Feeding the Hungry Heart The Experience of Compulsive Eating: Geneen Roth

After JJ reminding me how wonderful Geneen Roth's books are, I finally went and dug out the ones I have... I've been devouring them like I use to devour a pizza! :) Here is an excerpt I just had to share!! Feeding the Hungry Heart – The Experience of Compulsive Eating: Geneen Roth (P 128-129) “If you use food or any other tangible substance – alcohol, cigarettes, drugs – as your main source of psychic “nourishment” you never get full. Food, being a tangible substance, cannot satisfy intangible needs. It can numb you, drug you, but it cannot nourish you. Your chest aches. You’re not sure why, but you know that is hurt, and it’s uncomfortable to hurt. You want to do something about it quickly; you want the pain to go away. So you eat the ice cream in the refrigerator; and for a while the ache freezes over, but it doesn’t dissolve. You push it into the background; you focus your attention on the chocolate chips sliding down your throat: and afterwards, the glaze of the full stomach puts you to sleep. In the morning you awaken with stomach pains and a dull ache in your chest. No ice cream left. Today it’s potato chips or cookies or candy or anything in the refrigerator: Cold vegetables, frozen cake, fingerfuls of peanut butter. But the hurt remains. The ache - and what caused it - moves deeper into your body, curling around your heart, settling in your bones. The food has not touched it. Watching a child try to put a round peg in a square hole, you know it is useless. Yet the futility of using food for psychic nourishment is not as obvious. You eat but you remain forever hungry – full but hungry. At twenty, fifty, one hundred pounds overweight, you are undernourished. Food satisfies when the hunger is physical, and only then can it be considered nourishment. Every other time you ‘use’ food, you leave yourself. You walk out the door and leave yourself staving. You wouldn’t leave your best friend in time of need. You wouldn’t even leave an acquaintance. But you leave yourself over and over. And each time it happened, you come a little closer to true starvation. Every time you reach for food when you’re not hungry, you are getting a signal of need. If you recognize that, you’re lucky: you’ve found a way of getting your own attention. Some people never realize the success they have to their inner lives. Some people become so cut off from their bodies and so attuned to everyone else’s needs, judgments, and demands that they ignore their own. They learn how to nourish their spouses, children, friend, but they don’t take time to learn to feed themselves.” A few pages later (p 132), this line caught my eye: “…in order to hear the possibilities, you must care about yourself enough to listen.” All I can say is... "wow" I don't know about any of you, but a bunch of this hit home for me! Her books ARE amazing! If you want to work on your head stuff... well, get to the book store! :)

http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Gastric_Bypass_Surgery/forum/17095887-compulsive-eating