Book Review: Women Food and God

After reading a sample chapter of Geneen Roth’s new book Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything my former therapist sent to me, I immediately went to Amazon, ordered the book, paid for upgraded overnight shipping, and waited impatiently for it to arrive while going back and rereading the sample chapter (which is Chapter 4, entitled “It’s Not About the Weight, but it’s Not Not About the Weight.” Saturday morning, I poured myself a cup of coffee, went out on my patio in the chilly morning spring air, and opened up the book. As I devoured page after page, tears streamed down my face as I felt both happiness and sadness with each sentence I read and identified so deeply with: happiness to realize how far I have come in my own journey to ending years of disordered eating habits and finally reaching levels of fulfillment I never thought possible, and sadness to recognize the isolation and emptiness so many around me feel and try to numb themselves from with food.

Let me preface this review by saying I am not a religious person, and when the book was first brought to my attention, I initially dismissed it, turned off by the title. I didn’t feel that God has anything to do with my relationship with food, and, I was guilty of judging a book by its cover (or in this case, the title). So, if you are inclined to dismiss it for those reasons, don’t. The book is less about God, and more about finding a space within ourselves — a space we often fill with food, rather than exploring to its depths. Some people, when they open themselves up to that space have a name for it in God. Others might define it in broader terms like spirituality. And some might simply feel it as being one with themselves and all around them. The point of the book is to demonstrate how the relationship so many people (or more specifically in this book, women) have with food keeps us from any of those things, and more importantly how to change that relationship.

In part one, Roth addresses the “God” part of the book and how God related to dieting for her in the past. “Dieting was like praying. It was a plaintive cry to whoever was listening: I know I am fat. I know I am ugly. I know I am undisciplined, but see how hard I try. See how violently I restrict myself, deprive myself, punish myself. Sure there must be a reward for those who know how horrible they are.” She talks about how dieting gave her a purpose — perhaps much in the same way religion might for some people, and then she goes on to say “bingeing gave me relief from the relentless attempt to be someone else.”

Roth has written many books (which I am sad to say I have not yet read) on the subject of emotional eating, but a realization she says she has only recently come to is that “the radical part of the tale is not that I stopped dieting; it’s that I stopped trying to fix myself.” This reminded me of a similar realization I came to and wrote about in the article Self Acceptance vs Body Acceptance in which I proclaimed to end the urge to fix myself.

And yet, it is often hard to imagine a world in which we are not constantly trying to fix ourselves, especially our bodies. For one, it’s how women have learned to relate to each other. As Roth points out, “we fit in by hating ourselves.” I’m sure from time to time you come across that person who seems to hold that secret to happiness and balance the rest of us struggle daily to find, and isn’t there just a tad of resentment towards them? Maybe you’re just waiting to see them fall in order to prove they too  are actually imperfect humans like you, which probably explains our obsession with celebrities and the great joy many find in seeing photos of their cellulite and jelly rolls as we go through the check out line with smirks on our faces. It’s almost as if there is something wrong with someone if they don’t hate themselves — or at least some part of themselves. And yet, the ability to see their imperfections and embrace them as part of a greater whole is what makes them happy, and it’s the lack of that ability that keeps others from achieving true happiness.

It’s also hard to let go of the belief that achieving weight loss will be accompanied with the answers to all of our problems. Though on a rational level, we can understand that a number on the scale won’t change the world, “the promise of weight loss is that it will allow [us] to live on a magical piece of earth from which everything else will be manageable … If I fix myself so that I am no longer myself, then everything will be fine. My feelings will be manageable.”

In the chapter entitled “Never Underestimate the Inclination to Bolt” Roth addresses head on why we might avoid overcoming compulsive eating (or dieting). She bluntly states it when she says “compulsive eaters wouldn’t have an obsession with food if we believed that life was tolerable without it … There is madness in obsession, yes, but its value is that it drowns out the madness of life.” This sentiment is followed by the chapter that hooked me on the book: It’s Not About the Weight, but It’s Not Not About the Weight. And that’s when Roth goes on to explain the conundrum of addressing the very real problems that are created by excess weight: diabetes, joint pain, shortness of breath, and for many, a general decrease in the quality of life due to health complications, while all the while trying to unsurface the deeper issues which are being covered up by the weight problems. Here is a very poignant passage from the chapter:

“The bottom line, whether you weight 340 pounds or 150 pounds, is that when you eat when you are not hungry, you are using food as a drug, grappling with boredom, or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection. Food is only the middleman, the means to the end. Of altering your emotions. Of making yourself numb. Of creating a secondary problem when the original problem becomes too uncomfortable. Of dying slowly rather than coming to terms with your messy, magnificent and very, very short — even at a hundred years old — life. The means to these ends happens to be food, but it could be alcohol, it could be work, it could be sex, it could be cocaine. Surfing the Internet. Talking on the phone … Weight (too much or too little) is a by product. Weight is what happens when you use food to flatten your life.”

