Geneen Roth Food Quotes & Sayings

Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic ... The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being. — Geneen Roth

Our work is not to change what you do, but to witness what you do with enough awareness, enough curiosity, enough tenderness that the lies and old decisions upon which the compulsion is based become apparent and fall away. When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop. When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart. When the shape of your body no longer matches the shape of your beliefs, the weight disappears. (p. 80-81) — Geneen Roth

If LOVE could talk to you about your relationship with food, what would it say? — Geneen Roth

When you are not hungry and decide to eat, choose a food that you ate that day when you were hungry. Be aware of: 1. how the food tastes 2. how the taste was different when you were hungry 3. if you enjoy it as much as when you were hungry 4. what, since it's not hunger, you are feeling 5. how you know when to stop eating — Geneen Roth

All I know is that while I'm asleep, I'm never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories - and bless the man who invented sleep, a cloak over all human thought, food that drives away hunger, water that banishes thirst, fire that heats up cold, chill that moderates passion, and, finally, universal currency with which all things can be bought, weight and balance that brings the shepherd and the king, the fool and the wise, to the same level. There's only one bad thing about sleep, as far as I've ever heard, and that is that it resembles death, since there's very little difference between a sleeping man and a corpse. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

As signs of inadequacy and weakness, they look on wealth as a source of stability and strength. Our proud hearts shrink from weakness, real or fancied, in all its forms, as we have already noted, and they embrace whatever looks like strength, including the goal and the reality of affluence. The — J.I. Packer

The truth is that it's not about the weight. It's never been about the weight. When a pill is discovered that allows people to eat whatever they want and not gain weight, the feelings and situations they turned to food to avoid will still be there and they will find other more inventive ways to numb themselves. — Geneen Roth

You will stop turning to food when you start understanding in your body, not just your mind, that there is something better ... Truth, not force, does the work of ending compulsive eating. — Geneen Roth

Weight (too much or too little) is a by-product. Weight is what happens when you use food to flatten your life. Even with aching joints, it's not about food. Even with arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure. It's about your desire to flatten your life. It's about the fact that you've given up without saying so. It's about your belief that it's not possible to live any other way
and you're using food to act that out without ever having to admit it. (p. 53) — Geneen Roth

The music that was playing now was slow, sexy and melodious. Richard thought that he would surely die when he finally saw her come out. — J.M. Brown

Our relationship with food
how, when, what and why we eat
is a direct expression of our underlying feelings, thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. It has to do with stances we take that get reflected not only in our relationship with food, but in all our relationships. It just so happens that the relationship with food causes enough conflict, grief, shame and hurt that we're willing to look at it. — Geneen Roth

Your relationship to food, no matter how conflicted, is the doorway to freedom. — Geneen Roth

We are using the food as a doorway to understanding the rest of our lives. — Geneen Roth

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. — Geneen Roth

Letters freeze time for us, eternalizing shared experiences so we can go back and draw strength from them. Letters are like deposits in a secret bank that can be withdrawn when they are needed. And as we look back in love, we appreciate anew the thought and time that was taken to express those feelings. — Lois Wyse

Ah, furchte fruchte, timid Danaides! Ena milo melomon, frai is frau and swee is too, swee is two when swoo is free, ana mala woe is we! A pair of sycopanties with amygdaleine eyes, one old obster lumpky pumpkin and three meddlars on their slies. — James Joyce

You are lovable, you are loving; your choices about food will reflect that, if you give yourself a chance. — Geneen Roth

You politicians have got to look further ahead; you always got a Putter in your hands, when you ought to have a Driver. — Will Rogers

One of the most perplexing political questions of the late 20th century is how new democracies should punish deposed dictators and their associates. Victims cry for justice, but leaders of new regimes must decide to what extent it is possible, moral or prudent to pursue evildoers of the past. — Stephen Kinzer

Life is too short to learn German — Oscar Wilde

You can't take my joy, because you didn't give it to me — Monica Denise Brown

After initial needs are met-enough food, shelter, comfort-there is no correlation between money and happiness. That's a difficult thing for people to believe. — Geneen Roth

I'm not really interested in being king. I prefer to work for a living — John Flanagan

I feel like it's been important for me to use my own personal experiences with food and money to help people to not feel ashamed. I felt so much shame about my own experiences. — Geneen Roth

We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health. — Lionel Trilling

Bingeing is such an emotionally frenetic activity that no other concerns can exist in the same space. It is a hell that people who are food-sensitive are familiar with; and, because it is known, it is therefore not so terrifying as some of the problems that are outside our control. Problems like divorce, illness, death. — Geneen Roth

When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart. When the shape of your body no longer matches the shape of your beliefs, the weight disappears. And yes, it really is that simple. — Geneen Roth

I think we all have a hunger that's hard to name. A lot of people who come to my retreats have never named it before, or else they've named it in church, but they can't actually see the connection between what they're doing with food and this yearning. I call it "the flame" that they have: They yearn for big answers to live a big life. But they have to start with the most basic fears. — Geneen Roth

Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value. — Benjamin Jowett

And if you worry that not finishing the food on your plate is a slap in the face of all the hungry people everywhere, you are not living in reality. The truth is that you either throw the food out or you throw it in, but either way it turns to waste. World hunger will not be solved by finishing the garlic mashed potatoes on your plate. — Geneen Roth

And.. are you willing to go all the way? To understand that food is only a stand-in for love and possibility and spirit? Because if you aren't, you will get caught up in gaining and losing weight for the rest of your life. But if you are willing, then the portal to what you say you want is truly on your plate. — Geneen Roth

There are times when you simply have to righteous hang on and outlast the devil. — Ezra Taft Benson

Because if it's not her fault, it's God's, and I'm not ready to be pissed at the Almighty. — Cynthia Hand

In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions. — Hugh Blair