Geneen Roth
Women Food and God Online-Retreat
Part One / Week One: “Ending Your War With Food” Part One / Week One Summary Presented by
Geneen Roth Moderated by
Cheryl Richardson
PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food” Notes by Robyn Bloom, Edited by Judy Ross
INTRODUCTON & WELCOME Cheryl Richardson, Moderator: Bring yourself to this moment. Give yourself the gift of this time by situating yourself in a place where you will be uninterrupted and really present.
NOTES:
• Geneen will share about her personal relationship with food. • She will guide you through a short meditation exercise. • Geneen will discuss tonight’s topic: “Ending Your War With Food.” • She will answer questions that have been submitted by the participants. • The session will conclude with action steps – two “Practices” – for the coming week. Geneen Roth: Welcome to everyone. I am so touched and honored that you have chosen to spend your time here with me. I know there are many other things you could have done with your time, energy and money. And I am very, very honored you have chosen to be here with me. After reading all of your questions, I recognize all the pain, longing, hopelessness, desperation, joy and possibility. My own relationship with food has held the most profound depths of despair I have ever felt. So I understand the depths of what you are feeling. I want to share a bit of my story. I started eating compulsively at a very early age and went on my first diet at age 11. Through my teen years, I was dieting and bingeing and dieting and bingeing. I went on every imaginable diet: Atkins, mono foods diet, Weight Watchers, and diets I made up, like the Grape Nuts diet, fried chicken diet, hot fudge sundae diet, prunes and applesauce diet. I was so desperate to lose weight, to fix myself. I believed that if I got my “food thing” together, I could get my life together. If I could eliminate my suffering around weight, then the rest would be better. Wanting to be thin at any cost and under the guise of making myself healthier, I did the Master Cleanse. I starved myself for a couple of weeks and lost a lot of weight. Still believing this was a healthy way to lose weight, I kept it up, starving myself, limiting my calories and jogging 4 miles a day. I became anorexic, weighing only 82 pounds. After 1-1/2 years of this deprivation, I could not stand it any longer. I started bingeing, doubled my weight in 2 months and became suicidal. I thought, “If this was what life is all about, I don’t want to participate in it anymore.” It was the lowest point in my life.
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food” After I read Fat is a Feminist Issue and feeling that I had nothing more to lose, I decided to do what I had never before thought of doing: to STOP DIETING. It was a sudden understanding that I wanted to try something I had never done, before I killed myself: to trust myself. That was a possibility about my relationship with food that I had never imagined. To trust myself to stop eating when I had enough. I realized that if I listened to myself, I already had the all of the answers. I stopped trying to fix myself.
If I listen to myself, I realize I already have all the answers.
I gained weight at first, then leveled off and then started losing weight, reaching what I consider my natural weight. I’ve maintained that for 30 years now, give or take 5 pounds here or there. I tell you my story, because I want you to know that no matter how crazy, desperate or hopeless you feel, I know for certain, for fact, that it is absolutely possible to work through your relationship with food. I know this, like I know that there is an earth, there is a sky. I know that if I can do it, anyone can do it. I know that it is possible to untangle and unwind this obsession with food so that food can become a source of nourishment, not a source of desperation and self-hatred. NOTES:
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food”
MEDITATION PRACTICE I would like to introduce our Meditation Practice.
NOTES:
Your mind might be racing, taking notes, but the best way to listen to these Retreat sessions is to come home to yourself, to your body – to be present. It might be very hard to believe, especially if you are feeling discomfort or pain, but half of the journey home is by being relaxed, by coming home to yourself, to your body that you already have. The way to do that is to start by taking some breaths. I start every Retreat session by doing an orienting, grounding and centering exercise. I am introducing this now, so that you can do this with yourself, by yourself, anywhere, anytime. Guided Meditation Find a comfortable position. Become aware that the ground is supporting you. You do not have to ask, control or manipulate it. The Earth is here. It is supporting you. It is not falling down or crumbling. It is supporting where you are sitting right now. Feel that support. Notice that support. Notice what you already have, not what you don’t have. You have this support without even asking for it.
Let yourself come into your body.
