Most Helpful Customer Reviews
89 of 89 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Eye-Opening, Life Changing Book, May 28, 2007
This review is from: The Food and Feelings Workbook: A Full Course Meal on Emotional Health (Paperback)
After reading Karen Koenig's "Normal Eating" book and loving it, I bought this book in the hopes of further exploring her concepts of addressing the emotions behind eating disorders.
This book is challenging: it forces you to face your feelings over and over again, as well as going back to your past to face some of your most uncomfortable emotional moments. But this is the whole point: most people with eating disorders are avoiding or pushing away those uncomfortable memories and the fear of those emotions.
Karen's book teaches you that no emotion is wrong and we can handle any emotion that comes our way. The exercises in the book give you opportunities to face each difficult emotion, break it down and show us they're normal and survivable.
Some of the best things in this book are the relaxation techniques and the examples of rational beliefs when it comes to emotions and food. I have been able to put several of her strategies into practice in my everyday life and it has been helping me immensely to figure out many of my emotional responses to situations, as well as keeping me on track with my quest to become a normal eater.
I recommend this book to anyone who is seriously committed to breaking free of the tyranny of diets or eating disorders and is willing to do some tough emotional work. It has definitely changed my outlook on life.
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54 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stop and Feel Your Feelings So You Won't Eat Them Away, April 16, 2007
This review is from: The Food and Feelings Workbook: A Full Course Meal on Emotional Health (Paperback)
Karen Koenig has done it again. Written a lovely book for people with an uncomfortable relationship to food. The Food and Feelings Workbook assists the reader to separate out eating for nutrition or pleasure from eating to drown feelings. Eating-challenged people (my words), she says, grow up in an atmosphere where feelings are taboo, where they were taught by example that it was not okay to express even the smallest bit of anger, disappointment, or sadness. Instead, they were taught to push it under the rug and in our culture, a great way to do that is with food...too much or too little.
Koenig has organized this convenient workbook into sections that reflect 7 difficult feelings: guilt, shame, helplessness, anxiety, disappointment, confusion, and loneliness. She uses "Stop and Feel" questions throughout the book to help people exercise those seldom-used feeling muscles. She includes "Change Boosters" to practice new behaviors about feelings and eating. So, she gets you practicing this new skill, which you've avoided all your life. And she does it all with her usual wit, personal style, and generous helping spirit.
An example of her writing that I particularly like is from the Introduction: "This workbook...will encourage you not to bury your emotional pain until it turns into a toxic waste dump,but to put on your hip boots and slog through it, detoxifying one emotion at a time no matter how long it takes."
As a life coach and psychotherapist, I've recommended this book to clients who are slogging through it slowly...the way it needs to be used...and starting, little by little, to live with their feelings, rather than continue their obsession with food, weight, and body image.
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60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is worth doing, June 7, 2007
This review is from: The Food and Feelings Workbook: A Full Course Meal on Emotional Health (Paperback)
I bought this book several months ago, and finished it last month. It takes a while to actually do the book, but it is worth the time. I learned a lot. The book works for those who are eating too much and those who are eating too little. We all have similar problems and are trying to get into the middle of the spectrum.
This book is set up as a workbook. I didn't write in it because I had a lot to say, so I answered the questions in my computerized journal. There were questions that didn't pertain to me, and some I just plain did not want to do. When I got to those I put the book aside for a few days and returned to it. If I felt the same way, I just turned the page and continued to go forward. As I result I got to issues and questions that I did need to work on right now.
If you are having trouble normalizing your relationship with food, take a look at the emotions that are coming up when you eat, or when you refuse to eat.
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