Have you ever read a book or an article that made you question your thoughts or beliefs on a topic? If you have, please share the name of the book or article. I love reading powerful pieces and I’m sure our entire community would enjoy it too!
Women, Food And God did just that for me. A friend suggested I read it in passing a few months ago and said the insights would be good for my blog. Holy, understatement!
I thought I knew my weight gain and weight loss story by heart and shared a lot of it with you in How I Gained Over 100 Pounds and My Best Advice To You.
I was only a few pages into Women, Food And God when a few of Geneen Roth’s statements struck me.
“Our relationship to food is an exact microcosm to our relationship to life itself”. She also said, “the way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation and, yes, even God…”
– Geneen Roth, Women, Food And God
Her statements were so powerful, they left me questioning just about everything. What is my relationship with food? Perhaps more importantly what is my relationship with life? And, do we really need to bring God into this?
When I started this blog just a few months ago, I honestly didn’t think I had any issues with food. My situation seemed cut and dry. The stress pregnancy put on my body in addition to the stress of being a special needs parent caused my weight gain. Additionally, all of the diagnosis I amassed and discussed in How I Gained Over 100 Pounds and My Best Advice To You were contributing to my weight loss resistance. Very logical – right?
Within a few weeks and blogs like The Pursuit of Ketosis – Day 3 and Whole30 Experience (Day 11) I realized I had strong emotional issues tied to food. In fact, I believe we all have emotional issues with food. Don’t you?
Geneen Roth showered me with AHA moments throughout Women, Food, and God. I would write a summary for you, but I know I wouldn’t do her justice and hope you decide to order the book.
There is one very impactful part I would like to tell you about. When I came to the part that said people tend to gain weight when they stop living in the present moment, tears started streaming out of my eyes. Before I could even process why I knew this was my big AHA moment.
I lived my life in a very present state throughout the majority of my life. Sure, I had a tough blurb in my childhood and a difficult semester in college when I needed to live in what I call a daydream state. Looking back at pictures I can clearly see I gained a few pounds during both of those times. Besides for those two periods of time, I was an off the charts type A Superfreak who lived in the here and now.
Then, I got pregnant. I wasn’t a good pregnant person and felt terrible throughout my entire gestation period, so I started to daydream throughout the day to give myself a break. The early motherhood years were somewhat of a struggle for me for various reasons and I continued to daydream my way through them. When Drew was diagnosed with Autism, my daydreaming skills were enhanced to a new level and desperately needed. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know that I could have kept myself together.
I’ve pretty much lived in my daydreams for the last sixteen years and have thought of them as a safe place I can go instead of constantly losing my temper or worse yet, becoming one of those crabby people you see around town. Ironically, I have struggled with my weight for the last sixteen years- the same amount of time I have dodged living in the present moment.
What’s really interesting is, I lost my ability to daydream for a few months after my Dad passed. I couldn’t get myself out of the present moment to save my life. I remember praying and asking God to give me my ability to daydream back since he obviously wasn’t going to give me my Dad. In the four months, I lived in the present, I lost 46 pounds!
There must be something to Geneen Roth’s theory about the relationship between living in the present and weight. I’m not sure how to implement it into my daily life and to be honest, I’m scared. How about you? Do you live in the present? How does it affect your relationship with food and your weight?
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