Notice the places where your body is touching the ground or external surfaces, like the chair or sofa or bed. Let yourself come into your body. So much of compulsive eating is not being aware of your body. You eat what you mind says it wants – not what your body says – when eating compulsively. Notice this body that has schlepped you around your entire life, taking you everywhere, from place to place. Notice your legs, which have been faithful servants, though mostly what has been heaped on them is judgment. Take a moment now to feel your legs, to feel your arms. Then notice your breath, which has been breathing you, all along, without having to ask. Notice the movement in your body of your breath, and how it pooches out your belly, that part of your body that you judge. Just notice that your breath moves it out and in. Let yourself come into the present moment by coming into your body.
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food” Then notice your breath, which has been breathing you, all along, without havng to ask. Notice the movement in your body of your breath, and how it pooches out your belly, that part of your body that you judge. Just notice that your breath moves it out and in. Let yourself come into the present moment by coming into your body. Our body is the piece of the universe that we have been given. It is the place where we experience everything, and yet very little time is spent truly in our body. Most the time that we spend in our bodies is from the neck up, but most of our anguish about compulsive eating has to do with our judgments from the neck down.
Our body is the piece of the universe that we have been given.
So notice what happens if you look at yourself from the inside. Not from the outside. From feeling it, without judgment. Notice how that affects you. Are you antsy, anxious, judgmental? Are you asking yourself, “When does the real call begin?” Notice what comes up and let it be okay. See how that affects you, to come into this body you have. Good! NOTES:
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food”
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THIS WORK PRINCIPLE ONE: Diets Don’t Work.
NOTES:
Diets don’t teach you to trust yourself because they are based on shame, fear, deprivation and self-loathing. Diets say that if you trusted yourself, if you listened to yourself, you would devour the universe. The message is that your hungers cannot be trusted. Diets tell you that who you are is not okay, and you must be imprisoned, guarded, monitored and controlled. PRINCIPLE TWO: No One Changes Because They Loathe, Judge, Shame and Deprive Themselves. People do not change because they hate themselves into changing. Depriving, loathing and shaming yourself does not lead to becoming who you want to be – a happy, loving person. The means to the end cannot be separated from the end. How you work with your relationship with food shapes who you become. If you try to change by shaming and depriving yourself, you become a shamed and deprived human being. This is a chance to learn a different way. PRINCIPLE THREE: You Always Turn To Food For Exquisitely Good Reasons. You turn to food because you believe it is the best you can do and that food is saving your life. You believe that you have no other choice, or that it is the kindest thing you can do, given the choices that you have. It is important to look at your relationship to food from that perspective and understand that you always do what you do for the best possible reasons. If you don’t, you will continue to look at yourself from the lens of self-hatred. And hatred does not lead to change or to love. PRINCIPLE FOUR: Pain Is Part Of Life. No one is immune to pain. Discomfort and some degree of pain are absolutely built in to the fabric of life. It is not possible to live a life clear of pain. It is so good to know that, because so many turn to food to make the pain go away. But food cannot take the pain away. 5
PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food”
Food Is The Doorway To The Life You Want Most.
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Your relationship with food is itself the doorway – an opening to the life that you most want. Everything you believe about life, love, goodness, badness, abundance, deprivation and joy comes out in everything that you do. Cheri Huber says, “The way we do anything is the way we do everything.” The way you eat reflects your deepest beliefs about the way you live. If you could extract all the pain you have around food, you would find another way to act out your beliefs about abundance, or lack of abundance, about selfworth, or lack of self-worth. If you believe that you are not worthy of goodness, are not allowed to have what you want, or that there is not enough, those feelings will come out in your relationship with food. If you believe that you are not allowed to have joy, or that joy is for other people, then you will find a way to take the real pleasure of eating away. You will find a way to make eating a painful experience by eating by while driving, reading, standing up, bingeing, etc.
It’s not that we believe what we see. It’s that we see what we believe. Our relationship with food allows us – because we are acting it out – to see what our beliefs are. Once we are aware of what our beliefs are, then we can question them. Most of us were given our beliefs by around us. Even if nothing bad happened to you as a child, you still got a set of instructions about who you are supposed to be, who you are, that are not exactly in tune with your deepest self. Because nobody else, not even the best parent in the world, can know the true magnificence that is YOU. Only you can know yourself, from inside your skin. Nobody knows what is best for you, but YOU. Those beliefs that you were given early in life show up in your relationship with food, if you are curious and actually want to know about it. Ending the war and dropping the struggle with our relationship with food is possible if we are interested in learning from the struggle. The question is, “What can my relationship with food teach me?” It’s not about fixing it, but what can you learn about yourself, about your life, by being curious. If you look at it that way, then your relationship with food becomes an opening and the doorway to knowing yourself.
