Considered a pioneer in the anti-dieting movement, aka the non-diet eating Guru, Geneen Roth has written best-selling books on food, self-love, the relationship between eating and intimacy (the pain of overeating & underlying issues of deprivation) - Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating, Appetites, When Food Is Love and her most recent book Women, Food & God.

[From the 100 Ways To Be Being Remarkable Series, a special project that brings you business and self-development advice from The Success Manual. ]

This collection of Geneen Roth's best quotes is a distillation of her weight-loss philosophy contained in her many books and articles:

1. Willpower, discipline, and commitment are "irrelevant when it comes to dieting."
I used to believe that if I deprived and punished and frightened myself enough, then somehow I would change. But those strategies involving willpower and discipline - so celebrated in our culture - weren't leading me anywhere. In fact, I was killing myself. I began to sense that the way out was through love, openness, and trust,

2. I am not saying that "Eat whatever you want, whenever you want."
I'm saying: "Look; pay attention." Most people have hardly enjoyed a meal in their life. There's no joy or pleasure in food for them, because there's so much "I should, I shouldn't, I can't, I'm going to feel guilty about it afterward." I teach them how to slow down. I'm basically saying, "We have a choice: we can taste what is in our mouth and utterly enjoy ourselves, or we can remain unconscious of it and be in pain."

3. If you want to lose weight, you can do it by eating only when you're hungry and stopping when you've had enough.
But this thought is frightening to most people, because it means taking responsibility and trusting yourself.

4. Dieting is a $33 billion-a-year diet industry. It is based on the idea that most people like to be told what to do, especially when it comes to food.
That's part of the lure of diets: they make people feel like children again, because they tell us that we cannot be trusted to handle food; that we are not capable of making up our own minds and having control over how we eat.

5. Food can lead us into our heart and soul.
The physical is a reflection of the deepest part of yourself. You need to inquire into why you do what you do and slow down enough to pay attention and ask questions.

6. If people simply want to lose weight, I tell them that I am probably not the best person for them to be working with.
There are a lot easier and faster ways to lose weight.

7. Many people, however, want to lose weight simply because they believe it will make them happy and stop their pain.
So it's not so much the weight they want to lose, but the pain. They are the main audience for my work.

8. The first step (in losing weight) is truly slowing down and noticing what you're doing.
It's much harder to overeat when you are paying attention to what you are doing. Most compulsive behaviors are an attempt to go numb. The opposite of that is to be mindful and conscious.

9. Diet programs believe that if you let people relax their guard, they will devour everything in sight.
In such a view, the urge to devour must be counterbalanced by a deprivational force.

10. Try this Exercise: Carry a chunk of chocolate everywhere. Now, eat that chocolate slowly and with complete awareness.
This exercise reminds us to wake up, pay attention, stop reaching for what we don't have, and focus on what we do have. It teaches us that we don't need a truck full of love to satisfy our hungry hearts. When we pay attention, enough is possible.

11. People end up losing weight ten, 20, 30, 50 times in their lives.
They just endlessly do it, because they think endless dieting is a way to get a handle on their problem. But even if they get a handle on their dieting, just losing weight is not the point.

12. Stop thinking about your "problems with food" as the biggest curse in your life.
It's the issues underneath your "problems with food" that need to be dealt with.

13. Using food as the doorway to understanding yourself can lead to unimaginable beauty and openness and a kind of awakening. Most people don't know that.
(People) look for big answers to live a big life. But they have to start with the most basic fears.

14. It quickly became apparent that eating was always about only one thing: nourishing the body.
And this body wanted to live. This body loved being alive... It became apparent that the way I ate was another way to soar.

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