Geneen Roth

Mindful Eating

Renee Lertzman
here is perhaps no more recognizable trademark of compulsive eating than
grazing at the refrigerator. Most of us do it only when were by ourselves.
In her latest book, When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair
(Hyperion), Geneen Roth describes eating straight from the refrigerator with humor and
candor, and even suggests sharing the experience with someone:

I can appreciate her message, because Ive been there, standing before the freezer
in the home of my childhood, eating my mothers frozen Hanukkah cookies or leftover
sweets from a Shabbat reception, hoping not to get caught. Like many women in our
culture, I have experienced this painful struggle over food: the desire to conform to
cultural standards of thinness, coupled with the unwavering conviction that once Ive

Geneen Roth
4 The Sun

January 2002

Photo (right): Jason Langer/The Image Bank

Imagine you invite a friend over for dinner. Tell her that the two of you are going
to eat the way you eat when you are alone. . . . Lead her to the refrigerator. Open
the door. Stare. Begin picking from Tupperware containers. Use your fingers.
Graze through yesterdays Chinese food. Last weeks tapioca pudding. Make loud
grunting noises of pleasure. Open the freezer. Try to chunk off a piece of frozen
cake with your fingers. When that doesnt work, hack it off with a carving knife.
Notice the fine spray of sugar settling on your floor.

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attained my ideal weight, I will be happy. It was Roths book

self-love, and the relationship between eating and intimacy,
Feeding the Hungry Heart (Dutton) that led me to connect
including Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating, Appetites,
my desire for love and emotional nourishment with my endless
and When Food Is Love (all Penguin). She has garnered a huge
quest to have enough to eat.
following of readers who feel she speaks directly to the pain of
One of Roths perhaps most well-known and controversial
overeating and underlying issues of deprivation. Though her
exercises helps people to experience what they have as enough:
subject matter is serious, she addresses it with humor, kindness,
in conjunction with her advice to carry a chunk of chocolate
and even unabashed joy. She invites us to celebrate pleasure by
everywhere, Roth teaches how to eat that chocolate slowly and
eating exactly what we want, with awareness, and also to be
with complete awareness. The exercise, she writes, reminds us
willing to lose the suffering contest. She has led Breaking Free
to wake up, pay attention, stop reaching for what we dont have,
workshops around the country for two decades and recently
and focus on what we do have. It teaches us that we dont need
added intensive retreats.
a truck full of love to satisfy our hungry hearts. When we pay
In person, Roth is warm, engaging, and charismatic. Her
attention, enough is possible.
home in west Marin County, CaliforRoth knows what its like to struggle with
nia, is full of color and light, with a
food, having gone on her first diet at the age At every workshop, I ask, How view of the grassy, rolling hills around
of eleven, when she began skipping dinners
San Francisco Bay. She lives with her
to lose five pounds. My mother always felt many people have lost weight husband, Matt, her beloved and very
fat, she says, and didnt want me to follow
fat cat, Blanche, and their new puppy,
in her footsteps. They fought over food and before? Everybody raises their Celeste. As we talked in her sun-filled
body size, and Roth fantasized that, if she
kitchen, Roth would occasionally cut
could be thin enough, she could please her hand. How many of you were off a hunk of Gruyre cheese and offer
mother and make everything all right.
me a taste without missing a beat.
When she was twenty-two, Roth trav- ecstatically happy after you lost
Lertzman: Youve said that willeled to India, where she lived alone for four
power, discipline, and commitment
months in an eight-by-ten-foot room with no weight? Two people raise their are irrelevant when it comes to dietrunning water. It was a turning inward to
ing. But isnt self-control what dieting
something much bigger than myself, or the hands. How many people believe is all about?
family I grew up in, she writes. I started
Roth: I used to believe that if
believing again in goodness, in kindness, and that, when you lose weight again, I deprived and punished and frightin something far vaster than I could see.
ened myself enough, then somehow
After her return from India, however, you will be ecstatically happy? I would change. But those strategies
Roth went through a personal crisis: I didnt
involving willpower and discipline
know what I was doing. I had no idea what Everybody raises their hand so celebrated in our culture
I was good at, or what I could do, and being
werent leading me anywhere. In fact,
of service in some capacity felt crucial to me. again.
I was killing myself. I began to sense
Unable to control the direction of her life, she
that the way out was through love,
turned to something familiar that she could
openness, and trust, but I didnt feel
control: her eating. She became anorexic.
any of those for myself at the time. Still, once the idea of
When she got down to eighty-two pounds, Roth realized
love and trust occurred to me, I knew that I could never
what was happening and made another change: she went back
go on a diet again.
to school to study medicine. Within two months, she had gained
Lertzman: You are described as being a pioneer in
eighty pounds. It was at that point, she says, that I realized
the antidieting movement, but your work is more of a
I was really, truly ruining my life. . . . The size of my body,
psychological and perhaps even spiritual approach
how much I weighed, what I put in my mouth, what I didnt
to food and eating.
put in my mouth, what my life was going to be like when I
Roth: First of all, our culture deals with eating and
lost weight this was the center around which everything
dieting and food as just a womens issue and a banal
else revolved.
one, at that. New diets come out every month. Diet books
At this crucial juncture, Roth took a writing workshop with
are always on the bestseller list. But people generally dont
poet Ellen Bass and began to put her experiences down on paper.
think of dieting, weight loss, and food in a particularly
Her relationship to herself changed once more. She also read
deep way.
Susie Orbachs Fat Is a Feminist Issue and realized for the
Sometimes dieting is seen as a feminist issue. That
first time that maybe I wasnt a crazy person; that perhaps what
can be incredibly helpful, but its not broad enough. Other
I was doing around food had some meaning, that there was
authors approach the subject from a serious health perspecsome logic around it. . . . I also understood immediately that
tive, but our relationship with food goes so much deeper than
dieting would never work.
that. Its not just about what you put in your mouth.
Roth went on to write several best-selling books on food,
Food is both concrete and metaphorical its something
6 The Sun

