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20 June 2010

"Women Food & God" ~ Chapter 2: Ending the War

Concept
"The great blessing of our lives is our relationship with food."

Question
"Why would any sane person believe that tolerating the intolerable is a worthy endeavor?"
Answer
"... when we welcome what we most want to avoid... we evoke divinity itself."

"I stopped trying to fix myself. I stopped fighting with myself, stopped blaming myself, my mother, my latest boyfriend for my weight."

"[My students] have whole friendships built on commiserating about the twenty pounds they have to lose and the jeans that are too tight and the latest greatest diets. They fit in by hating themselves."


Though I've definitely had conversations like this, none of my relationships are solely based on weight issues-- thank God. If anything, I'm the petty soul who feels jealousy toward certain attractive friends and family members. And no, it's not easy to admit that.
Fortunately I see the error of my ways and push those feelings out of my head, never sacrificing a friendship because my friend reached her goal and I didn't. However, I do believe I've used this topic to relate to my thin friends, as a way of making light my morbidly obese body.


Diets
"... researchers found that one of the best predictors of weight gain was having lost weight on a diet at some point during the years before the study started."

"83 percent gained back more weight than they had lost."

"Another study found that people who went on diets were worse off that people who didn't."

"I expect [my students] to realize they have been brainwashed by a sixty-billion-dollar-a-year industry."


You know, for all of the documentaries I watch about food industry, political, and religious conspiracies, you'd think I would've figured out the shady diet industry one! Of course you'd be more likely to gain back the weight if even slightly wavering from a program (which is almost definite) and needing to spend more money on more solutions. If you lost the weight once and kept it off for the rest of your life they'd be out of business. And that's what I want, to lose the weight once and say goodbye forever.

Life
"... our worth in the world has always been tied to our looks... not the amazing miracle of mere existence."

"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."

"We have become so obsessed with getting rid of our obsession, with riding on top of our suffering and ignoring its inherent message, that we lose the pieces of ourselves waiting to be found beneath it."

"The real richness of obsession lies in the ineffable stillness, the irrefutable wholeness, that is found in turning toward its source."

"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. Your true nature. Your essence."


Honestly, Roth speaks for herself on this one. It's amazing how she touches upon EVERYTHING I'm feeling at once. Her goal is to help one deal with the WHY not the HOW-- that is the ultimate solution. My perspective of life is changing. As I continue to read I see more of what she means by facing the pain and emerging from it a stronger, brighter woman.

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