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Dec 14, 2010

Jill rated it:

Yes. I have food issues. And God issues. And I'm a Woman. It seems I meet all of the criteria.

This is a BRUTAL book. I can only read a little bit at a time. Make it stop.

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I don't know. I just don't know. I was going back and forth between 2 and 3 stars, but it's really more like a 2.5 for me. The epilogue was the best part of the book, in my opinion.

Hmmm. I'm confounded here. I was extr More...

9 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 25, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

“Feel the Pain, Don’t Eat It”

This is a non-fiction book that I found enlightening and helpful, with many truths in its pages.

Author Geneen Roth had fluctuated between severe food restriction and severe binge eating all her life. Her self-worth was tied up in her weight and shape, and her existence was a miserable yo-yo of dieting and shame. She went to therapy, learned about herself, studied mindfulness and meditation, taught and wrote, and slowly began to deal with her emot More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Aug 01, 2011

Liberty rated it:

A new take on a million-dollar/yr industry. Amazing notion really... That you don't have to atone, hate, suffer, or diet your self away.

As Geneen writes, "...once the belief and the subsequent decisions (about your worth and a lifetime of dieting) are questioned, diets and being uncomfortable in your body lose their seductive allure. Only kindness makes sense. Anything else is exruciating."

Excruciating is an utterly painful place to be when embodying your S More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 31, 2011

Helynne rated it:

I had been intrigued by the title of this book for months before I read it, and after reading this collection of essays, I was not disappointed, although it should be noted that the author, does discuss women and food a lot more than she discusses God and spiritual aspects of weigh issues. Geneen Roth's main theme is self-love, and "coming home to oneself" as an overall approach to health and weight control. "We don't want to eat hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to b More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 08, 2011

Charlotte added it

I've always been skeptical and dismissive of the self-help genre, but I LOVE Geneen Roth and I want to shout it from the rooftops! She embodies the best Jewish/Buddhist mother, someone who knows you to the core, who tells it like it is, who's wise and spiritual, and all with a kick-ass, self-deprecating sense of humor. She resonates with a huge and devoted following of women, and I think that's why. This book offers nothing much that's new since the Refrigerator book,which I read first. It's More...

0 comments like

Jan 26, 2011

Summer rated it:

Loved it--down to earth, easy to read, and really resonated with me.

Some quotes from the book:

There is a whole universe to discover between “I’m feeling empty” and turning to food to make it go away. The problem of weight is predictable. We know what to do when we have that problem. Beat ourselves up. Make ourselves wrong. Eat fewer donuts. But staying with the emptiness—entering it, welcoming it, using it to get to know ourselves better, being able to distinguish the stories More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 08, 2011

SwensonBooks rated it:

Geneen Roth's new title is almost banal. I had a really hard time getting through it and it was a very quick read. Promoted by Oprah Winfrey [book selection and guest appearance], the book follows the classic genre of self-help diet books. For all the hype, it reads like most every other diet book sans recipes, menus, points, weights, and measurements. Roth gives the formulaic fat book a twist: you can eat what your body needs and feed your soul without counting calories or stepping on the scale More...

0 comments like

Jun 30, 2011

Susan rated it:

I love my public library. Each time I've moved to a new town, the first place I visit is the public library to sign up for my library card. Most Methodist preachers no longer travel from place to place on horseback, but we still spend a lot of time in the car. My routine for years now has included trips to the library, exploring the audio book collections, and checking out volumes that seemed interesting. I've discovered a love for non-fiction that I never knew I had and that genre fiction is More...

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Jun 15, 2011

Candice rated it:

I read this book because Oprah highly recommends it (Anne Lamott does too!). I thought it might be a good book to read as I seem to be forever trying to lose the last 10 baby pounds. (Interestingly, also while watching a Meryl Streep interview on Oprah, Meryl said the one thing she knows for sure in life is that the 10 pounds I speak of never goes away. haHA!)

A good portion of the book I found hard to relate to, but the part that I *could* relate to was indeed life-changing. Geneen's More...

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Jun 09, 2011

Janet rated it:

I picked this book up for $1 in my church book swap. Having read and admired one of Roth's first books, WHEN FOOD IS LOVE, I had forgotten about her for years, and rediscovering her work was timely for me.

