Feeding the Hungry Heart: The Experience of Compulsive Eating

"I BOUGHT THIS BOOK FOR A RELATIVE WITH AN EATING DISORDER BUT I ENDED UP READING IT FIRST! IT HELPED ME TO UNDERSTAND MORE ABOUT THESE DISORDERS. I CAN SEE THIS BOOK HELPING THE SUFFERING FEEL LIKE THEY AREN'T CRAZY OR ALONE, AND THAT THERE IS HOPE. IT OPENS THE DOOR TO RECOVERY...."
~ Written on 2007-09-13

"The best book I've yet read on compulsive eating. One line touched me to the core. Do I eat to mother myself because I never got any; to nurture myself? Maybe that's why I need a dog, someone who I feel loves me totally and completely as me, not as a daughter or a wife? But this book also showed some very sick people in regards to food, some very bad binges and sneak eating. My life and thought do tend to revolve around food - buying it, cooking it, eating it. The writing is excellent. Roth should really write a novel or something more demanding. She can write well. I do wonder if the writing of other women was not polished up by her."
~ Written on 2005-11-16

"Living with an eating-disordered father all my life, it's no surprise that I started sneaking and hoarding food up in my bedroom by the age of 6. He snuck his binge foods, too, existing on diet Coke, eggbeaters, fat-free cheese, and salads of entire heads of lettuce adorned with other fat free vegetables and topped with fat-free dressing to take to work-- where he'd eat a 2lb. bag of M&M's in one shift. When I became clinically bulimic at 12, he slowly ceased restocking the pantry and fridge. I was hospitalized on an eating disorders unit twice- first merely because of the bulimia. My mother, at least, was perfect happy about the 18 extra lbs I'd lost, no matter how dangerously they'd gone. The second time I was admitted to the same unit, I had been purging every last thing I ate, and spent all of my free time either trying to mimick the detailed exercise charts of "true-life anorexic memoirs" OR bingeing and purging my brains out.

Finally, 30lbs below what would shortly become an apparent healthy set weight point, people were getting concerned about my anorexic proclivities. I was to turn 14 years old there.

Brief break before instituationalization. They take no mind of my ED what so ever. I go overboard in the cafeteria. This, plus a lithium prescriptio, puts 42 lbs on me in 4.5 months. I hate myself. I stop eating the moment I am discharged and lose 10 lbs the first week. I do it by baking copiously, and never tasting my goods. I know I am good.

Other adolescent pursuits of self-destruction manage to whittle me back to a minimum expected weight of 140-145. I never go lower than that. I can stay up for days on LSD, consuming nothing but the occasional nitrous oxide balloon, and later-- I will live in my car and travel the country, *always* looking for a handout (and extras, to divert to other street kids). But as a teenager, the only slight possible dip occured when I started enjoying opiates recreationally. It was temporary. Most people get over the weak stomach caused by snorting or shooting dope. I never did, because I now had the perfect cover. No one even *imagined* I might be puking from anything but bulimia. No way. I had my cake and morphine and I could snort and eat and purge it, too.

But I spent a lot of time in the company of others at this time. I was using drugs, yes. But simply because I spent so much time there, I often ate there. And having read some of Geneen's books by then (this one preobably first- to see where the heck she was coming from) I conceded to order along with the guys (this would be the 3rd delivery that day) from the place that delivered all the wierd SUBs, like 12inch cheeseburger.

I would make a sandwich out of whitebread, mayo, and yellow American cheese food product.

I'd eat a piece of pizza.

Not yet understanding the true meaning of "crispy" AT ALL, I followed my bosses directions to cram a take-out container full of "crispy chicken" from the Chinese Buffet next door.

I shared the top layer of the new Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough icecream from B&J's with the other girl who haunted the apartment, and discovered the joys of "new" Sour Cream and Cheddar Potato Chips.

So thank you for that, Janeen.

It wasn't until I was 2,000 miles and -60 degrees fahrenheit from home, living out of my car with 3 others and a dog that I realized my last eating-disordered vice had slipped away. We were crashing with some nice folks in Colorado Springs, and I was getting some crackers out of the sleeve. I didn't have the faintest idea how many crackers I was retrieving, whether it was divisible by 3, 6, or what the chart on the side of the box said."
~ Written on 2005-08-17

"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. "
~ Written on 2005-07-27

"About the only thing I got from this author is that she suffered from compulsive eating. I agree that you must learn to love yourself, but this woman gives no concrete information on how to do that. I read most of her books about 3 years ago, and even went to one of her seminars. The only thing I learned is that she is rude in person, and the seminar was like one big infomercial pushing her other books. I saw a lot of others there who were struggling with compulsive eating, which was helpful, but we all left feeling like, "now what?". I finally found OA, and am experiencing real recovery. This book wasn't a complete waste of time, because it sent me into another direction to find a program which actually helps me."
~ Written on 2005-03-24