When Food Is Love: Exploring the Relationship Between Eating and Intimacy

It is neither a diet nor getting-thin-the-other-way book. This is a book about love. Well, not even about love. While the author does not state it explicitly, her story is about that comfortable and healing feeling of safety and security experienced when a person feels loved and accepted.The author has the guts and nerve to tell the truth: "... after I reached my natural weight and stayed there, I discovered that it wasn't being thin I wanted, it was getting thin." Getting-thin is the grand illusion that masks the pain by making us believe that life will turn around, and suffering will stop once we get there. No. It is not true.Geneen is interweaving her stories of struggling with weight and building a love relationship. Before the book I could only guess that these two vulnerable and sensitive areas of my life were interconnected. However, "Eating is the metaphor for the way we live," and the similarities are so painfully striking... For 25 years I kept the childish idea that getting thin means being loved and safe. Safe was the key word in my endless diets and pills and food plans and body hatred struggle. It has stopped recently. I am a bit overweight. I am loved by a nice man. I feel content with myself and life.There is no such thing as (complete) safety. While I was taught from childhood that I have to be pretty and likable to rely on others for safety either through love or friendship, I now know it is a road to suffering. The chapter about the author's Model Mugging class was a revelation. Thanks to Geneen, I also know that when I suddenly have a fat-and-ugly attack and a compelling desire to lose 40 pounds before Christmas, it means that readings of my pain and fear meters are too high. It means I need to dive into the pain and release it.The book is full of drama--I was way too exited. It is disturbing--I cried a lot while reading it. It is sometimes painful and always touching. It offers a sober and sane approach. It stops that grand illusion.The book is also a keeper. I will not give it away, even to my good friends. I would buy several more copies for them instead.

I've been in therapy for years struggling with an obsession with food. Two separate therapists have tried to dig into my childhood loneliness, but I couldn't connect the emptiness to eating beyond a surface level of awareness. I couldn't *identify* any feelings I needed to grieve for. None of it seemed important or traumatic enough.The raw, personal, SPECIFIC writing in this book - the emphasis on her perspective as a child, on her clients' perspectives as children - finally exposed those concepts for me in a way that was concrete instead of generic and abstract. From the first page, every other passage was a punch to the gut. She does NOT pull her punches.My therapist did point out, and was right in an abstract way, that food was there when affection wasn't. But, the author describing how she was called "selfish" as a child for having childlike needs - how food was a way to give to herself and experience pleasure when she felt pressured to care for others and be selfless - how she wandered from empty room to empty room before stopping at the fridge - how she learned to survive by the fantasy that she would be loved when she got thin - these descriptions accessed that truth in a much deeper way. She may as well have been telling the story of my own childhood, in greater detail than I could ever remember before. The concepts are so much better communicated than generic self help instructions.I'm not sure where to go from here, besides bringing all the highlighted passages to therapy. But I'm at least fairly certain I won't be taking these feelings to the fridge.

It was like a flashback to the 80s! Omg a lot of stuff that I remember from my childhood are mentioned even though the book is dated a lot of the information is useful and can still apply to today crazy enough !

Words almost fail me as I attempt to describe how much this one book has helped me. Besides God's word the holy bible, I can honestly say this book has moved me and caused me to rethink not only my past and present but where I want to be in the future. Also, the types of relationships I have and want to have with others and most important with myself.This is not a book offering a quick fix. To be frank, there are times I have had to book the book down because the words were too painful since I relate on so many levels with Ms. Roth. This book will make you laugh and cry and most importantly, examine YOU - the person you truly are -- where you came from -- confronting your painful past and realizing that it is your job to go rescue that abused child from your past before you can be a whole adult in the present.I would recommend this book to anyone struggling with a food addiction, especially if you have abuse (physical, emotional or sexual) in your background. It really is not about the food - it is about finding a way to look at the past and tell the truth to yourself so you can nurture yourself, stop torturing and punishing yourself with food and learn to love yourself so you can open your heart in an authentic way to others.I have spent lots of money on therapy but never quite felt like I was getting the help I needed. While this publication cannot replace therapy, it definitely has helped me see that there is light at the end of the tunnel and for that I am forever grateful.

Intuitive eating is nothing new to me. I have read many books on the subject and had a great many "successes" in weight loss, with eating when I was hungry and stopping when I felt full. But the weight I lost never stayed off. And it was only until I read this amazing book that I realised why. My weight had nothing to do with me not being able to listen to my body. My weight wasn't even about me being a lazy fat ass (cos that's what I found myself calling myself almost every day). I wasn't an anomaly - the one person in the world who was just destined to stay 2 stone overweight. My weight and my relationship with food was a necessary crutch I needed in order to make it through my life. Food covered the pain of my childhood. A pain I imagined to be so bad, I thought looking at it would kill me (well I was wrong about that!).This book is not about what to eat. Or when to eat. It''s about looking at your pain and being brave and learning that the food and weight thing is a cover story to a deeper issue. And if you look at what the real issues are, the issues from childhood that we are all trying to run from, not only will your relationship with food get better and your weight will decrease, you will reconcile with parts of yourself you never thought you'd be friends with. This book has changed and saved my life. In so many ways.. I know that while I'm losing weight, it's not about getting to a certain size. I now see my body size as an indicator to determine how I'm dealing with my inner issues. This book made me realise that I get to decide who I want to be. I can't express how amazing it is. When you read this book and if you are willing to do the work on yourself, you will forever change your dependency on food. It will not control you anymore. You will be free. Every time I feel like I'm going to binge, I know it is a sign of inner pain. And I sit with that pain and I allow myself to feel it. I would have never done that before. And the experience of feeling ALL my emotions is incredibly empowering. Food is covering pain that I gave so much power to. And now I see that while it's uncomfortable, it's not nearly as difficult to deal with as I imagined!

J'avais l'impression qu'elle me décrivait! Je ne comprends pas ma relation avec la nourriture, je sais qu'elle me détruit mais je n'arrive pas à m'arrêter, je manger pour me punir des fois de mes échecs, je mange parce que j'ai peur, parce que je suis triste, parce que je suis déçue. Rares sont les moments où je me contrôle et plus d'une fois où je balance en air tout mes efforts faits pour perdre du poids. Ce livre m'a énormément touché, l'auteur est si profonde dans sa description de ce que c'est un emotional eater, ses comportements, ses réactions, sa façon de penser et de vivre en général. Elle parle du vécu d'autres personnes de ses workshops. Il n'ya pas de consignes dans ce livre, il est plutôt fait comme un roman, mais c'est impressionnant comment j'ai pu arrêter de me torturer avec la nourriture et de finalement poser un trait sur ce qui est bon pour moi et mauvais uniquement avec ce que l'auteur racontait.Je le recommande à toute personne qui reproche à la nourriture tout ce qui tourne mal dans sa vie, à toute celle qui pense que le fait de perdre du poids pourrait la rendre heureuse

Geneen Roth is an absolute genius. Her writings are the reason I have finally been able to break free from emotional, over eating binges. She deserves all the praise for what she has poured into her books. Thank you Geneen. You are a rare and wonderful mind!

Interesting thoughts but mainly for those who didn’t have love as a child.

Really good read for all of us who are having distorted relationship with food. Eye opening!