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.