Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything [Paperback]

Embraced by Oprah, the #1New York Timesbestselling guide that explains the connection between eating and emotion from Geneen Roth—noted authority on mindful eating.

No matter how sophisticated or wealthy or broke or enlightened you are, how you eat tells all.

After three decades of studying, teaching, and writing about our compulsions with food, bestselling author Geneen Roth adds a powerful new dimension to her work inWomen Food and God. She begins with her most basic concept: the way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation and, yes, even God.

A timeless and seminal work,Women Food and Godshows how going beyond the food and the feelings takes you deeper into realms of spirit and soul—to the bright center of your own life.Women Food and God

PROLOGUE

The World on Our Plates

Eighty hungry women are sitting in a circle with bowls of cold tomato vegetable soup; they are glowering at me, furious. It is lunchtime on the third day of the retreat. During these daily eating meditations each woman approaches the buffet table, lines up to be served, takes her seat in the circle, and waits until we all sit down to eat. The process is agonizingly slow—fifteen minutes or so—especially if food is your drug of choice.

Although the retreat is going well and many people here have had life-changing insights, at this moment no one cares. They don’t care about stunning breakthroughs or having ninety pounds to lose or whether God exists. They want to be left alone with their food, period. They want me to take my fancy ideas about the lil£$