And, if you’re thinking your compulsive eating stems from a simple case of too much love for food, Roth has an answer for that too: “When you like something — love something, you take time with it you want to be present for every second of the rapture … Overeating does not lead to rapture. It leads to burping and farting and being so sick that you can’t think of anything but how full you are. That’s not love; that’s suffering.” How can you love something that makes you sick over and over again? It’s like returning to an abusive partner every time they say they are sorry, and really, they do love you, and really, it won’t happen again. But like so many women who are abused and feel that they somehow deserve the abuse — as if they brought it on themselves, compulsive eaters and dieters continue to punish themselves through their relationship with food because they don’t feel worthy of something better.

Like most other books that address emotional eating, Women Food and God is for those ready to do some serious work and reflection on their lives. Roth challenges the reader to face head on the pain and uncomfortable feelings that drive them to eat when they’re bodies are telling them not to. What she reminds the reader over and over throughout the book is that the very feelings they feel will destroy them are the same feelings that allow us — everyone of us to feel alive. If you are ready to top numbing yourself with food and dieting, start feeling alive, this beautiful written, incredibly powerful book is for you.

Book Review: The Body Love Manual — How to Love the Body You Have as You Create the Body You Want

You might find it strange to think that you need a manual on loving your body, but in fact, there is a book written by Elizabeth “Lily” Hills called The Body Love Manual*, and that’s precisely what it sets out to do — teach you to love your body. Right now, go to a mirror, look yourself directly in the eye and say “I love my body.” How does that feel? When one person I know said those words out loud, she said she felt silly. Silly because nothing could be further from the truth for her, as I suspect is the case with most people. I don’t have any statistics on how many people dislike their bodies, but if I were to take a guess, I would probably say that most people range somewhere from a vague dislike to an intense hatred of their bodies. And our eating habits confirm that.

It seems like most of us are either on a diet, trying to create a body that we can feel happy with, or treating our body with complete disregard, filling it beyond capacity with foods that would make our body scream in pain if it could talk. And then, when we can’t stand to look in the mirror anymore, or feel totally out of control around food, we go on a diet. Again. But let’s face it — diets don’t work.

Ninety-five percent of people who go on a diet regain the weight lost, and often more, within five years. But how are we supposed to reconcile those statistics with things like “obesity epidemic” or “1 in 3 Americans are overweight” and “war on obesity”. If diets don’t work, how are we supposed to cure our country of unhealthy eating habits and an inactive lifestyle? Jamie Oliver thinks he has the answer with his Food Revolution. Michelle Obama hopes she has the answers in trying to eradicate childhood obesity by encouraging kids to get off the sofa and get outdoors. In both cases, the focus, ultimately, is about teaching people to live healthier lives — to choose apple slices instead of chips, grilled chicken instead of burgers, bike riding instead of Playstation. But together, both Obama and Oliver are only getting at half the problem — which is what people eat, and without addressing the other half — why people eat, they will never reach the long term success they both genuinely want and hope to achieve.

The concept of intuitive eating is gaining momentum and working towards that goal with the help of books like Intuitive Eating, and Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat will be far more effective than wagging the finger at people in an effort to get them to make better choices. The Body Love Manual takes intuitive eating one step further by guiding readers through a process of identifying what it is that keeps them so disconnected from the bodies, preventing them from listening to and properly nourishing their bodies. Though the subtitle of the book is How to Love the Body You Have as You Create the Body You Want, don’t be mistaken. This is not a diet book in disguise. The Body Love Manual is for anyone ready to put away dieting forever, deciding to become an intuitive eater, and challenging the thoughts and feelings that so far have preventing you from achieving that goal. Integral to this process is learning, as the title suggests, to love your body. As Hills points out, “The human body is tragically under-appreciated, neglected, and abused…The fact is that it is very hard to feel motivated to take care of something you don’t care about. Conversely, when you care deeply for and truly honor your body, you will be far more likely to make the healthier choices for it.”

The Body Love Manual should not be a quick read. It requires reflection and real emotional work. But ask yourself if you identify with this passage from the book:

“As the number I saw on my bathroom scale went up, my sense of self-worth plummeted. During this period of my life, it was rare for me to appreciate and value any of my other qualities … [which] became secondary in comparison to my weight.”

