Seven Eating Guidelines

Geneen Roth's seven eating guidelines say it like it is. We were born eating the way the guidelines describe – we ate when hungry, stopped when satisfied, and ate food our bodies liked. We enjoyed the food, and in the beginning always ate in the company of somebody else, undistracted and calm.

The seven eating guidelines describe natural being. They're not a prescription, but a description of what's still inside you. Even if it seems like it's covered over by emotional eating, and hard to find again, natural being (and natural eating) is still here. You can’t get rid of your natural wisdom!

During the 10 years I was a teacher at the Reflections & Revelations retreats led by Geneen Roth - on which her new bestseller Women Food and God is based - I saw many people find their natural appetite again. And it was always a rejoicing moment.

I also saw many people experience - to their surprise – stopping when satisfied. They could choose food that made their bodies glad, eat undistractedly, and rediscover the very simple pleasure of food.

Geneen Roth's seven eating guidelines are about eating - and they're also about your life, your natural life. And at the root of us, our natural life is our spiritual life.

Can you let yourself want what you want? Hunger is just basic wanting, the kind of natural wanting that is alive in us before we even think about it. And wanting is completely natural, not only food but experience that leads towards us growing. If you look back on the times in your life you really, really wanted something you'll find that it always led to you growing.

Does that mean wanting always leads to those fade-into-glowing-sunset moments Hollywood loves so much? Not at all. Does wanting always lead to growing? When it's real, always.

We do sometimes find ourselves wanting something not real, something not in integrity with our inner core. And whether it's doughnuts and Doritos, or as much money as possible to cover up a lifelong anxiety about dying, there's no real growing when we get it. Cookies and chips temporarily soothe parts of us that carry anxiety or depression, but we don't get the nourishment of getting what we really want, or the strengthening and empowerment of moving towards what's really true for us.

Uncovering our natural selves does take time and effort. But we have another ally on our side – another natural ally. When we feel inside ourselves, and we go on feeling (with our thinking being a partner of that feeling), we can begin to notice the longing in us. This longing is the ultimate wanting. It invites us into the deepest places in us. We long for truth, for freedom, for love and liberation. We long to be ourselves, to be close to God (if that’s our flavor), or to just live in a natural relationship to food. How is that relationship? The seven eating guidelines describe it – start there, pay attention to how you’re not eating like that, and follow the wanting. Follow the natural wanting back to yourself.

Why Women God and Food?

Women Food and God by Geneen Roth is a current New York Times bestseller. Finally, a book that says "dieting doesn't work" has hit the mainstream and told the truth about compulsive eating and eating disorders. Even Oprah, maven of a million diets said she's had an ‘ah-hah’ and realized it's not about food. And that's true, it's not about food.

Women Food and God says "When the shape of your body no longer matches the shape of your beliefs, the weight disappears." That makes it sound easy: change your beliefs and change your weight. But there's another piece involved, having to do with feelings and with relationship. Let me explain.

For 10 years I taught at the Reflections & Revelations retreats that Women Food and God is based on. I loved participating there and considered - still do - the retreats a unique and shining example of inner work in relationship to food. Geneen Roth is a master teacher and a pioneering healer of compulsive eating and I feel very fortunate to have worked with her for so long.

I worked with hundreds of Reflections & Revelations retreat students in that time, teaching a simple body-based form of meditation, facilitating process groups, supporting people in their questions and their struggles during the retreats - and working individually with many, many students in between the retreats.

And I found myself undergoing an evolution during that period: more and more I discovered that what heals is emotional life in relationship.

Understanding flows from that healing, but healing doesn't flow simply from understanding. Beliefs change because of healing, but the reverse isn't true, healing doesn't flow from changed beliefs. And our lives with food, with the affliction/ blessing and the blessing/affliction of compulsive eating, are the clearest expression of our yearning for healing. We want healing and it shows up in our life with food and eating. No wonder diets don't work.

My own work with individuals began to shift. I gradually lost interest in doing anything directly with beliefs because I saw and felt very clearly that the beliefs of my students changed when their underlying emotional relationships changed - with food, with themselves and with others. And then their bodies changed. Bodies don't change, weight doesn't alter because you've managed to wrestle a belief to the ground. I wish it were that easy, but it's not.

Our relationship with food starts soon after we take our first breath. We don't have thoughts and beliefs in those early stages of our lives but what's crucial to us is our emotions and particularly our relationships. So healing our relationship with food has to take place in the domain of relationships and emotions. There's no other way.

My work with people now is much more emotionally sourced than it used to be. And being in healing relationship with somebody who champions your deepest possibilities and can feel your deepest longings, is enormous support. Support of this kind makes it possible to lovingly renegotiate how you live your life with food - and with yourself. Your relationship with others directly mirrors your relationship with yourself - and with food. And although you can’t heal those early relationships, you can bring into the supportive relationships in your current life your emotional early world – and watch healing magically happen, beliefs shift, understanding emerge – and your body change toward a more natural you.