Five years ago I got down to a very attractive weight with Weight Watchers. I've been on and off WW since and have often become preoccupied with what and how much I'm eating, but the preoccupation hasn't paid off in weight loss. WOMEN, FOOD, AND GOD reminded me that the diet in More...

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Jun 09, 2011

Ileana rated it:

This is an amazing book. It is not just about we overeat, it can be applied to anything we might use to numb ourselves in order to prevent feeling pain. Loved it!

I do believe there are frozen places in ourselves - undigested pockets of pain - that need to be recognized and welcomed, so that we can contact that which has never been hurt or wounded or hungry.

"To discover what you really believe, pay attention to the way you act -- and to what you do when things don't go th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 03, 2011

Gere rated it:

The reason I rated this book with 3 stars is because my mother read it and found something in it that caused her to start dealing with her problems and start eating again. She has been a die hard anorexic for more than 20 years. Any book that can get her to eat a meal without guilt and fear is worth reading, which is why I read it. For me, I found nothing. If it weren't for my mother's experience I would say that the author is full of crap. I think that my problem with it was that the author onl More...

0 comments like

Apr 06, 2011

Diane rated it:

When I first received this book in the mail, I wasn't sure it was for me. I consider myself to be more of a spiritual person than a religious person, so I was concerned that the book might be preachy -- it is not. The title is very misleading, and the author even states that God means different things to different people. As I read a few pages, something about what the author was saying seemed to resonate with me. The author states:

"The way you eat is inseparable from your cor More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 26, 2011

Carla rated it:

I battle the same 10 - 20 pounds, and have ever since the birth of my son 26 years ago. I wouldn't say that I have any compulsive eating issues, and that is what the majority of the teaching in this book is aimed at. However, I did find some relevance for myself in reading about the sort of universal image women have of their bodies, and the inability most of us have to see our body in a realistic light. I have spent a lot of time, as I believe a lot of women do, in analyzing myself, my motives More...

0 comments like

Jan 26, 2011

Saranne added it

I loved this book - here are some of my favorite lines...........

-I believe we are walking, talking expressions of our deepest convictions; everything we believe about love, fear, transformation, and God is revealed in how, when and what we eat.

-If we are actually interested in finding out what we actually believe – not what we think, not what we say, but what our souls are convinced is the bottom-line truth about life and afterlife – we need go no further than the food o More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 09, 2010

Kimberly rated it:

This book was a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I thought the author had an excellent vocabulary, but then on the other hand I've never read a book with so many fragmented sentences!

As far as the content goes, I thought she was a little off the wall in a few places, but then there were some astounding truths that shone through so clearly such as learning that I have been literally ignoring my body and my feelings my whole life. From not even realizing for hours that my bladder ach More...

0 comments like

Nov 18, 2010

Rebecca rated it:

I picked this up off the "new arrivals" shelf at the library where it was displayed next to books about economics, WWII, and Karen Armstrongs, "A Case for God." I thought-- Fantastic! A feminist reading of foodways! Boo, hiss, completely wrong.

It's a meandering, blissfuly citation-free, whiny self-help book. The author tells us how crazy she is and how horrible her life has been but how many people love her and how many thousands of people have completely changed t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 01, 2010

Aban (Aby) rated it:

I was attracted to this book because it deals with a problem that (and many people) have . . . difficulty with overeating and weight control. The book offers Roth's alternative to constant diets and a never ending cycle of losing and gaining weight.

Roth suggests that overeating has little to do with a love of food or with hunger, and everything to do with our emotions and state of mind. She believes that if we accept our feelings and deal with them, rather than trying to escape from More...

1 comment like

Sep 16, 2010

Reid rated it:

I began to realize while reading this book that the title is a bit misleading, since it does not exclusively deal with any of the three things it names. First of all, it is not only for women; men could benefit just a mightily from what is written here. Second, it is not just about food, but about any obsession we use to divide ourselves off from our lives and our true natures. Third, when Roth speaks of God, she is referring to whatever in our world equates to that feeling of being entirely a c More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2010

Linda rated it:

Well, after much anticipation, I finally got my hands on yet another spiritually driven book about awareness. It focuses on Women and on their relationship with food, although that is a metaphor for anyone, with any type of unhealthy habit. The basic premise is that bad food habits are a manifestation of the pain, confusion and loss that we do not know how or want to deal with. Eating when you are not hungry is a way of coping with life but it not only does not solve the initial problem, it cr More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Aug 17, 2010

Lisa rated it:

I haven't read Roth's first book (When Food Is Love), but if you're going to read one of her books, which address possible solutions to the problem of compulsive eating, I would read the first one. This book seems like a rehash of every women's magazine article you've read about dieting (or not dieting) for several years, probably because those articles were by Roth or based on her work. Women, Food, and God seems like a repackaging of her earlier work--she even seems to assume that the reader h More...

