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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Weight loss does not guarantee true happiness or peace; inner fulfillment is what truly matters.
This quote emphasizes that external changes, such as losing weight or achieving a specific body image, do not inherently lead to emotional fulfillment or happiness. It suggests that the pursuit of a thinner body is futile if it does not address deeper emotional issues, highlighting the need for inner peace and self-acceptance over superficial goals.
Themes
HappinessSelf-AcceptanceEmotional FulfillmentWeight LossInner Peace
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about self-worth, one might say, 'Remember, weight loss does not make people happy; true fulfillment comes from within.'
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.
Geneen RothRead
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
The big horrible thing isn't the plane crash or the earthquake or the diagnosis. When those things occur, we act, we know what to do. We live or we die. Hell is what we do in the meantime. It is the ways we starve our souls as we prepare for the future that never comes as planned. The true disaster is living the life in your mind and missing the one in front of you.
Geneen RothRead
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The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event - through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you - ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.
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Nothing can bring you happiness but yourself especially how you choose to think about your situation.
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I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
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