If you feel like you could have written those words yourself, then perhaps it is time to begin the work towards loving your body because “When your thoughts about yourself are respectful and appreciative, you will begin to attract more positive experiences of all kinds into your life.”

Though the Body Love Manual talks about achieving your ideal weight, you might begin to question what your “ideal weight” is and in fact you may find that you are already there, because your “ideal weight” should reflect a healthy lifestyle that is not measured by a number on the scale but by the feelings that come from your mind and body which will tell you when you’ve reached it.

*As required by FCC law, I am disclosing that The Body Love Manual was donated by the author for purposes of this review.

To My Body, the Vessel of My Soul

by Anonymous

I offer you this apology for the many times I have treated you badly.
For not giving you rest when you were tired
For not feeding you when you were hungry
For overfeeding you when you weren’t
For putting you in danger with smoking and too much weight

For comparing you incessantly to other bodies and usually deciding that you came up short
For the harsh words, thoughts and scrutiny over qualities about you that I deemed as less than
For falling victim to others’ definitions of beauty and not defending my own
For my disappointment when you didn’t do things fast enough or strong enough
For placing you on a pedestal with lavish praise so fleetingly that it must have felt like you were the victim of emotional abuse – which I suppose you were

But the truth is this
You are strong in so many ways
You’ve got an immunity of steel and can heal yourself so quickly
You can carry your weight in grocery bags and a two-year old for hours with your strong left arm
You can hear a child crying in the middle of the night and drag yourself out of sleep to comfort him
You can run for a long time and cover a lot of distance

And you are beautiful
With your Easter hair and cat green eyes
With your sexy Morgan nose and breasts so perfect their authenticity has been questioned
Your ears and nose and eyebrows are fine featured and delicate
You have strong muscular legs

And you work – you work extraordinarily well with very little complaining. And so I apologize and I praise and I thank you. You are a gift from God – made perfectly in his eyes – who am I to criticize the works of his hand?

EDNOS: The Eating Disorder You Haven’t Heard Of

When I received the diagnosis of Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified two years ago, I had a very mixed reaction. On the one hand, the label didn’t seem to fit. Me? With an eating disorder? I wasn’t underweight, and in fact was technically on the edge of being overweight. I had intentionally thrown up from time to time, but certainly was not bulimic. I had tried starving myself periodically in an attempt to get my weight under control, but I definitely wasn’t anorexic. At the most I considered myself a chronic dieter, or someone who at times could be a little obsessed with healthy eating and exercise. I could agree that my eating was very disordered but to identify myself as someone with an eating disorder made me squirm in my seat a bit. (For more on the differences between disorders and disordered eating, read Disordered Eating or Eating Disorder?)

On the other hand, after hearing my therapist tell me I had an eating disorder, I felt relief. After all, I was there to get help, and if I could label my problem, perhaps the solution would come more easily. I was ready to silence the voice in my head that made me obsess over my body and food 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and if giving that voice the name ED (for Eating Disorder) would help, I was willing to accept it.

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week is February 21-27 this year, which seems like a good opportunity to bring attention to this lesser known sibling of Anorexia and Bulimia. Everyone knows about Anorexia and Bulimia, but EDNOS, which has only recently begun to receive recognition in the mental health community can be as equally dangerous and life consuming as its better known counterparts.

So what does Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified mean? Well, the short answer is a “category [of] disorders of eating that do not meet the criteria of a specific eating disorder,” according to the most recently updated version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Ultimately, the definition is more anecdotal which explains why it is often harder to identify, though according to the publication Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, 50 percent of individuals who present for treatment of an eating disorder receive the diagnosis of EDNOS which effects 4 to 6 percent of the general population.*

While many of the criteria for EDNOS may closely mimic anorexia or bulimia, some behaviors are less obvious, and in fact, within our diet and body-obsessed culture, can appear perfectly normal. What may look to an outsider as just another diet involving close monitoring of caloric intake as well as exercise, may in fact become — if not already — an unhealthy and unnatural way to control weight based on an intense drive to be thin combined with an unrealistic body image. On the flip side, EDNOS also includes the sub-category of Binge Eating Disorder (BED) which is often overlooked as a simple lack of willpower and/or self control. Regardless of wherever a patient lies in the spectrum of EDNOS, it is important to realize that the emotional trauma suffered as a result of the disorder is equal to that of Anorexia and Bulimia, and should not be seen as anything less than a serious illness.

