Tools

Once I got my head in order and wasn’t looking outside of myself for some magic solution to my food abuse issues, I started to seek out reading material that coincided with my outlook. I found the following books very helpful and read them several times. It was great to have the authors’ insight expand on what I was learning about myself. It was also great to have their thoughts and ideas in my head during the more challenging times.

- Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth

This book completely changed my life. It spoke to my relationship with food on a level that I had never experienced before. It also promised that I could use my relationship with food as a path to what Geneen calls ‘God’.

She’s not referring to God in the conventional sense. The theme of the book isn’t ‘Jesus loves a thin girl’. She’s referring more to the ‘sigh of ecstasy’ that so many are searching for, don’t find, and ‘replace’ by abusing food.

There is more to life than food. So much more. You don’t have to settle for a life who’s only ‘joy’ comes from the high of escaping into a binge. There IS more and if you’re willing to find it, this book can help.

Every page contained a revelation. Every page spoke to me. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Read it four times and will read it countless more. Reading this book is like going home.

- What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better by Dan Baker Ph.D.

I’m not going to lie to you, this book started out kind of hokey and I felt like a hippy was reading to me. I stuck with it and learned a lot about what does and does not lead to happiness. Most of us are looking in the wrong places. While this book doesn’t deal exclusively with food addiction, it does provide insight into what DOES lead to happiness.

Who doesn’t want to be happy?

- Naturally Thin: Unleash your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting by Bethenny Frankel

I took from this book what I needed/wanted and left the rest.

Pros:

This book gave me a lot of great tools to implement the new thought process I learned in Women, Food and God. I understood all of the concepts of Geneen Roth’s book, but wanted more direction when it came to applying these concepts. Enter Bethenny Frankel’s book.

I could relate to Bethenny’s story and her journey to natural thinness. Bethenny is a former food and exercise obsessive (sound familiar?) who decided to get off the diet and exercise treadmill and just live her life. She lays out the guidelines she follows and covers one guideline per chapter. It’s heavy on the application part which is what I needed.

She’s a huge fan of playing fast and loose. She frequently stresses that perfection is not the goal. These are guidelines. Some days you’re going to have more or less than what an ideal day would/should contain, but that’s how life is. Perfection is not attainable and it is not the goal.

Her view of exercise is in line with mine: do what you love because you’ll actually do it.

She emphasizes that her guidelines are not meant to be restrictions. They’re all meant to be used as a means to be good to yourself. I couldn’t agree more with the ‘diet and exercise as an expression of love’ concept.

There are also GREAT recipes in this book.

Cons:

Her narrative voice can sound harsh. She’s abrasive so I get it, but if I hadn’t already read Women, Food and God, I don’t think this book would have been a good book for me to read. Her narrative voice can sound a LOT like my inner-critic. She can also use negative and judgemental turns of phrase that I’m trying to banish from my life (ie: you want the cupcake right this second? What are you? Two years old?).

She says never to measure or count. That measuring and counting are obsessive. Yes, they can be. I agree, but she then goes on to describe in detail how to use different size bowls for certain kinds of foods (ie: a super small bowl for ice cream) and guidelines for a balanced day (no more than two servings of sweets a day, if you have alcohol, that counts as one sweet, if your last meal was carb heavy, your next meal should be protein based and you want to have this many protein meals and this many carb meals each day, etc). Um, sounds like counting to me. You count your way with your dishes and ‘no more than two sweets a day’ guidelines (granted, they’re good guidelines, but don’t pretend like you’re not counting and tracking) and I’ll count and track my way.

Happy reading!