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food”
The Language Of Food.
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If you were given a Braille book to read but didn’t know Braille, you could not read it because it would just feel like a lot of bumps. You would not understand anything about the story. That’s how your relationship with food works. Unless you are interested and curious about it, and understand that it is a fabulous language, it would be just like a bunch of Braille bumps. YOUR relationship with food – the thing that you are so desperate about, which causes you so much discomfort, that you want to change and fix right now – can lead you to the center of your very own life when you are curious about it. We are talking about a shift in perspective. When you understand the language of your relationship with food and see it is a gift rather than a curse, it becomes the path that allows you to come home to yourself. Many people want to come home to themselves, but they do not know where to start. You have this: your relationship to food. What you eat, when you eat, where you eat and how you feel when you eat are clues to guide you home to yourself. Cheryl, as the stand-in student, does that make sense? Cheryl: Yes. To help myself and others who are listening to process all the rich information you just shared, I jotted down a few questions.
Eating compulsively is like changing the channel when you don’t want to listen.
You say that no one knows what is best for you but you. But if I had chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner, how can I believe that statement? It sounds like a place I can never arrive at. Geneen: You don’t gain weight and eat compulsively because you listen to yourself; you eat and gain weight because you are not listening. When you eat compulsively, it’s because you don’t want to feel what you are feeling, and you turn to food to medicate that, to alleviate those emotions. Eating compulsively is like changing the channel when you do not want to listen to what is on your channel. Turning to food is bolting from your present experience. You are going to learn to take the step of asking yourself what is really going on. No situation is unworkable. You already know that. You have lived through astonishing pain. It is part of what life is. 7
PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food” We often protect ourselves from losses that have already happened. When you turn to food, you are protecting yourself from an old hurt, one that already happened and cannot happen again. Yet, you keep turning to food, which means you are living in reverse. We protect, medicate or change the channel when we do not want to listen, because we do not want to tolerate or simply do not want to feel whatever it is we are feeling. There is a meta-question that you need to ask yourself as you embark on this journey: “How do I want to live my life?” The poet Mary Oliver writes, “Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”
NOTES:
How do you want to live your life?
Ask yourself, “Am I breathing just a little and calling it a life? What do I want my life to be? Do I want to take up the space I have been given on this Earth? Do I want to keep gaining and losing the same weight?” Ask yourself, “How do I want to live?” You signed up for this Retreat because you are longing for change, because you know it is possible to live a life you have not lived into yet. The longing is knocking at the door of your heart. The discomfort you feel is not the whole reason you signed up. There is also the longing for the life that is possible but you are not quite living. In order to have that life, there has to have been some degree of willingness to ask yourself, “How do I want to live? How do I want my days defined? Do I want to learn to be kind to myself?” If that answer is “Yes,” know that it requires a willingness to tolerate some discomfort. Change requires that you do something unfamiliar. Anything new requires some degree of discomfort. But remember, you are already uncomfortable! I am not asking you to become uncomfortable. You are already uncomfortable, ant that discomfort is already familiar. Because it is familiar, it is safe. So doing this course is different from the life you already know and will involve some discomfort.
Change requires some degree of discomfort.
Ask yourself, “What is it that I really want from my life?” And remember this is your chance to answer that question. This is the doorway. But also know that there will be moments of discomfort as you learn new skills. Learning when you are hungry. Stopping when you are full. Being okay with hunger. Those are all new skills that will take an effort to learn. It takes great effort to be effortless. And, there will be moments when you are not going to want to do it, when it is safer and easier to eat.
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food” If you know the answer to the question “How do I want to live?” and are willing to have your relationship to food be the doorway, that is your ground work. You keep coming back to that. Cheryl: What kinds of answers do you get when you ask that question during a retreat? Geneen: “I want to be aware of the life that I have been given.” “I want to know and appreciate my body.”
Who would you be if you were not feeling guilty?
“I want to find out what I love most and do that.” “I want to spend more time with children.” “I want to do work that I love.” “I want to appreciate myself.” A way to find the answer to those questions is to ask, “Who would I be if I were not feeling guilty or diminishing myself? If I was not afraid to speak my truth?” Take the time to actually let yourself take in what you already have. NOTES:
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food”
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS Cheryl: Here’s a question from Donna:
NOTES:
What if I read the books, do the Online-Retreat, do the work and still not get it? Or what if I relapse at a later time? Geneen: This is probably everyone’s fear. “What if I am the one who doesn’t get it? Or it doesn’t work for me?” This is what I know, a Law of the Universe: What you pay attention to grows. What you put your attention on changes. What you focus on is what you become. As the writer Annie Dillard says, “How you spend your days is how you spend your life.”