The introduction of EDNOS as an accepted diagnosis “gives a voice to sufferers who don’t fit into the narrow diagnostic categories of Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge Eating Disorder” said Shannon Cutts, author of ANA: How to Outsmart Your Eating Disorder and Take Your Life Back, and founder of Mentor Connect, a community of people in recovery from eating and related disorders.

Cutts, who herself suffered from Anorexia, Bulimia and EDNOS feels grateful for the recognition of EDNOS, and encourages sufferers to seek help. “If you know that your symptoms, thoughts, and behaviors are affecting your quality of life, then you both need and deserve help. Use your voice and ask for help. Do not assume you are the only one who “doesn’t fit” into a category and therefore you don’t deserve help. There are many people who suffer from EDNOS and you help not just yourself but everyone who suffers from it when you demand the care you deserve. Search out a medical professional who is familiar with eating disorders rather than struggling to educate an unsympathetic doctor or therapist. Be your own health care advocate. You know better than anyone else when you are struggling and need help. Eating disorders kill, and just because your symptoms don’t fall into the three most commonly-recognized categories does not mean they are not equally deadly.”

The health complications that arise from eating disorders are extensive, and include low blood pressure, slower heart rate, a decrease in bone density, a disruption in hormones, sometimes leading to infertility, and more. Even more alarming is the fact that eating disorders have the highest rate of death among any mental disorder — just one episode of bingeing and purging can cause an electrolyte imbalance causing sudden death. That is why it is so important to recognize that eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes, and present themselves in a variety of ways.

Is there treatment for EDNOS? Though whole rehabilitation centers have risen to address the problems specific to Anorexia, Bulimia, and even Binge Eating Disorder, there is help for other non specified eating disorders. The effort to overcome any eating disorder is extensive and should not be downplayed. Most of the times, the help of a mental health professional is necessary, and the journey through recovery is never quick and painless. But when you consider the alternative of living a life plagued by self loathing, fear of food, and serious health risks, including a premature death, the effort is one that must be undertaken to break free and live a full and happy life.

As for my own journey, to be honest, it’s an ongoing process. Sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back. But as Jenni Schaefer, author of Life Without Ed, and Goodbye Ed, Hello Me likes to say, fall down seven times, stand up eight.

A Confession in Numbers

I am 37 years old. I am 5 feet 5 inches tall. I weigh 159 pounds. I wear a size 36 AA bra. My pant size ranges from a 10 to a 12.

These are numbers that so many people don’t share — at least in full honesty. Some lie about their age or are too embarrassed to admit it. Many lie about their weight, and we’d probably be surprised how many people stretch the truth a bit on their height.

I decided I am going to break the taboo and share my numbers here … publicly … for anyone to see. And guess what … I have not been sucked down into a pit of shame for doing so. To me, they are just numbers. There is no value or meaning behind them. They are a numerical representation of particular facts pertaining to me. But I have not always felt this way.

When I was in my teens and early twenties, I always looked much younger than my age. When I was 17, I was offered a children’s menu at a restaurant. When I was 19, people would ask me what grade (in high school) I was in. When I was 25 people would inquire about my major (when I had completed my degree 4 years prior). For the most part, I was annoyed because if people thought I was younger, they also treated me that way, condescending to me, or at least that’s what I thought. But I also felt mature for my age, and was threatened if people undermined that feeling by assuming I was younger (a clear indication I still had some growing up to do). Of course, as I got older, the tables began to turn, and as the number of times I got carded had an inverse relationship with the number of gray hairs I found, I began to fear aging a little more.

My height, though less of an issue was also something I was insecure about. For most of my young adult life, I was 5 feet, 3 and 3/4 inches. Of course, it was natural to round up, but I hated the idea of being short. That probably stemmed from the fact that my short stature was accompanied by a more rounded shape. Which brings me to the next number: my weight.

Until pretty recently in my life, my weight — whether I knew exactly what it was, or shied away from that knowledge in the pursuit of blissful ignorance — had an enormous impact on my mood. If I woke up feeling great, and stepped on the scale only to find an unexpectedly high number, my mood was instantly deflated, and I might stay depressed for days. The opposite also held true, however, and a low number could add a note of joy to my day. The same could be said for the times I went into a dressing room and tried on an item of clothing. If I tried on my usual size and it was too big, I was overjoyed. If the size I picked out was too tight, I was devastated. Never mind that there are so many factors in what goes behind that number on the tag ranging from cost of fabric to clever marketing.

