Customer Reviews

It Was Food vs. Me ... and I Won

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought the book on a whim; when I found out that Nancy's battle was with about 15 pounds I buried it on the bottom of my "to read" pile. I dug the book out later to give it a reasonable chance, and I must say that her candor and warmth won me over on many levels. While I don't believe that food issues are exactly the same for someone who wants to lose 15 pounds vs someone who need to lose 100+ pounds, there are some valid points where the obsessions cross.

The idea of eating when hungry and stopping when satisfied has been explored before (thinking here of Geneen Roth's good work). The idea of finding out what is really going on with emotions has been well done (Laurel Mellin is the QUEEN in this concern; if emotional overeating is a problem for you, please read her book "The Solution.")To be fair, though, Nancy Goodman makes these issues very personal, which makes the book quite readable. It is obvious that she has worked hard and come far in her journey, and I for one commend her for her honesty and genuine heart to help others. I do have some concern that Nancy is still tied very tightly to food; true freedom, it seems to me, lies somewhere beyond the need for things like "structured" binges.

One other concern is some of Nancy's nutritional advice. In addition to the inference she makes linking dairy and cancer, there are many places in which she seems to use her personal food preferences as nutritional gospel. For instance, she fairly dismisses fruit, saying that it is "full of sugar" and doesn't have much in the way of vitamins. Yikes! While it is true that there is a lot of natural sugar in fruit, it is also true that fruit is crammed with vitamins (oranges and strawberries pack vitamin C), minerals (a banana gives you more than your daily requirement of potassium), and phytonutrients we are just beginning to figure out (blueberries contain powerful anti-oxidants.)No, they are not vegetables, but then, neither is oatmeal. Please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. She also gives the side of her hand to olive oil, lumping it in with all other fats as "slimy food." In Nancy's world, if you cook with or eat olive oil--which is a terrific mono-unsaturated fat--that's okay, because slimy food is what some people enjoy. I'd urge Nancy to defer to someone like Dr. Andrew Weil for information about the healthy use of fats in a balanced diet. Finally, Nancy tells us that couscous "is an interesting and healthy grain that cooks in just five minutes." People, PLEASE. Repeat after me: COUSCOUS IS NOT A GRAIN. Couscous is a tiny pasta product, typically made out of semolina flour just like your good old spaghetti noodles! It is tasty, and yes it does cook in five minutes, but if you want a grain, eat a GRAIN.

If you want a book that reads like chatty mail from a friend, you'll enjoy "Food vs Me." And you may find some of Nancy's tips useful in your own life. My advice is to read with a caveat that (as she freely admits) Nancy is not a nutritionist. Take her advice with a grain of salt...and maybe a shot of tequila.

To prevent repetition, please read Carla Baku's review because I believe that the review highlighted some very important aspects of the book that the reader should acknowledge. If you are looking for a book that you can relate to because you have similar experiences with food and emotions as Nancy had, you've found it. I am still amazed at her ability to share and then publish some of her experiences. I have gone through very similar experiences and I can barely write about any of it on paper, let alone share with anyone else. If you are a person who is looking for a solution or an answer to what might be your problem with food... this is the wrong book. It is a comforting book though if you are someone with similar issues like Nancy because it makes you realize that you are definatly not alone. Nancy talks how she goes to see a therapist or a counselor and at first it was really difficult, difficult to admit her problems and difficult for her to face someone and to ask for help. Nancy realizes that her family and her marriage interplay with her issues with food. What I realized at this point was the power of asking for help. Not the kind of help from the late night infomercials selling equiptment that already filled my basement, not the kind of help from the latest diet books or solutions, but the kind of professional help like Nancy sought out and helped her to overcome her issues with food. Like I did and before I knew it, my issues weren't around food at all, food was just the distraction and for me is no longer a problem anymore. I think an important part of the book is the challenge and the power of asking for help. After 2 years with an eating disorder, I asked for help and found a therapist. Its the best thing I've very done for myself.

