Unbelievably depressing. I don't usually read books that fall under the self-help genre. On the plus side (no pun intended), it did make me feel a bit better about myself. I don't have as serious a problem as some others, for whatever that's worth.

I enjoyed the parts written by Geneen Roth, but wasn't as taken with the personal stories of the women from her workshops, etc. I ended up just reading her introductions of each section then skimming the rest.

Roth writes about her own experiences as an emotional eater who both binges and purges as well as attempts to diet and inevitably fails, just as 95% of other dieters fail and eventually gain the weight they lost back.

Much of this book is about connecting to how one feels about food and how one feels about the self by reading how others connected to food and others discovered their feelings. The book is about having an emotional experience as you read it. If you are looking for diet tips, you'll need to look elsewhere because every diet tip detailed in these pages also discusses the failure and absurdity of the diet, and dieting in general.

This is highly recommended for anyone who has eaten because they needed something, and then felt guilty about it afterward.

The presentation of this as an audiobook was charming because it was a live recording of the workshop so you could hear the audience laughing etc.
however the long visualisation exercises were unexpected to me and I ended up skipping them.
There are some v bizarre claims in this like if I heard correctly she says there was a study in which a group of many religious people from different backgrounds were asked to pray for 200 patients and there was a second group not being prayed for, but the pray-ers didn’t know whxih group they were praying for and the patients didn’t know whether they were part of the the group being prayed for. The group that was prayed for had better recovery rates or something. This is used as an example of the benefits of reaching out for help. But ... if they didn’t know they were being prayed for what does this prove?
If somebody’s read this also and wants to correct me please go ahead but that’s how I heard it and it majorly undermined the experience for me.
Also there are parts where women speak into the microphone and hearing them share deeply personal stories felt way too intimate, even though it was anonymous.

3.5

Very good, helpful book. Roth knows what she's talking about.

I’m not really sure how to rate this or even review, for that matter. It was ok. Some I agreed with, and some I disagreed with.

I just finished reading Jennifer Louden's "The Woman's Comfort Book" and in the footnotes she references this book. She said if you read it you will "...never diet again." Hey, it's worth a shot!

Essential. If you have ever felt out of control around food- this book will make total sense. Should be read by anyone considering extreme diets or weight loss surgery......

I'm not really a new-age, self-help reader so I didn't know what to expect with this one, but I really enjoyed it. Roth makes a close study of emotional eating and explains the condition with compassion, forgiveness, and awareness, while suggesting ways to break free from this condition. The book intersperses fiction, poetry, and advice from Roth. I wasn't sure I'd dig that mix, but I really enjoyed the way it broke up the text. It wasn't just 200 pages about emotional eating. Instead, it contained real-life experiences that helped highlight how women (mostly) use emotional eating as a survival tactic. It was kind of riveting.

A classic - a must-read for anyone struggling with emotional eating.

Wow. This is very emotionally taxing and not an easy read. A moving collection of stories.