Ok, so I admit I’d be pretty embarrassed for anyone to see what my roommates and I DVR. We’ve been pretty quick to let a chosen few go, but 90210, Sex and The City, The View, and Oprah are amongst the contenders.
So last night after making myself a delicious shrimp and quinoa stir fry, I sat down to watch an episode of Oprah.
The guest was Geneen Roth, author of “Women Food and God.” The key message of the book is that women often over eat as a gateway to spiritual enlightenment. In other words, women who struggle with their weight and relationship to food often use eating as a way to mask their problems or as a way to create happiness even if just temporarily.
Whether you’ve struggled with your weight or not, I think we can all relate to a time we’re we’ve used food to avoid boredom, as a reward after a bad day, or in order to forget what’s going on around us all together.
Additionally, The Book says that diets set women up for failure. This is also the primary philosophy of my school and holistic health in general.
Diets fail because the emphasis is placed solely on the food, when in fact the food is only half the battle.
Diets in some way become a form of punishment. “Eat this and you will be thin.” “Eat this and you will be fat.” Inevitably this kind of mentality will cause frustration and with frustration comes a loss of will power.
Instead the focus should be placed on “What makes me feel good?” “What will nourish me and is good for my body?” “What will give me energy and stamina?” “What will help me live a long, healthy life?”
This book, similar to the work of a holistic health counselor is therefore calling women (and men for that matter) to take a deeper look inside of themselves to not only get at the root of their problems with food, but to be kinder to themselves. Eat healthy because you love yourself and want to feel great, not because you are disgusted with yourself. When one learns to adopt this mentality is when the weight will come off.
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