The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning and transformation.
Geneen RothRead
Awareness, not deprivation, informs what you eat. Presence, not shame, changes how you see yourself and what you rely on.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Awareness in eating leads to better choices than restriction, and accepting oneself enhances self-perception.
This quote emphasizes the significance of being mindful and aware of one's eating habits rather than feeling deprived or restricted. It suggests that true change and self-acceptance come from recognizing and embracing one's presence and identity, rather than succumbing to feelings of shame about one's choices.
Themes
AwarenessMindfulnessSelf-AcceptanceNutritionPresence
In practice
Example use cases
In a talk on healthy living, you can use this quote to highlight the importance of mindful eating.
More from Geneen Roth
All quotes →No matter where you go, no matter how many gifts you give and receive this holiday season, unless you are actually present, it all flies by as if in a dream. Satisfaction in anything--a meal, an interaction, a gift, a sunset--depends on your willingness to take it in. Breathe. Feel your arms and your legs. You are allowed to love every little thing about yourself and your life. You are allowed to take up space and be all that you are. Really you are.
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Weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same sinking heart.
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For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.
Geneen RothRead
It's never been true, not anywhere at anytime, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale.
Geneen RothRead
Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic…The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being.
Geneen RothRead
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