“Women, Food and God” will be featured on the Oprah show this week, with Geneen Roth, author of 7 books on compulsive eating. Geneen has always been masterful at describing her compulsive eating and compulsive dieting in artful detail. This book discusses the process of her retreat students, as well as the connection of spirituality and compulsive eating.
Here are a few snippets:
- Women turn to food when they are not hungry because they are hungry for something they can’t name: a connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life.
- The relentless attempts to be thin take you further and further away from what could actually end your suffering: getting back in touch with who you really are.
- Compulsive eating is an attempt to avoid the absence (of love, comfort, knowing what to do) when we find ourselves in the desert of a particular moment, feeling, situation.
- If compulsive eating is anything, it’s a way we leave ourselves when life gets hard.
- Compulsive eating is a way we distance ourselves from the way things are when they are not how we want them to be.
- Ending compulsive eating is all about the capacity to stay in the present moment.
No matter where you are in your stress eating/compulsive eating process, it’s likely that something will speak to you in this book. The question is – what many people (including myself) have been writing about for years – how do you stop stress eating? And that has to do with not only being in the present moment, but learning to manage emotions without automatically reaching for food.
I was curious, so at Geneen’s workshop a few weeks ago, I asked Oprah’s producer – What was it that resonated with Oprah about this book now, since these ideas are not new . . .?
Her answer?
She really didn’t know, but she thought it might be the spiritual connection . . . perhaps we’ll find out on the show!

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