As for my bra size, well, in this breast-obsessed culture, it can be just as hard to accept small breasts as it can to accept a larger stomach (and even more difficult if you have both!). I sometimes felt humiliated going into Victoria’s Secret and not being able to find a single bra that fit my less endowed chest.

But allowing any of these numbers to have a such an impact on our outlook in life can be so hindering, or worse, damaging. Through a lot of work, I have learned to embrace each of these numbers (though oddly enough, I now measure at 5′5″ — perhaps due to a higher self esteem and better posture??) no matter what they are. I do not fear my age, but embrace the wisdom and experience that has come with each year I have passed.

I do not fear the number on the scale. Learning how to see each of these numbers for what they are has been liberating for me, and I have to say has led me to a more peaceful place in life since I know longer devote the majority of my effort resisting them — mostly the one on the scale.

So, what are your numbers?

Review of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat

It wasn’t that long ago that I decided I was ready to get off the diet roller coaster. But if you’ve spent a lifetime going on and off diets, obsessing about your weight, and swinging back and forth between counting every calorie and having an all-out food free-for-all like I have, then making the decision to end the cycle is only the beginning of the process. Sure you can decide you’ve had enough of counting calories, always feeling deprived, and so you just eat what you want, whenever you want, without considering the consequences. But chances are you, if you’ve been playing the diet game long enough, you probably have long lost the ability to listen to your body, and when you end up gaining weight as you no longer restrict every bite, you’re likely to feel bad about yourself, leading you to go on yet another diet.

Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat: How to Break Your Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle by Michelle May, M.D., is a guide book for quitting dieting and (re)learning how to eat. Like other books on intuitive eating, Eat What You Love places a big emphasis on listening to your body. But simply deciding to listen to ones body after ignoring it for so long isn’t as easy as making the decision to do so. With each Chapter, author Michelle May outlines actionable steps you can take to stop controlling what you eat and start taking charge of what you eat. She also includes moments from her own journey towards becoming an intuitive eater, bringing a personal element to the book.

In Part 1 of Eat What You Love, May helps you recognize what type of eater you are. While you might think your poor relationship by food can be summed up by simple explanations like “I just enjoy food too much” what you might find while reading this book is that there are more underlying issues that lead you to ignore your body’s cues. Understanding your habits and learning the reasons behind your eating will enable you to use the tools provided in the book to help you “eat mindfully, live vibrantly.”

Once you’ve discovered the underlying issues behind your eating habits, Eat What You Love provides new strategies to deal with old feelings and situations that may trigger overeating. In fact, there is a whole chapter on self-care. Additionally, learning how to eat with purpose may awaken or heighten the sensations you get from the food you love, and give you whole new level of enjoyment of food. And you may even realize some of the foods you think you love actually don’t taste all that great when you pay close attention to what your body is telling you as you eat it. Your taste buds are the most sensitive when you are truly hungry, and as your hunger diminishes, so does your taste sensations. That first bite of chocolate cake may taste like a little slice of heaven but if you eat slowly, taking time to taste every bite, you might find that as you fill up, the flavor seems to fade.

After going through the process of learning to eat with intention, becoming more mindful of how your emotions come into play when making decisions about food and learning how to cope through means other than food, Eat What You Love moves onto the subject of exercise. As with food, May encourages you to focus more on how exercise makes you feel instead of seeing it as a chore or as redemption for your food sins, and in the vain of the title of the book suggests “do what you love, love what you do”. If you dread the monotony of walking on the treadmill, don’t do it. Instead find other ways to move that make you feel good, like dancing around the house, taking the dog for a walk outside, or even active play with the kids. Of course, you might also find that when you are focused on the way exercise makes your body and mind feel, it might renew love for activities you thought you no longer enjoyed. And for those who are interested, May spends some time talking about the physiology of exercise but breaks it down in layman’s terms to make the information accessible and meaningful.

May points out that “Every time you drastically decrease your caloric intake, you lose muscle, not just fat, if you aren’t exercising regularly. Once you abandon the diet and resume eating the way you previously did, you’ll quickly regain fat but not the muscle you lost. As a result, your metabolism will be even slower.” In addition to suggestions on ways to add enjoyable movement to your life, Eat What You Love offers specific weight-bearing exercises as well as stretches to increase flexibility — another important component of a healthy lifestyle.

The last section of the book is filled with menu ideas and recipes for foods that will feed and nourish your body while allowing you to love what you eat. Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat is a comprehensive resource to get you on track towards a healthy relationship with food and your body. It is not a quick fix diet solution. It does not present an easy way to lose weight under the guise of a healthy eating plan. Instead, if you are ready to do some emotional work, Eat What You Love will bring you to a place you thought you might never be able to find — a place where you don’t have to think about food all the time, but instead enjoy it thoroughly while staying in charge, and living your life in a healthy way.

