Geneen Roth

Mindful Eating

Renee Lertzman
here is perhaps no more recognizable trademark of compulsive eating than grazing at the refrigerator. Most of us do it only when were by ourselves. In her latest book, When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair (Hyperion), Geneen Roth describes eating straight from the refrigerator with humor and candor, and even suggests sharing the experience with someone: Imagine you invite a friend over for dinner. Tell her that the two of you are going to eat the way you eat when you are alone. . . . Lead her to the refrigerator. Open the door. Stare. Begin picking from Tupperware containers. Use your fingers. Graze through yesterdays Chinese food. Last weeks tapioca pudding. Make loud grunting noises of pleasure. Open the freezer. Try to chunk off a piece of frozen cake with your fingers. When that doesnt work, hack it off with a carving knife. Notice the fine spray of sugar settling on your floor. I can appreciate her message, because Ive been there, standing before the freezer in the home of my childhood, eating my mothers frozen Hanukkah cookies or leftover sweets from a Shabbat reception, hoping not to get caught. Like many women in our culture, I have experienced this painful struggle over food: the desire to conform to cultural standards of thinness, coupled with the unwavering conviction that once Ive

Photo (right): Jason Langer/The Image Bank

Geneen Roth
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attained my ideal weight, I will be happy. It was Roths book self-love, and the relationship between eating and intimacy, Feeding the Hungry Heart (Dutton) that led me to connect including Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating, Appetites, my desire for love and emotional nourishment with my endless and When Food Is Love (all Penguin). She has garnered a huge quest to have enough to eat. following of readers who feel she speaks directly to the pain of One of Roths perhaps most well-known and controversial overeating and underlying issues of deprivation. Though her exercises helps people to experience what they have as enough: subject matter is serious, she addresses it with humor, kindness, in conjunction with her advice to carry a chunk of chocolate and even unabashed joy. She invites us to celebrate pleasure by everywhere, Roth teaches how to eat that chocolate slowly and eating exactly what we want, with awareness, and also to be with complete awareness. The exercise, she writes, reminds us willing to lose the suffering contest. She has led Breaking Free to wake up, pay attention, stop reaching for what we dont have, workshops around the country for two decades and recently and focus on what we do have. It teaches us that we dont need added intensive retreats. a truck full of love to satisfy our hungry hearts. When we pay In person, Roth is warm, engaging, and charismatic. Her attention, enough is possible. home in west Marin County, CaliforRoth knows what its like to struggle with nia, is full of color and light, with a food, having gone on her first diet at the age At every workshop, I ask, How view of the grassy, rolling hills around of eleven, when she began skipping dinners San Francisco Bay. She lives with her to lose five pounds. My mother always felt many people have lost weight husband, Matt, her beloved and very fat, she says, and didnt want me to follow fat cat, Blanche, and their new puppy, in her footsteps. They fought over food and before? Everybody raises their Celeste. As we talked in her sun-filled body size, and Roth fantasized that, if she kitchen, Roth would occasionally cut could be thin enough, she could please her hand. How many of you were off a hunk of Gruyre cheese and offer mother and make everything all right. me a taste without missing a beat. When she was twenty-two, Roth trav- ecstatically happy after you lost Lertzman: Youve said that willeled to India, where she lived alone for four power, discipline, and commitment months in an eight-by-ten-foot room with no weight? Two people raise their are irrelevant when it comes to dietrunning water. It was a turning inward to ing. But isnt self-control what dieting something much bigger than myself, or the hands. How many people believe is all about? family I grew up in, she writes. I started Roth: I used to believe that if believing again in goodness, in kindness, and that, when you lose weight again, I deprived and punished and frightin something far vaster than I could see. ened myself enough, then somehow After her return from India, however, you will be ecstatically happy? I would change. But those strategies Roth went through a personal crisis: I didnt involving willpower and discipline know what I was doing. I had no idea what Everybody raises their hand so celebrated in our culture I was good at, or what I could do, and being werent leading me anywhere. In fact, of service in some capacity felt crucial to me. again. I was killing myself. I began to sense Unable to control the direction of her life, she that the way out was through love, turned to something familiar that she could openness, and trust, but I didnt feel control: her eating. She became anorexic. any of those for myself at the time. Still, once the idea of When she got down to eighty-two pounds, Roth realized love and trust occurred to me, I knew that I could never what was happening and made another change: she went back go on a diet again. to school to study medicine. Within two months, she had gained Lertzman: You are described as being a pioneer in eighty pounds. It was at that point, she says, that I realized the antidieting movement, but your work is more of a I was really, truly ruining my life. . . . The size of my body, psychological and perhaps even spiritual approach how much I weighed, what I put in my mouth, what I didnt to food and eating. put in my mouth, what my life was going to be like when I Roth: First of all, our culture deals with eating and lost weight this was the center around which everything dieting and food as just a womens issue and a banal else revolved. one, at that. New diets come out every month. Diet books At this crucial juncture, Roth took a writing workshop with are always on the bestseller list. But people generally dont poet Ellen Bass and began to put her experiences down on paper. think of dieting, weight loss, and food in a particularly Her relationship to herself changed once more. She also read deep way. Susie Orbachs Fat Is a Feminist Issue and realized for the Sometimes dieting is seen as a feminist issue. That first time that maybe I wasnt a crazy person; that perhaps what can be incredibly helpful, but its not broad enough. Other I was doing around food had some meaning, that there was authors approach the subject from a serious health perspecsome logic around it. . . . I also understood immediately that tive, but our relationship with food goes so much deeper than dieting would never work. that. Its not just about what you put in your mouth. Roth went on to write several best-selling books on food, Food is both concrete and metaphorical its something