1 comment like

Aug 16, 2010

Happyreader rated it:

I really enjoyed this book – and I completely understand how that reader gained 100 lbs after reading her other books.

I thought this was a much better spirituality-eating awareness book than Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. Despite the God in the title, the spirituality is more Buddhist than Judeo-Christian in approach. Basically a how to use mindfulness and body awareness to be present to those fears and needs that compulsive eating can’t anesthetize. Her eating rules are very More...

0 comments like

Jul 18, 2010

Christine rated it:

As someone who has dealt with weight problems for many years, I have to say this book was actually very helpful. I had never read any diet books prior to Women Food and God and I was therefore hesitant to read it. At first, I thought it would be a waste of money, and that the book was based on different dieting “techniques”, and the "best way to lose weight", however, it wasn't even close to that!
I found it to be an interesting and insightful book that really thought me a lot ab More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 16, 2010

Kelli rated it:

This non-fiction book is not a "diet book" or even really about food. It's about feeling and dealing with your feeling in a constructive way instead of overeating or eating mindlessly.

I read Women Food and God for work and I really enjoyed it. Geneen Roth presents her material in a thoughtful, insightful way. She includes anecdotes from her compulsive eating retreats as well as her own journey with dieting, weight gain and triumph over compulsive eating.

More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 05, 2010

Kasey rated it:

The latest book in my recent obsession with food-as-spirituality literature. Because it has such similar subject matter, it's hard not to compare this to the two Marc David books I recently finished... and, compared to them, Geneen Roth's latest book struck me as good-but-not-great. I did like a lot about it--first, the basic premise, that exploring food and eating and nutrition can be a spiritual practice, as much as anything else you pay close attention to can be. Also I love her tone--funn More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 23, 2010

Janell rated it:

I have never read any of her books before. As someone who has struggled with weight since I was 13, I am eager to learn some deep insights about food intake. I did glean some of those insights in certain passages; things that spoke directly TO me, but for the most part, I felt like things were being spoken AT me. A lot of what I read was stuff I'd heard before; some of it was newly packaged. It all made sense, but overall I felt like something was missing, that I wanted more from this book. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 06, 2010

Kare rated it:

Being on the road so much as a journalist it wasn’t until I got married that I got serious about learning to cook. Lucky timing. Reading Geneen’s book brought back memories of the series of serenditious (may not be a word until now) events that brought disparate foodies into my life. Each, in their own way combined a love of living well in the moment and the preparation and eating of food as meditative, clarifying and celebratory acts.
Tassajara Zen Center’s first chef Edward Espre Brown, w More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 30, 2010

Nicola rated it:

I read 117 of 211 pages and could not continue to read any further. The book was not what I had thought it would be. I have not read anything by this author before and going by the publisher's summary and the title I had expected this book to incorporate the Judaeo-Christian God into women's struggle with weight loss and food relationship. That surmise was incorrect, the author's concept of the word "God" could be more clearly stated as "whatever supreme deity, power or feeling yo More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 29, 2011

Jessi rated it:

First Line: "Eighty hungry women are sitting in a circle with bowls of cold tomato vegetable soup; they are glowering at me, furious."

This book is an interesting read for anyone who has struggled with eating too much or not enough. Roth makes the claim (and this is something I have suspected about myself for a while) that dieting can never be successful until you learn to listen to yourself, address the emotions evoked by food from your past, and center your eating on the a More...

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Aug 05, 2010

Zinta rated it:

The United States has become the poster nation for overweight people, and, quite possibly going hand in hand, we have also increasingly become a nation of obsessions and addictions. The reasons, I suspect, are varied and many, arguably from living in a society that has lost sense of its values, to living in a society bombarded with convenience everything, including poor quality foods with a long list of chemical additives and preservatives, many of which studies have shown can lead to increased More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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