Talking with Jenni Schaefer, Author & Eating Disorder Activist

I admit it. Jenni Schaefer is one of my personal heroes. It’s not just because she’s battled with and recovered from an eating disorder. It’s not just because she travels around the country, talking about eating disorders and raising awareness on the most deadly of all mental disorders. It’s not just because she’s written and published two books. It’s not just because she is pursuing her dream of becoming a country singer. Perhaps it’s the culmination of all of these things, combined with her candidness and a comfort with herself that comes through in conversation, but each of her qualities are ones that I admire and feel inspired by. Jenni and I spoke for the second time after I finished her second book, Goodbye Ed, Hello Me, and through the course of our discussion, we covered topics both old and new, but each subject we touched on gave me another look at her perspective on herself and the world.

Before we dove into some of the questions I had for Jenni, I decided to be frank with her in regards to my first impression of her. To be honest, I can sometimes be skeptical when I hear someone say “I’ve learned to accept my body as it is” and when I look at them, I see a body which to me, represents our society’s ideal of being thin. Sure, I thought. That’s easy for you to say. You have a body that everyone else accepts too … what’s not to accept? These are the same thoughts I had when Jenni stood up to speak at a Congressional hearing on eating disorders. To me, she was thin, and I was envious of her flat stomach. When I shared these thoughts with Jenni, she was not the least bit surprised (or offended, as I feared) and she said that this subject is one frequently discussed at eating disorder conferences, saying that the “size and shape of a therapist is like the elephant in the room no one is talking about.” Eating disordered patients will definitely scrutinize the body of their therapist and it’s an issue that must be addressed. Jenni also personally related to my feelings as she put it into perspective for me.

“My ideal my body size with my eating disorder was many pounds lighter than I am now … The Jenni that was sick would have looked at Jenni today and say ‘wow you’ve really let yourself go.’ Jenni today looks at me and I actually love my body. My brain is now nourished and I can see I have a healthy body.” She also talked about the height of her eating disorder when she was severely bulimic and actually overweight by most doctors charts. That fact made it more difficult for her to seek the treatment she so desperately needed. She looked healthier compared to when she was anorexic, making it harder for others to understand the depth of her struggles. During this time, she looked at others with eating disorders, and thought she wasn’t thin enough to deserve help and get treatment. When she finally did seek treatment, one of the coping skills she learned early on was to look for similarities instead of looking for differences in other people.

“We will always find differences and use that to seperate us from the rest of the world which is what I used to do, or we can seek similarities and try to look at how we are all the same.” She then added this wonderful pearl of wisdom: “Eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes and recovered bodies also come in all shapes and sizes, and where I am recovered at my current body size, someone else might be recovered and actually be thinner than me, or heavier than me.”

If you read my previous interview with Jenni, you know that when I saw her at the hearing, she was wearing a black shirt which said “Recovered.” in white lettering (that wasn’t a typo — there is a period at the end of ‘Recovered’ in order to drive home the statement). This was an issue we discussed last time, but because of a recent blog post by Life Coach Andrea Owen entitled Can We Ever Fully Recover?, I felt the subject had to be explored further.

One of the things I really admire about Jenni is that she is very good about encouraging people to find the approach that best works for them. She asks the question “Does saying you are in recovery from an eating disorder keep you sick or keep you healthy?” For Jenni, always saying she was in recovery kept her sick, but she recognizes that for others, it keeps ED away.

“As long as I said I was in recovery, my eating disorder was waiting around the corner to get me. I really had to claim [recovery] for me and that’s what worked best for me.” She then added, “I am recovered from my eating disorder. I am not recovered from life. I still am constantly getting better at perfectionism. Of course I have a negative voice in my head. What’s different today is that negative voice is not surrounded around weight and food. My personal ED is gone. Does that mean I never have a bad body image experience? Do I never think anything bad about my body? Of course not, I live in America!”

But the negative voice Jenni hears from time to time is one that most of us deal with even without any history of an eating disorder, and Jenni refers to this voice as societal ED. Jenni recalled a chapter in Goodbye Ed, entitled The Worst Pick Up Line Ever, in which she describes an experience at her gym when a guy asks her “Are you here to lose weight too?” Her initial reaction was to ask herself why he would say that? But her therapist quickly reminded her that most women would have a negative reaction to his comment, and it isn’t necessarily the voice of an eating disorder. It was time to stop identifying herself with her eating disorder. When asked if she ever had moments when she questioned if life wouldn’t be better or wouldn’t she be happier at a lower weight, Jenni emphatically says no.

