Customer Reviews

Feeding the Hungry Heart: The Experience of Compulsive Eating

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am sorry you thought this book was a waste of money. This is not the book to read if you are looking for a diet. "Where are the answers?" you say...

Well, the answers are in the stories of these women who have struggled with the agony of a shameful addiction.

This book is so totally anti-diet. Anti-depriving yourself. It's about being good to yourself, maybe for the first time ever.

It's about figuring out WHY, so you can then work toward healing.

The author was not whining. She was simply telling her story, her truth. She tells her story about food, weight, shame, dieting, and the torment of being teased by other kids, in a touching, yet humorous manner.

Maybe you have not suffered the pain of addiction, possibly? I don't know.

I am in a position to give some advice because I identified with many of the women in this book. I suffered for years with food problems and I am finally free. My heart aches for people who are still struggling. This book has helped me in my battle to start being good to myself.

Do yourself a favor, forget about dieting. Eat what you want when you are truly hungry for food. Don't listen to people who tell you you are too fat. Make exercise fun. Enjoy your food, enjoy moving your body. Enjoy life.

Be good to you.

There's you answer.

I first came across Geneen Roth's books in the early 1990s, as a college student. I'd gone away for school and gained sixty pounds. Deep down, I knew that I had a problem with food, and it wasn't something I could solve on my own. My problem was as serious as that of an alcoholic or drug addict, and food was my drug of choice. When I read Feeding the Hungry Heart, I learned for the first time that I wasn't alone, that I wasn't a freak, that other people, mostly women, had felt the same way I felt. And most importantly, that they'd come through the experience and found a way to be healthy with food. If you suspect that you have a problem with food, try reading this book. Don't expect to find diets or even suggestions for overcoming the problem. If you view your overeating as an addiction, this book is really the first step to recovery. Use it to help yourself admit that you're addicted to food, and then move on to Roth's other books, especially When Food Is Love and Breaking Free from Emotional Eating. They'll help you get a better sense of specific steps you can take. I did what I'm recommending ten years ago, and over several years, I overcame my obsession with food and lost the sixty pounds I'd gained. I didn't do it by dieting or restricting myself from eating anything. And it didn't happen quickly. I'm also fully aware that my relationship to food is just like an addict's relationship to alcohol. It doesn't go away. In fact, in stressful periods of my life, I've turned to food for solace and gained weight again. But this time, the difference is that I know what I'm doing and why. I know why I'm turning to food. And I know what it can't and won't ever be able to give me. Anyone who tells you that it's just a matter of calories in vs. calories out or who recommends that you "just get over it" doesn't understand that food is, for many people, not an issue of physical hunger, but of emotional hunger.

I have struggled with my weight for most of my 31 years. I bought this book a few years ago and it showed me that I am not crazy - other women have had the same thoughts and actions that I have...Thank God! Whenever I start to feel overwieght or even THINK about going on another diet, I read this book and it puts me right back on track. I loved this book. LOVED it. It has significantly affected the way I view my body and the way I treat myself now.

Because I doubt if Ms. Roth's early years with an abusive mother, emotionally absent father were fiction. Ms. Roth's first book was truly a brave recounting of her conflict with food and you can clearly understand that her childhood had a lot to do with that (as it does for many of us). I also appreciated the writings from other women who've been through the same battles. It really never ends. You have to constantly be vigilant. I would recommend this to anyone who uses food for comfort, anesthesia, etc. The book makes sense.

How tragic that you are frustrated by the information presented by Ms. Roth. In fact, the mere issues you raise (no plans, no diets, etc.) are the issues Ms. Roth explains are unnecessary for success in the envelopment of this book. I have personally lowered my cholesterol by 50 points, and my weight by 35 pounds in four months by reading this book. In synopsis, I eat when I am hungry, eat what I want when I determine what that might be, and the rest goes on by itself. Perhaps I might suggest you read this book for sheer entertainment, and not the "answer" as we have all (women in America, and other bathingsuit consious societies...hahaha.) and maybe some of it will resonate with you. Obviously, you are a women of great integrity and intelligence, or you would not have taken the time to respond to Amazon.com, and I encourage you to step beyond the failures we have taken as being our "lifestyle", and give it another try. My life is so undeniably improved since my discoveries of Ms. Roth's candid approach to the masses. Please, give it a try.

It has been said frequently that this is not a diet book. It is in a healing book. It takes the die out of diets. Many people as children or in some part of their lives have experienced having food deprivation as some part of a punishment system. Others have been deprived because of selfish parents. Others have been deprived of food when they are hungry due to some other emotional assault on their sense of self. This is an empowering book. It teaches us to listen to our inner being. We learn to approach food and eating differently. We learn why we want to eat. And we learn to nourish our inner and outer self so we can eat to truly care for ourselves in a healthy way, not a way that simply damages our emotional and physical selves. This book can help heal our emotional damage and lead to a more healthy self inside and outside.

This is for the person who wrote the previous review -- Sorry you missed the answers. They're outlined very clearly in "Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating," the next book. Personally, I found reading the first book helpful in using the next one. For $10 you're not willing to try? How about if you checked it out of the library? Be nice to yourself -- don't give up yet. This book and the two that she wrote afterwards were the best thing to ever happen to my weight life. I eat better, am happier, and no longer feel like I can't control my food habits.

This is the first book I read when I began my recovery five and a half years ago. It always spoke to me, or rather, screamed at me! This is always the first book I recommend to anyone who struggles with food issues, or has a loved one who struggles. Geneen Roth is an amazing writer, and her style is wonderfully eloquent. A MUST-READ!!!

During a difficult recovery from bulimia, I sought out emotional advice from those who had been through similar perils and had recovered to an admiral degree. I bought Feeding the hungry heart and read through it as fast and deperately as I would a quart of ice cream. The book is really a culmination of women's stories who had been compulsive eaters and had recovered by taking seminars from the author. While I could certainly relate to much of what was said, I found the stories to be depressing; leaving me with a bit of hopelessness. Never was it thoroughly explained exactly what these women did to lead to a recovery. I felt cheated; as if this was just the prequel to the book with the answers. I wasn't about to pay another $10.00 to find them.

Geneen Roth has opened up a new path in my journey to recovery from compulsive eating. Her ideas and suggestions put my eating disorder in a different light. It is nothing to be so ashamed of that I continue my own self-sabotage. With work - getting rid of the old messages surrounding my compulsive eating - I will discover the me I was created to be.