Everything You Want is on the Other Side of …Eating?

Is that true? Is eating in the way of happiness? Yes, for some of us. I have a little note over my desk reminding me that, "Everything you want is on the other side of fear." But we know that most of us don't like to feel fear. Or anger or sadness or anxiety or resentment or loneliness or disappointment or loss or….yeah all those feelings.

We drank over those and maybe took drugs over those. We shop over those feelings and maybe work or worry rather than fully feel them. So yes, of course--what is even more accessible and even more socially acceptable than any of those? Food. The mother lode of addiction. And yes, your mother will show up in your eating story:) How could she not.

I'm all over--and all about food and eating this week. I have just come from three days with the inimitable Geneen Roth, author of "Women, Food and God." Oh, do take a look at her book if you are a woman in recovery. Even if you know a lot about food, even if you are thin, even if you think, "Food issues? not me."

It's not a program and not a diet and not a philosophy--Geneen offers some brilliant thinking about how we are with food and how food keeps us from happiness, sobriety, peace, self-acceptamce and even from God.

This is one of those times that I am so glad to be a woman in recovery and in long-term recovery so I can just gobble up lots of new ideas and not need to deflect or defend. My weekend with Geneen was a big Wow! and the ability to have Wow! and new info and be in the community of women changing their lives means so much.

Making Peace with Your Plate--Food Addiction

For women chemical addiction and eating addictions often go hand in hand. We are culturally frontloaded to care about our bodies; we think we are too heavy even when we are just right. Body obsession is another kind of unhappiness, a kind of distraction, and I have found over many years of recovery that addiction is addiction: it’s in me not in the substance and I can use all kinds of things: drugs, alcohol, behaviors and activities to not feel.

That’s kind of the bottom-line, I think. Not feeling.

Now I have discovered a soul mate kind of book that talks about food and eating and alcohol and all the rest. I am loving this new book, “Making Peace With Your Plate” by Robyn Cruze and Espra Andrus. They are former patient and clinician writing together, and they are good.

I’ll spend more time later this week sharing some excerpts from “Making Peace with Your Plate” but I can begin by telling you they had me at the start with this sentence:

“Full recovery means that my daily activities are no longer dictated by my body or my food intake.”

Amen to that. Thank you Robyn Cruze.

More to come later this week on “Making Peace with Your Plate."