After writing two books about ED and traveling around the country raising awareness about eating disorders, Jenni is ready to focus on something new in her life — balance. While she enjoys talking about eating disorders and recovery, she is spending more time making room to talk about other things. In her own words, “I don’t want to always be defined by an illness I once had. Now that I’m recovered, I can do anything.”

Jenni has a variety of interests that have nothing to do with eating disorders, and those interests are leading her in new directions as she works more on her music (she has recorded two singles so far) and having fun. Being close to nature has become an important part of Jenni’s happiness and helps her feel grounded, so she tries to find activities that she can enjoy outside ranging from hitting the slopes to simply sitting outside reading a book. And speaking of books, she is already in research mode for her next one — and it’s not about ED! As she further explores the world of dating, finding new challenges and new experiences, she is realizing these are also experiences worth sharing. I for one can’t wait to read about them.

Review of Goodbye Ed, Hello Me by Jenni Schaefer

Jenni Schaefer’s first book, Life Without Ed chronicles her journey through the ups and downs of recovering from an eating disorder. At the book’s end, she declares herself truly free from the control of Ed (a common nickname for eating disorders). Now Jenni has written a follow up book entitled Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life.*

Before I go on to talk about specifics of the book … before I lose readers who think “I don’t have an eating disorder, so I won’t relate to this book” I want to point out something very important. This book is not just for people dealing with eating disorders. It’s for anyone who has spent their life obsessing about food, yo-yo dieting, hating their bodies, and otherwise doing anything related to food, even if it falls short of an eating disorder. This book is here to tell you too, in no uncertain terms, that you CAN find a life outside of your food and body obsessions.

When I interviewed Jenni earlier this year (you can read the interview here) she admitted that even after finishing her first book, Ed still occasionally made an appearance. In retrospect she sees herself then as being “significantly recovered” but not fully recovered. Goodbye Ed, Hello Me was written when she finally put a restraining order on Ed, forbidding him to ever enter into her life again. Goodbye Ed is about what life is and can be like after you are fully recovered (yes, you CAN fully recover!) from an eating disorder. It’s about, as the subtitle suggests, falling in love with life.

In the first chapter,  Happily Divorced, Jenni details some of her final battles with Ed, when she occasionally allowed her ‘ex’ to woo her once again. But with a support team and “tool box” in place, she finally cut him loose once and for all. What follows in the rest of the book is the story of how Jenni reclaimed her life from a vicious illness that nearly killed her.

Because her entire life had been dominated by a force greater than herself (or so she thought until she sought help), Jenni didn’t experience the normal milestones people have during their development. Sure she got her driver’s license. Yes, she graduated from high school and went on to college. But every thing she did was tinted as she viewed the world through the lens of her eating disorder. As a result, she avoided dating, minimized social contact with friends and family, and avoided pursuing dreams for fear of failure. In her own words, “my eating disorder had become my identity.”

After Ed was forever banished, Jenni had to take time to figure out who she was separate from Ed. It was time for her to regain herself, which sometimes was scary, and at other times, exhilarating. Of course, dating landed more on the side of ’scary’ since she never went through the full motions of dating during her adolescence, and in fact one chapter is entitled the Thirty-Two-Year-Old Adolescent. Learning how not to lose herself in a significant other in the same way she lost herself in her eating disorder was part of the dating process for Jenni, and one that was not without great pain when she walked away from an engagement for that very reason.

But it wasn’t just in dating that Jenni had to learn how to find herself. Practically born pursuing perfectionism, it was time for Jenni to work on letting go, allowing for mistakes, living and learning from them, and not losing herself in every task she undertakes. In every step she took that lead her away from Ed, she also had to walk away from the need to be perfect in everything she does.

Goodbye Ed is not just an account of Jenni’s life after Ed. It’s a guide for women (and men) who want to find themselves after kicking Ed to the curb or who just need the hope that its possible to do so, even if they haven’t divorced from Ed just yet. It is filled with tools that can be applied to any stage of recovery, and yet never once does she assert that the reader must do this or must do that in order to have a fulfilling life without Ed. Jenni is wonderful at relaying the tools that made her succesful in her recovery but frequently acknowledges that different approaches are for different people and encourages the reader to adapt their road to recovery accordingly.

