are simple (if not easy): take time to meditate and focus on the sensations of your breath and your body, eat your food mindfully without distractions, and eat with, in Roth’s words “enjoyment, gusto and pleasure.”  Even small steps toward these goals will bring benefits for your mind, body and spirit!