Women Food and God (Roth)

For lunch today, I went to an Italian restaurant with a work colleague. I probably should’ve gotten a nice green salad with the dressing on the side, but that’s hard to do in an Italian restaurant, at least for me, and I gave in to the temptation of manicotti. As it turns out, it was really good manicotti, with flavorful tomato sauce and creamy herbed ricotta. Given my decadent lunch, I thought I’d write today about a book that I read recently called Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth.
It wasn't quite what I thought it would be. Based on the title, I assumed it would be from the Christian perspective, but it's not. It's sort of New Age in feeling. I enjoyed it though and thought there were some good insights about being mindful about what and how much we are eating, not turning to food when instead we should be dealing with our feelings, and that sort of thing. I guess the author has been on Oprah and is pretty well-known for writing about the link between emotions and eating.

She writes quite a bit about being in the moment and thinking about a world larger than yourself, often by observing nature and the details of what’s going on around you. “It was like those times when I can’t sleep and I am thrashing in bed, hot and sweaty and wound in a knot of feverish mental activity. A thought enters like a prayer: Go outside. Walk out the front door and look at the sky. Just for a minute. Listen to the night. If I can rouse myself from the hypnotic trance of what’s wrong, I throw a sweater on, pad to the door, and step into the vault of night. Coolness. Silence. A million points of glitter. Heart beats once, twice, three times. The mind sloughs its frenzy, merges with the expanse. Dazzled by a world that bears no resemblance to the one of ten minutes ago, the one I perpetually construct in my head, I slip back into the house as if I, too, am a pinpoint of luster from the boundless dimension, padding along some strange hallway, disappearing with each step until I fall back asleep.”

I think she makes some good points, and I really enjoyed her writing style.
This next quote is a good example of what the book is about: “When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop. When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart.”
With that nice quote in mind, I admit I’m off to watch the season finale of The Bachelor…