Geneen's voice in this is wonderful. The focus, though, is much more about other women's stories.

This book was just what I needed. I highly recommend reading if you suffer from compulsive eating.

Love Geneen Roth...

I did not like the way the story alternated between Roth's experiences and those of the individuals who attended her workshop. I would have liked to have known what happened to some of these people - if they ever overcame their compulsive eating behaviors.

I read this book in high school at the recommendation of a nutritionist. It changed the way I think about my body and food.

This is a collection of stories, some of which are written by Roth. Very dated, and some of the stories become annoying. Instead of empathizing with the writers, I found myself arguing with them. Reading this book isn't going to make you change your behavior.

Still fat.

Seminal Geneen Roth.

Unlike Roth's subsequent books, this one from 1982 is compiled from writings by several women. It is also extremely raw, honest, and occasionally hard to read because of this. The promise of the title of it being about the experience of compulsive eating is true and descriptions veer toward visceral so much that I actually felt vaguely nauseous reading some chapters. An important pioneering work but I am glad she didn't leave it at this.

A little dated and I wasn't expecting the contribution of multiple writers in varied genres & voices, but once I got into it for what it is, I uncovered many gems.

First of all, PHEW! I am so glad that I am not, never have been, and hopefully will never be in the shoes of the women who contributed their stories to this book. Some stories are simply heart-wrenching and brought tears to my eyes. However, like so many women, I have suffered from body image issues and have used food to console myself, so this book did speak to me in some ways. In particular, this book is a good reminder to always accept your body the way it is, learn to distinguish real hunger from emotional hunger, to always be present and aware, and to remember to nurture yourself emotionally and physically. I will definitely check-out other books by this author. The reason I gave three stars to this book is because it is essentially a collection of short stories from many different women, who participated in the author's compulsive eating workshops, making it a hodge podge of personal stories, different writing styles, and so on. However, I definitely enjoyed the bits of wisdom from Geneen Roth herself (and her writing).

The book is awesome, and full of new ideas for me. It uncovers that we have two kinds of hunger - bodily, and emotional. Food will never satisfy our emotional hunger, and sometimes nothing will. We just might try to learn to live with it. I like author's approach, and pieces provided by the other people with eating disorders.

Now, about me. I have tried many diets, and some computer applications. I had lost a lot of weight, but then I've gained again. I am fed up with spending 3 or more hours daily to search for, and then enter everything I eat and drink to app, and being unable to reach enough iron or other nutrients anyway. There must be a better way, I thought. How did the people before computers or nutritional books live?

"Feeding the Hungry Heart" is a second source for me, which says that if you relearn to recognize when your stomach is full, you can master your eating. I'm an elder now. I haven't realized that my metabolism changed and slowed down. It takes my stomach quite a long while to communicate with me, but I started hearing when it tells me "I'm full, it's time to stop eating." I hope that as I go on, I'll become more sensitive to this kind of non-verbal communication.

The idea of staying still with the feeling of "vortex," stress, depression, desperation, and letting those emotions pass, is new to me. Enduring this maximum down, without doing anything, just relaxing, recognizing it, and letting it burn itself away is crazy, but it just might work. I have read about substitution, which can be tried after we surface from "the pit," so it is not quite new to me. I just came up with three ideas about how it can be applied in my case. I'll try it all. It will be harder without a support group.

Again, it is a fantastic book, and I would recommend it to anybody with eating disorders who still searches for answers.