Just like Life Without Ed was not just a book for people suffering from an Eating Disorder, Goodbye Ed provides inspiration for anyone wishing to bring out their best inner self, and shine gloriously without the constraints of food-obsession and a poor body image.

* Goodbye Ed, Hello Me was donated to me by The Center for Change, a residential treatment center for eating disorders.

Waking Up at Your Plate

Balancing Health AND Pleasure

by Nicole Ohebshalom

Life is full of choices that seem to have only black and white solutions.  Should you take a risk or observe? Does your child need more freedom or control?  Stay quiet or fight back?  Help someone or create a boundary? We are faced with dilemmas throughout the day.  We believe that we must choose one over the other to create a balance in ourselves and in our life, but instead we create tensions that lead to breakdowns.

In ancient tradition teachings, the tensions in life are not only a natural part of life, they are life.  The dynamic opposition is what gives birth to and sustains the changing and evolving creative essentials of our world.  We clearly see this interaction by the T’ai Chi’s swirling black-and-white circle. It shows us that without one part of the pair, the other cannot exist.  Both sides of the picture complete the circle of wholeness.  Without the dynamic interplay between these powerful pairs, there is only stagnation and narrow thinking.   One great lesson I have learned in life is we cannot ignore or chase away the tension of opposites, because its how the universe operates.  Our job is to learn how to flow with life and listen to our inner-pleasure balance compass.

Many of my clients find that when they don’t listen to their body and embrace both sides of the situation they create breakdowns instead of breakthroughs.  When we become out of balance, we feel lopsided, especially in our body.  The body sends us messages to help us get back into balance.  Recently, I had a client craving late night cookie dough ice cream.   I’m sure many have been there — I have!  What was occurring for my client was pressure in receiving a promotion especially in this economy.  The ice cream felt like a big old bear hug, a way she had learned to receive love, relax, and smooth over her feelings.  Now, she takes a bubble bath with a good book, she has fun playful tools at work, and can listen more to what her body wants to eat. I’m so excited for her; she is rocking her new promotion!  And she still eats her ice cream now and then, but with so much more pleasure!

When you learn to honor yourself then you are respecting, appreciating, and giving birth to your best self so you can give creatively and abundantly in ways that honor others.  At its core, using a pleasure balance compass gives us the inner-guidance in receiving and giving during our life challenges.

Ready to gain more understanding of this balance system?  Many of us believe that our duty is to give, give, give, which prevents us from living joyfully and giving fully.  For example, the earth must receive enough nutrients, sunshine, and water before it can produce a beautiful harvest.  Your body and mind need their own nutrition and self-love to support one another, connect with your soul, and create a beautiful life for you.

Finding the balance in life begins with these few questions: Do you love yourself enough to honor your body’s needs? Do you give yourself the nourishment, rest, and activity you deserve?  If you can give all this to yourself, as well as getting out of your mind and into your body then your body will make sure you find your balance.  Your body always has your back! You see this when you trust and learn to receive from her.  If you want to get in touch with your inner potential, you must also care for your body and listen to her wisdom.  Rabbi Nachman said, “Strengthen your body before you strengthen your soul.”

From society we have learned to push ourselves beyond our limits, we are giving on an empty tank when we should be receiving.  Honoring yourselves and connecting to your pleasure balance compass is going to call for adding into your life more playful activities.  It’s about asking yourself what you need, right now, in order for you to regain balance.  A conscious effort is needed to come back into balance by learning more of yourself and asking yourself: What do I need at this moment to create happiness?  Your happiness is your responsibility.

I asked this question to myself early today.  I was writing on the computer and I felt my body slumping and becoming tight.  In response my thoughts became narrow and nothing flowed.  To balance myself out I put the music on, let go of my mind and got into my body and just danced. It was so awesome! I feel free!  After 5 minutes, I was so into my body and happy that I could connect more to myself, the writing slowed smoothly, and my body was relaxed.  For myself, I know moving my body is key and a method to honor myself.  This doesn’t sound difficult, but it takes practice.  The change begins with watching yourself, getting to know yourself, and then translating that knowledge into action that is distinct to your needs.

Ask yourself throughout the day: Do you sacrifice the needs of your body because you are giving so much of yourself?  Do you ignore the warning signs that are trying to get you back into balance?  Do you think of your body as something you love and completely surrender to?

Nicole Ohebshalom is the owner of Radiant Living Wellness which offers programs to address weight and health concerns, increase energy levels, or simply to help clients eat better. A firm believer in the power of balance, Nicole is also a Kundalini Yoga Instructor. To learn more about Nicole and her services, visit Radiant Living Wellness.

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