What you pay attention to grows.
If you put your attention on knowing when you are hungry, knowing when you have had enough, it cannot help but change you. In the 30 years of doing this, I have not seen it not work when you begin to pay attention to yourself. Cheryl: Here’s a question from Carol: I have read all of the books and I find myself thinking it makes sense. But then, I go back into confusion when I try to put it into action. And then I go into a self-hate place when I cannot do it. Geneern: It takes great practice. At the end of each session, I am going to give you action steps and practices. People often ask me if I binge now and what I eat for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner. From being the craziest person around this, food is not a problem for me now, and for me that is a miracle. How did that happen? Because I realized there are certain guidelines to follow and that I needed to make a commitment to myself to the best of my ability to follow those guidelines.
Make a commitment to yourself to follow the Eating Guidelines as best you can.
When I contracted to write Women Food and God, I found myself resisting. So I posted a sign at my desk: “Ass in chair.” Every morning, I would drag my feet, not want to work on the book and feel feel very sorry for myself, imaging all the fun things my friends were doing. Do I do it or not do it? Do I follow through or not? It gets down to that moment of “ass in chair.” The Eating Guidelines will inform you. Once you take on a Practice, then you do it to the very best of your ability. No hard and fast rules, because then you will rebel. But there is something in you that will show up for yourself. Take it in small steps. For me with my writing, I committed to sit in my chair for three hours. That was my commitment. And I followed through.
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food” Do not make yourself wrong when you don’t follow the Guidelines because judgment, punishment and self-loathing never lead to change. Rather, be curious and notice what happens. “Oh, I’m eating when I’m not hungry.” That’s a noticing, a change. The thought of hunger and the experience of hunger will have entered into your consciousness.
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Insight by itself does not lead to change. Action that you take on your own behalf leads to change. Cheryl: A question from Helen: I read your book and had many insights. It made sense. I realized that I began eating cake to get sweetness into life after I left my marriage of 26 years. Now, 20 years later, I am 50 lbs heavier and I am still eating cake to bring sweetness into my life. Geneen: Insight alone does not lead to change. You are acting out what your beliefs are. It is your actions that really make a difference. If you want sweetness in your life and you are eating cake to get it, then there must be a part of you that believes that you do not have sweetness in your life. What is not so sweet about your life? Inquire and notice what that is. Find out if it is really what you are telling yourself it is. In a recent interview with Justine Toms of New Dimensions Radio, she shared that she grew up in a family with a lot of kids, and where she felt like there was never enough, that she always needed to take more and more and more to get enough. “I eat because I still feel empty, to fill the emptiness. But the food just doesn’t do it.” I said to her, “Instead of trying to fill the emptiness, let’s see if the emptiness is as bad as you think. Why does it need to be filled? What’s so bad about it? What does emptiness actually feel like?” After all these years, if you are still trying to fill the sweetness with cake, it means the cake is not sweetening what’s not sweet, what you believe is not sweet. So ask yourself, what’s not sweet? What’s the lack of sweetness about? Is it really what you think it is? Most of us believe a lot of scary stores. It’s not that what has happened is not scary or awful, it’s what we tell ourselves about those stories that is truly scary. Maybe the lack of sweetness feels like loneliness, sadness, boredom or unworthiness. What would those feelings be like if you were not using food to sweeten them? Maybe emptiness might just feel like space. Loneliness might just feel like aloneness covered up by scary stories you are telling yourself.
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food” There might not be anything scary about those feelings. The bottom line is, you do not know until you start examining them. What does loneliness feel like? Where is it located in the body right now? Does it have a color or a texture?
NOTES:
Often you feel a glimmer of a feeling like loneliness and you are off running with stories in your mind. “If I let myself feel it, I’ll fall apart. I won’t be able to go to work or function. I have to keep myself together!” And how you do that is by eating, to fortify yourself. But all you have had is a glimmering, the beginning of a feeling. I have never met anyone that has died or fallen apart by feeling a feeling. Caveat: If there is a trauma or abuse around a particular feeling, you might want to get some guidance, support and help in exploring those feelings. But most of us are running from the first sensation of a feeling before knowing what it is by creating big scary stories. Then we eat from our stories not from the feeling itself, because we have not let ourselves feel it. Cheryl: So you are saying that if Helen could put some space between the thought and the eating of the cake then she can begin to understand the unsweetness in her life? Geneen: It begins by not eating when you are not hungry. It begins in that very moment when you want to turn to food and think food is the very best thing on Earth.