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we deal with every day, but it can also be a doorway that we want to do it more? Dont most Americans already treat leads into the hidden rooms of our lives. My relationship with themselves with rich food? food is a microcosm of my relationship to being alive, to my Roth: Thats a good question. I also work with people beliefs about trust, pleasure, deprivation, and nourishment. on the experience of what its like to have enough. So many But looking at these deeper, underlying issues is considered emotional eaters have a sense of never getting enough. They subversive. approach life from an inner sense of poverty, and no amount Lertzman: Especially if youre advising people to carry of food, sex, clothes, or money will satisfy them. I ask them a piece of chocolate around in their pocket. to question the notion of being forever deprived, to recognize Roth: Yes, some people actually think Im saying, Eat that it is in their minds, though probably based on a real whatever you want, whenever you want. That is not what experience of having felt deprived in the past. Im saying at all. Im saying: Look; pay attention. Most As a child, I couldnt get enough of my mothers love. people have hardly enjoyed a meal in their life. Theres no joy But I was not in control of my mother. As an adult, I was in or pleasure in food for them, because control of how much food I ate, so I ate theres so much I should, I shouldnt, more to make up for not having had I cant, Im going to feel guilty about it Im supposed to eat chocolate? enough of something vital in my past: afterward. I teach them how to slow in this case, love. I felt deprived and down. Im basically saying, We have people say. But Im already forty poverty-stricken when it came to love, a choice: we can taste what is in our and that became part of my motivamouth and utterly enjoy ourselves, or pounds overweight. Yes, and tion for eating compulsively. For the we can remain unconscious of it and first twenty-five years of my life, I had be in pain. People dont know there is youre forty pounds overweight in a constant feeling that I could not a choice. It doesnt occur to them that get enough. Realizing that I could get they can actually enjoy eating. part because youre not allowing enough food and still lose weight Giving them a piece of chocolate is was a major turning point. a way to introduce them to pleasure and yourself to have what youre having If you want to lose weight, you awareness. At my workshops, theres an can do it by eating only when youre exercise in which we practice savoring anyway, and youre not paying hungry and stopping when youve had a single chocolate kiss. Once, a man enough. But this thought is frightening told me that hed been bingeing on attention while youre having it. to most people, because it means taking chocolate kisses for twenty years and responsibility and trusting yourself. had never eaten just one. The one in I am asking people to stop, just It goes against the machinery of the his mouth was always the precursor culture particularly the $33 billionto the ten that came after it, and the for a moment, and think: Have I a-year diet industry. Most people like two bags after that. But when he actuto be told what to do, especially when ally allowed himself to have one, and ever enjoyed chocolate, really? Do it comes to food. Thats part of the was present while eating it, he didnt lure of diets: they make people feel like want another one. Its when I feel I I know how to enjoy food? children again, because they tell us that cant have one, he said, that I want we cannot be trusted to handle food; twenty. that we are not capable of making up In a normal dieting mentality, giving that man chocolate our own minds and having control over how we eat. would be like handing an ax to an ax murderer. Im supposed Lertzman: Why do you think people want to be told to eat chocolate? people say. But Im already forty pounds what to do? overweight. Yes, and youre forty pounds overweight in part Roth: Its easier. Many people say to me, I am tired because youre not allowing yourself to have what youre of thinking about food. I dont want to spend one more having anyway, and youre not paying attention while youre second thinking about it. Just give me a set of rules, and I having it. I am asking people to stop, just for a moment, and will follow them. But the problem is, people always break think: Have I ever enjoyed chocolate, really? Do I know the rules. Something in them says, I dont want to do how to enjoy food? Does it bring me pleasure? I know Im this. Im not going to do this. In fact, I am going to do the bingeing all the time, but am I paying attention to even one opposite of this. thing Im eating? The answer is no. Dieting perpetuates that cycle of making rules and So I am saying: Show up, not just for meals, but for your breaking them, which leads into deeper issues of the heart, life. Taste the food. Sit down. Focus on what youre doing. such as craving nourishment and gratification, and yet not Whats the point of eating chocolate if youre not going to really allowing yourself to have it. It perpetuates the belief have a fabulous time doing it? Youre missing your whole life, that if I am good enough, Ill be safe. because you never let yourself have it. Lertzman: But if something brings us pleasure, dont (end of excerpt)
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