Butter Tarts are not my enemy.

Enemy: a thing that harms. Butter Tarts are not my enemy, it's my thought that Butter Tarts will make me feel better or solve my problems that is the enemy.  

I've just finished listening to Geneen Roth's book, "Women, Food and God" and it makes so much sense to me!  Betty Anne lent me a copy of the book and here's my recent email to her:

"I've been meaning to get your book back to you.  I have never read it.  I tried several times during "My Year of Living Dangerously Close to Cracking Up" but have a difficult time staying focused on self help books.  Perhaps because every second paragraph sends my mind off down a corridor of self reflection and I forget to come back!

However, after reading just a few pages I knew deep down it was about me.  A few months ago I decided to put all the time I spend in my car to good use.  So, I bought books on CD. Two weeks ago I came across your copy of "Women, Food and God" and thought duh....so immediately ordered it.  I just finished it last night on my drive back from Denbigh.  To put it mildly Geneen's words have brought about a flood of emotions.  First, sadness for the young girl who so could have used that insight 47 years ago, then anger because I wish I had read it a year ago and then acceptance because I was not in the frame of mind to take it in a year ago, and now excitement because I finally see a way to change my relationship with food and yet still, some trepidation because I'm afraid to try to change my relationship with food and finally, hopeful possibility." 

Here are some of Geneen's word that have really resonated with me.  Perhaps you will see yourself in them too.

"Most of us spend our lives protecting ourselves from losses that have already happened."

"We eat the way we eat because we are afraid to feel what we feel".

"No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul.  We refuse to take in what sustains us.  We live lives of deprivation.  And when we can't stand it any longer, we binge."

"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 and transformation."

"If you try to lose weight by shaming, depriving and fearing yourself, you will end up shamed, deprived and afraid.  Kindness comes first. Always."

"If you pay attention to when you are hungry, what your body wants, what you are eating, when you've had enough, you end the obsession because obsession and awareness cannot coexist."

It is possible a Butter Tart is just a Butter Tart and has no healing properties.

Food is not the enemy, our thoughts about food are the enemy.

It is possible to change our thoughts.