January 2002

we deal with every day, but it can also be a doorway that

we want to do it more? Dont most Americans already treat
leads into the hidden rooms of our lives. My relationship with
themselves with rich food?
food is a microcosm of my relationship to being alive, to my
Roth: Thats a good question. I also work with people
beliefs about trust, pleasure, deprivation, and nourishment.
on the experience of what its like to have enough. So many
But looking at these deeper, underlying issues is considered
emotional eaters have a sense of never getting enough. They
subversive.
approach life from an inner sense of poverty, and no amount
Lertzman: Especially if youre advising people to carry
of food, sex, clothes, or money will satisfy them. I ask them
a piece of chocolate around in their pocket.
to question the notion of being forever deprived, to recognize
Roth: Yes, some people actually think Im saying, Eat
that it is in their minds, though probably based on a real
whatever you want, whenever you want. That is not what
experience of having felt deprived in the past.
Im saying at all. Im saying: Look; pay attention. Most
As a child, I couldnt get enough of my mothers love.
people have hardly enjoyed a meal in their life. Theres no joy
But I was not in control of my mother. As an adult, I was in
or pleasure in food for them, because
control of how much food I ate, so I ate
theres so much I should, I shouldnt,
more to make up for not having had
I cant, Im going to feel guilty about it Im supposed to eat chocolate? enough of something vital in my past:
afterward. I teach them how to slow
in this case, love. I felt deprived and
down. Im basically saying, We have people say. But Im already forty poverty-stricken when it came to love,
a choice: we can taste what is in our
and that became part of my motivamouth and utterly enjoy ourselves, or pounds overweight. Yes, and tion for eating compulsively. For the
we can remain unconscious of it and
first twenty-five years of my life, I had
be in pain. People dont know there is youre forty pounds overweight in a constant feeling that I could not
a choice. It doesnt occur to them that
get enough. Realizing that I could get
they can actually enjoy eating.
part because youre not allowing enough food and still lose weight
Giving them a piece of chocolate is
was a major turning point.
a way to introduce them to pleasure and yourself to have what youre having
If you want to lose weight, you
awareness. At my workshops, theres an
can do it by eating only when youre
exercise in which we practice savoring anyway, and youre not paying hungry and stopping when youve had
a single chocolate kiss. Once, a man
enough. But this thought is frightening
told me that hed been bingeing on attention while youre having it. to most people, because it means taking
chocolate kisses for twenty years and
responsibility and trusting yourself.
had never eaten just one. The one in I am asking people to stop, just It goes against the machinery of the
his mouth was always the precursor
culture particularly the $33 billionto the ten that came after it, and the for a moment, and think: Have I a-year diet industry. Most people like
two bags after that. But when he actuto be told what to do, especially when
ally allowed himself to have one, and ever enjoyed chocolate, really? Do it comes to food. Thats part of the
was present while eating it, he didnt
lure of diets: they make people feel like
want another one. Its when I feel I I know how to enjoy food?
children again, because they tell us that
cant have one, he said, that I want
we cannot be trusted to handle food;
twenty.
that we are not capable of making up
In a normal dieting mentality, giving that man chocolate
our own minds and having control over how we eat.
would be like handing an ax to an ax murderer. Im supposed
Lertzman: Why do you think people want to be told
to eat chocolate? people say. But Im already forty pounds
what to do?
overweight. Yes, and youre forty pounds overweight in part
Roth: Its easier. Many people say to me, I am tired
because youre not allowing yourself to have what youre
of thinking about food. I dont want to spend one more
having anyway, and youre not paying attention while youre
second thinking about it. Just give me a set of rules, and I
having it. I am asking people to stop, just for a moment, and
will follow them. But the problem is, people always break
think: Have I ever enjoyed chocolate, really? Do I know
the rules. Something in them says, I dont want to do
how to enjoy food? Does it bring me pleasure? I know Im
this. Im not going to do this. In fact, I am going to do the
bingeing all the time, but am I paying attention to even one
opposite of this.
thing Im eating? The answer is no.
Dieting perpetuates that cycle of making rules and
So I am saying: Show up, not just for meals, but for your
breaking them, which leads into deeper issues of the heart,
life. Taste the food. Sit down. Focus on what youre doing.
such as craving nourishment and gratification, and yet not
Whats the point of eating chocolate if youre not going to
really allowing yourself to have it. It perpetuates the belief
have a fabulous time doing it? Youre missing your whole life,
that if I am good enough, Ill be safe.
because you never let yourself have it.
Lertzman: But if something brings us pleasure, dont
(end of excerpt)
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