There, I have told you what this book is about. You can save your money. Ok, I have read every single diet book out there and still have my extra pounds. So I read the great reviews and thought, I'll try this one. Well, what she has to say is that feelings matter. Yes, I knew this. She writes this book from her journals during therapy (I am guessing) and connects her eating to her emotions, and tells us all the details of her emotions, and therapy. Very very little on how she loses her 15 pounds. Some very iffy advice, including the advice that dairy causes cancer. Twice the recipe for a baked apple with low sugar maple syrup (nutrasweet if the iffy one in my opinion). Yep, 15. She was abandoned, she was molested - she has some real issues, but they were of no help to me on my journey. If you are seriously interested in connecting (and dealing with) feelings with weight loss try "The Solution" by Laurel Mellen - another good tip is "I Wish I Were Fat, I Wish I Were Thin" by Michele Joy Levine. If you are interested in what goes on in therapy read Irvin Yalom's latest book, or "Inside Therapy". This was a total waste of time.

I have been vascillating for years between diet books that are loaded with structure, and the new "non-diet" approach that encourages you to eat when you are hungry, stop when you're full and no restrictions as far as food content. Not so easy when you have a history of disordered eating. Nancy's book is a welcome place between the two extremes. She encourages some structure but not restriction. There is definitely a difference. I was at the point where I thought I would have to accept myself much heavier than I am comfortable with (nondiet approach), but this book has given me hope that I can be at a more healthy weight and still not live my life around the diet du jour. I love Nancy's honest, down to earth style, and I love her attitude of being thin and having your cake and eating it too!

Having visited Nancy's website, and read some impressive endorsements, I was very keen to read this book.

At the outset I was impressed by her fresh and unique voice. It's clear Nancy is genuinely motivated to reach out and help her audience. Her honesty about her own journey is absolutely amazing. It seems like nothing is held back. As I read the first few chapters, I really believed that I had encountered some one who had really overcome a food obsession and could shine a light and lead a way for me.

But as the book progressed, I started to get concerned about some of the mixed messages. For example, whilst this book at first appears to offer a non-diet solution, Nancy talks about calories a lot. And I mean A LOT. It's obvious that she tracks calories during the day, writes everything down and still exerts an awful lot of control and energy over how she eats. It doesn't square with the 'life after food onsession' that I was hoping to discover. . My concern is that the readers who are searching for a 'quick fix' will just take in the chapters on food, try to copy Nancy's approach and end up more concerend about calorie-counting than they had been at the beginning and miss what is a valuable message about uncovering the feelings behind food.

It is clear that Nancy has found a way to successfully manage her weight long term. Now 15 lbs lighter that when she embarked on her own quest for a life past bingeing, she has found a way of living at her ideal weight and is clearly a lot happier. However, as far as I can tell there is an awful lot of monitoring and calorie counting going on. From what I can glean Nancy consumes about 1600 calories a day - 400 less than the doctors recommend for adult women. Sounds sort of like a diet to me...? Nancy also mentions that when she first started seeing the counsellor who helped her find this solution she took up running, and now runs 7:20 min miles. Well call me sherlock, but is it surprising that someone who eats 1600 calories a day and runs this fast weighs 15 lbs less than they used to? A mother of three in her thirties or forties she has a body fat of just 17% - sounds almost underweighht to me. Should this woman really be a role model for showing women a life beyond food obsession. In my opinion, she is still obsessed, just has it disguised better.

Deep down every body knows that to successfully lose weight and keep it off, we need to eat less and exercise more. It's putting this into action that gets difficult. Nancy is the first to say, 'it's not about the food, but about the feelings' and in this regard her book is worth reading. I don't however believe that Nancy has truly freed herself of food obsession, or can show others how to do this. She describes herself as that rat who escaped the maze. As far as I can tell she is still very much in the maze, but has just found a way of living there more happily. For some readers, learning how to do this may be useful in itself, but for readers who beleived that this book could show them an escape route from food obsession, they, like me, will be disappointed.

Nancy Goodman struggled for many years with weight issues. Though she was never that overweight, her obsessions with food were making her life miserable. And she kept her weight down by overexercising, undereating etc.

In this book Goodman shares her thoughts on what works for her. She "talks" to the reader and shares ideas on what to do so the reader can also hopefully conquer their food problems.

