The Last Diet Advice You’ll Ever Need
Swimsuit season is now upon us.
You really want to hear the last diet advice you’ll ever need? Here it is: Follow these guidelines from Geneen Roth’s new book, Women Food & God. And read on to hear why…
The Eating Guidelines
- Eat when you are hungry.
- Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
- Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety producing conversation or music.
- Eat what your body wants.
- Eat until you are satisfied.
- Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.
- Eat with enjoyment, gusto and pleasure.
It seems so simple, right? So simple because it is.
Yet, we still have a weight problem and a food obsession. It’s not a self-discipline issue, or even a body-image issue. At least not entirely.
The reason we can’t reason ourselves to a healthy relationship with our bodies and food is because it isn’t a will issue, it is a spiritual one.
And if you are sick of yo-yoing and tired of chasing the latest diet fad you have arrived at a very good place. Read on…
Let me tell you about my family.
I have three sisters. All of us had/have issues with food and body image.
One of us started taking laxatives in high school and traveled to a foreign country to get liposuction when they were only 24 years old. One of us spent three years eating nothing but steamed cabbage and weighed under 90 lbs. One of us battled obesity and got the lap band surgery to make her stomach the size of a quarter.
My mom also struggled. When she was pregnant with me she restricted her calories to 500/day. She counted saltines as a meal.
I was the one who spent one month at an Eating Disorder Clinic for overeating. After being called out for anorexia in highschool I was so ashamed about my struggle with food, that I tried to cover up the issue by bouncing to the other extreme. I learned over eating when I was a flight attendant as a way to stuff my loneliness. I feigned such cheerfulness on the outside, but locked in my hotel room, the real saddness would come out, and I would binge until I fell asleep.
What is especially special about food is how revealing it is of the healing that needs to be done in our heart.
How we eat is how we live.
When we deprive ourselves or over-indulge ourselves, we know the real issue isn’t the swim suit we want to wear or the chocolate cake we want to eat. We could just as much be popping pills, racking up debt, or hopping from bed to bed. Addictions are coping mechanism and fundamentally they are all the same– they give us an escape so we do not have to deal with what we think we cannot deal with.
When we vow to lose the last 10 lbs, or, fed up on living on broccoli alone, throw in the towel on one more diet and binge on Fat-Free cookies, what we are really craving is not a certain size or surge of sugar, but to feel the fullness of love, acceptance and significance.
We want to know we are truly safe, and truly wanted. Food is our clearest substitute for comfort, and in our society, it’s the one addiction that is condoned.
But what is really going on?
Geneen Roth in her brilliant book says this:
Our relationship to food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life itself. I believe we are walking, talking expressions of our deepest convictions; everything we believe about love, fear, transformation and God is revealed in how we eat. When we inhale Reese’s peanut butter cups when we are not hungry, we are acting out of an entire world of hope or hopelessness, of faith or doubt, of love or fear. If we are interested in finding out what we actually believe–not what we think, not what we say, but what our souls are convinced is the bottom line truth about life and afterlife–we need go no further than the food on our plates. God is not just in the details; God is also in the muffins, the fried sweet potatoes and the tomato vegetable soup. God–however we define him or her–is on our plates.
My sisters and I talk openly about our struggles with food–that is, when there is not an actual plate of food in front of us. We have a bold theory. We think every woman suffers. We don’t think any of us our exempt. We think every woman out there in the Americanized world has had at least one battle with what she puts in her mouth; at least one demeaning conversation with her reflection in the mirror. Every meaningful female friendship I’ve ever had from the time I was 12 years old has born witness to this confession: I too have experienced a personal war with food.
This personal war with food is a sweeping epidemic. Sweeping. And, for the most part, we are numb to it.
To be on a diet, to yo-yo back and forth 10-50 lbs, to crave, to binge, to shamefully repent and punish ourselves– this is all so commonplace it’s almost boring. We no longer bring it up in conversation, but we martyr through it in silence, believing the lie that this is what it meant to be a woman.
We were never meant to spend the better part of our womanhood battling food. Food is not the enemy. Food is a substitute for the enemy. And the role it plays in distracting us from our self-worth and the real good we can contribute to the world makes me angry. We could be doing and experiencing so much more if we were free from this battle.
I love Geneen Roth so much for her work. Her book, Women Food & God is the clearest expose of what is really going on with us, that I have ever read. I read it pouring with gratitude, my tears underlining every page. Yes, yes, this is all so true. This is exactly how I found my way out. Somehow I arrived on the other side of this battle with food. It happened gradually sometime between my 8th month of pregnancy with Lucca and when he turned 2 years old. One day I woke up and realized I was no longer controlled by thoughts of what I ate or how I looked. I was following Food Guidelines number 1 and 4 and 7 without even thinking about it. My body had finally arrived at the way to freedom, because my spirit had finally admitted the truth.
Looking back on my life, it was just as Geneen said: it was never about the food or the scale. It was about my feeling of worth, lack, emptiness and shame. I saw the patterns in my life with drugs and men and food and all of it pointed to a brokenness that longed to be revealed and healed, no longer stuffed down, ignored or denied.
I think about what the Bible says about the power of confession often. When we bring our darkness to light, the darkness disappears. It cannot stay as it was. Hidden it has Power; revealed it has none.
I said in a Tweet when I was reading Geneen’s book that I think “every lady with a body should read Women Food & God and “I wish I would have read it when I was 15.” Geneen’s book brings awareness to the real issues like I’ve never seen done before. She states thing simply, gently, and the truth of her words will resonate with your core.
However– this is important — the book will not transform you by head knowledge. Wisdom must be lived in order to mean anything personally. The real work will be done in your daily choices– to be present with your plate, to apply what you now know. One thing I know from repeated experience is that you can stuff information like you can food– a great book can be just another “fix” to help you feel temporarily more powerful and in control. But hope doesn’t have to end when the book or the binge is over. You can take action. You can live your day absolutely aware that you aren’t in this alone; that this struggle is universal;
Commit to the deeply personal work of facing yourself and practice lovingly the Eating Guidelines above. Read Women Food & God and get help if you need more support. There is no shame. This truly can be the last diet advice you’ll ever need. On the other side of all this muck, a life of wholeness really does await.
If you have the courage please share with us your thoughts, or maybe even your confessions…
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