Change happens bit by bit.
There are many other things that can satisfy your hunger besides food in that moment. It means you are hungry, but not hungry for food. Ask yourself when you want to eat when you are not hungry, “What is that I really want?” It could be that you want to be alone. Or maybe you want to be with someone but you are alone. Just be with that, in that moment, when you want to turn to food but your body is not hungry. Start by doing this once a day. It is not good to try and do this every time you want to eat. Change happens bit by bit, in little baby steps that you know you can do. If it feels like I am saying something that you feel you cannot do, then don’t do it. You take on a Practice or an action step, and do it once a day or every other day. Cheryl: Here’s another question: I am confused about how spirituality, psychology and food all fit together. Can you explain how it relates to spirituality? Geneen: I am defining spirituality in a way that we know that something is possible beyond the physical world. There is something that each of us longs for and that each of us has experienced, thousands of times. It is when we are taken out of ourselves, the conceptual
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food” mind stops, and suddenly something else is here. Something else is shimmering right in front of us in that moment. Mothers know this when their child is born. There is wonder, awe, something that stops the mind. We feel it at different times in our life, when we are confronted with majesty. Moments when what we did not think was possible happens. The selfless love we feel when someone we love is in pain or grieving. Or when we are in the presence of beauty, like a sunrise or sunset, at the ocean. In those moments, our mind stops and we have the sense of something here beyond our old familiar self. And that something is what I am calling spirituality.
Take a moment to notice what’s around you.
Because our beliefs about what is possible or not possible shows up in our relationship with food, it is through those beliefs that we can see what else is possible. The world beyond appearances is available to us every single day. We function in this world, but we are also aware of so much more than we have been focusing on. What else is here? When we stop and look around, there is so much more. You can take a moment to notice what’s around you, the wind and the sky. When you stop and notice, you become aware that there is so much more than the little self and what it is always doing. NOTES:
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PART ONE / WEEK ONE SUMMARY “Ending Your War With Food”
PART ONE / WEEK ONE PRACTICES A PRACTICE FOR YOURSELF:
A PRACTICE RELATED TO FOOD & EATING:
“BE ASTONISHED!”
“EAT WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY”
Unwinding your relationship with food is not just about food or being willing to tolerate discomfort, but also about noticing what you already have. I call this the “Be Astonished” Practice.
Hunger is a survival mechanism. Everyone gets hungry. Maybe it has been a very long time since you have eaten only when you are physically hungry. But we need to feel hunger to live. The way to tell when you are hungry is by checking into your body.
Every day notice what you already have. Not just what you don’t have or what is wrong or needs to be changed. Notice the abundance of what is already here. During this Retreat, you will be noticing what you believe is keeping you from being your self. And you will also be noticing what you already have. What is keeping yourself from the life you really want, and what you already have. What would all the people who died today give to be here one more second, to taste, to smell, or to touch a loved one? You have that.
Every day when you wake up, notice what you already have. NOTES:
The aim of this Guideline is to eat ONLY when you are physically hungry. So you need to learn what your hunger signals are. To do this, you need to wait long enough to feel your hunger. Before you eat, check-in with your body and rate your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 is “I’m stuffed.” 1 is “I’m starving.” 5 is neutral. 4 and below, you are hungry; 5 and above, you are not. Note where you are on the scale by checking in with your body. Remember, “mouth” hunger is not indicative of “body” hunger. Check in with yourself by putting attention on different parts of your body and what those parts feel like. Is your stomach growling? Does your stomach feel empty? Does it feel spacious? Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 before you eat and see what happens. NOTES:
Thank you for being here. Acknowledge yourself for having the courage to show up and for having the longing to use your relationship with food as a doorway to yourself.
All contents of the Women Food and God Online-Retreat is © 2010 Geneen Roth and Geneen Roth and Associates, Inc. and is for the sole use of Online-Retreat enrollees. All content requires express permission from Geneen Roth & Associates Inc. for reuse, display, republication or resale.
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