Goodman's book is an interesting read. Though I feel she still has issues with food and likely always will, it appears that she has won the major battles and can work through her feelings.

Some of her ideas are totally different. Don't eat salads as a weight loss food (unless you want one) because they won't fill you up and by the time you add on all the dressing you may as well have eaten a satisfying sandwich. Consider eating calcium chews as a dessert. One or two will give you that chocolate or caramel munch and serve as an end to the meal. Use your calories on things you want. If you really want that hunk o'cake eat that instead of dinner. Think about what you are willing to give up so you can eat other things. (In Nancy's case she doesn't eat olive oil or butter).

Nancy is really open in the book with her thoughts and feelings. I did feel sorry for her hubby though whom she blasts throughout the book. Also she has the benefit of having spent a number of years working with a food therapist.

Overall, it's an interesting read about one woman's struggle to make peace with food and her approach is different than the typical diet advise.

I have read this book cover to cover twice now, and I am so happy that I did. It was such an honest, funny and truly sincere story that it motivated me to stop feeling sorry for myself and start "redirecting", as Nancy puts it, my energy into something positive. I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs that extra push or motivation! This book will be one that I refer to many times in the future. It is my inspiration!

Thanks Nancy!I stayed up all night to read this book cover to cover.This is the most inspiring book of it's kind. Nancy writes with a funny,chatty,candid style that speaks directly to the heart.With every turn of the page I found a ah-ha, yes that's how I feel.Her positive enthusiasm, and warmth is very inspiring.Showing us how to deal with real life situations and using her tools of how to make daily food choices and journaling to find the real issues behind the food is so helpful and very doable. This approach to working with and for yourself is really the key to being free from the distraction of food as a way to hide yourself.You will love the feeling when you read that you are not WEAK of WILL or ALONE.When you read this book you will laugh, cry, and at the end wish you could meet this remarkable woman to say hi and give her a hug of THANKS.

I found this book to be really powerful. It resonated deeply with me, so much so that I had tears in my eyes simply reading the book jacket. I read it in one night. I think that Nancy Goodman has written the book that could make other "diet" and weight loss books obsolete. This is someone who has lived with the frustration and pain of food obsession; her expertise comes from real life and her voice is authentic. What she weighs now or in the past is irrelevant; food obsession or addiction has little to do with what the scale says. The degree of obsession, the behavior and how it impacts on one's quality of life is what matters. There are so many ways that disordered eating manifests: everything on the arc from anorexia to bulemia to compulsive overeating to morbid obesity. In every case, there is an emotional root and this is what Goodman is addressing. I found the book hopeful and refreshing in her honesty and her humility. She doesn't claim to have cured herself but rather to have found a way to live with her problem and not be controlled by it. I believe that that is as much as any of us can hope for. Obsessions and addictions have to be managed, for a lifetime.
For this reader, the most valuable aspect of this book is that finally someone is offering a practical means of getting to the emotional roots of weight and eating problems. We all know it's not about the food itself but we persist in trying to solve the problems through food - or food deprivation.

Hearing Goodman say that deprivation (dieting) leads to weight gain is validating to me and I'm sure to many others. Her premise makes sense and her methods are creative yet practical and realistic. Goodman comes across like a good friend - natural, funny and unpretentious - but there is a lot of wisdom in her words. Her metaphors are marvelous.
My only minor criticism is that there is some repetition but this is far outweighed by all that I found valuable. I have already recommended this book to a number of women and will continue to do so. I loved it.

Have you ever wanted to go up to that athletic, good looking woman you just saw on the street (the one who's physique you have spent the last year trying to attain) and ask: "tell me the truth -- what do you do/have you done to look the way you do?" Well this book is the equivalent of that. A "from the trenches" life story of the writer's struggles with food and emotion. She does not wax prosaic, she writes like you're having a heart-to-heart with your best, most honest friend. Read her experiences, know you're not alone, and find motivation in that simple knowledge.

A caveat: please don't read her and then judge her writing like she's a Booker Prize literati, take her as she is -- the girl next door with a brain, heart, body and life experiences -- just like you.