August 7, 2019 • 32 mins
What 5 things are not wrong in your life right now? Geneen Roth explains why we need to reframe what holds our attention in This Messy Magnificent Life.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every single time I brought my mind back to what
I did. Have this gorgeous teacup, this piece of chocolate,
the fact that I had such good friends, the fact
that I had shelter there for that night and probably
the next night, that I had sardines in my bad tree.
I mean, it was on that level. And the more
(00:22):
I did that, the happier I got. Hello, and welcome
to our podcast. This is the place where we talk
about change and transformation and ambling down this wild and
(00:44):
wonderful journey of life. I'm Lisa and I'm Jill Herzing.
And you know, one of the things that people, I
think seek to change most often or or mess with,
it's the dial they endlessly want to play with is food.
What are they eating? What's their routine? What diet are
(01:06):
they on? What are there you know, what are they
cutting out? What are they adding in? Is so much
bigger than that, and it, I mean, as so Janine.
You can't see us, but Jill and I are about
the same height and probably a good forty pounds difference.
Jill has no issues with food to just confused by
the old aspect of compulsive eating. And I, on the
(01:30):
other hand, I am a poster child UM for the
addictive food, UM soother um emotional eater. So you know.
So anyway, I want to introduce you very quickly before
we jump in. Um. We are speaking with one of
my personal idols. I've been such a fan since your book, Women,
(01:51):
Food and God. But we are speaking with Janine Roth,
who wasn't the author of Women, Food and God and
our most many books, but she's a relationship and identity, food, body, image, money,
and the Divine and her most recent book is This Messy,
Magnificent Life. Genny, thank you so much for being with
us today. I'm very happy to be here, glad to
talk to you both. Every time I read anything you, right,
(02:14):
I feel like you've channeled me. It's so weird. And
then I feel like, oh, I'm just such a freaking cliche,
because I bet everyone feels like that when they read you,
because you articulate so beautifully the struggle around self worth
and and self soothing and food, and it's just I
(02:34):
can we just talk about that a little bit? Of course,
just a little bit, just a tiny subject. So can
we just have a little bit of talk about that
teeny weeny bit about food? Yes, and how it relates
to ourselves. You know, I would like to say that
(02:56):
from a very big perspective, or a bigger perspective, everybody's
got something. People who don't have challenges with food sticks
with food, have something else that they're struggling with. Were
we where we're here on the Earth, on you know,
(03:18):
on Earth school basically to learn of the challenges that
push us into learning. Without challenges, now we would just
be gliding along. In fact, probably uh, this is going
to sound like a very big leap, but it's possible
(03:39):
that um evolution wouldn't have happened because there wouldn't have
been any challenges. Maybe the water right up and fish
had to leave the sea, and then you know, we
got to have birds, and it's it's the challenges. And
of course I don't actually know if that's there is
no progress without struggle right there there, there really is.
(04:00):
And um, as somebody once said, what's in the way
is the way. And so I think if we take
a bigger look at it and see, right, okay, this
is what I am struggling with. And what I struggle
with is my relationship with food, or my relationship with money,
(04:23):
or my relationship in relationship to relationships or my work.
I don't love my work, or what is my purpose
in my life? I don't know what that is. Everybody's
got something. I feel as if the people who are
challenged by food are are twice blessed. And by that
(04:47):
I mean we get to have something as concrete and
daily as meals or not meals, because a lot of
people don't eat meals. They graze to show us what
we actually believe about who we are, what we deserve,
(05:09):
what we want? Uh? Do we deserve to have delight, joy, pleasure?
Are we constantly berating and comparing ourselves? Do we ever
feel like we have enough? All that is reflected in
the food on our plate? If you're actually interested now,
if you're coming at the relationship with food with the
(05:32):
attitude of this is horrible, I need to fix it.
I wanted to go away, and I did that for many,
many years. I was not interested in what my insane.
I mean, if anybody had looked at me from the outside,
they would have thought I was deranged. And I actually
(05:53):
did feel deranged around food because food was the way
that I was expressing every single thing that was going
on in my life. So if you look at it
that way as the derangement and I need to fix it,
then you're going to feel perpetually crazy if you look
at it as Okay, what's going on? What are my
(06:14):
beliefs that would be here? Whether or not they express
themselves through food, they'd still be here. Am I interested
in them? Do I want to look at them? You know?
What are they? So that's a place to begin. Okay. So,
so if you're to get to what your beliefs are
(06:38):
and to separate your beliefs from food and the rituals
around eating and self soothing with food, what's the first step? Uh?
The first step is to look at the food you
took on your plate, to look at what you're eating.
At the retreats that I teach, we do eating agitations,
(07:00):
and they are the most stunning moments of the retreat
because people usually don't think about the food. They think,
I'm hungry. That muffin looks good, those mashed potatoes look good.
I don't like vegetables. Um, somebody else is eating strawberries.
I want some strawberries. You look, and you see what
(07:24):
drives you to food. Who's actually choosing the food on
your plate? Now? Most of the time, it's it's a
part of ourselves with which were identifying that feels deprived,
doesn't feel like it has enough, feels like we deserve more,
and so if we can't get what we want in
(07:46):
the rest of our lives, okay, well I'll just take
a lot more mashed potatoes right now than I really want,
because this is a thing that I can get a
lot of. And so there's all. There's usually an adult
child thing happening there, and we're usually rebelling again some
(08:07):
voice in our heads that say, you shouldn't. You're bad,
you can't look at you. What's the matter with you?
You're worthless? And so we turn to food as a
way of saying, I don't have to listen to you.
Look at this. The first thing is just simply to
to look at the food. Do you like it? Are
you interested in it? Do you really are you really hungry?
(08:30):
Number one? Is this what your body, not your mind wants?
Because we mostly eat to feed the mind. Do we
feel like we can ever get enough? There are certain
questions to ask yourself. Now, I understand that this is
often difficult to do alone. You can do it, but
support is very helpful having a body or a partner,
(08:55):
a friend you can call on the phone and and
and say, here's what I'm doing with food. What are
you doing? Who's not interested in making it go away?
But who is interested in finding out what you're trying
to get enough of in your life that you don't
have enough of? So you're turning to food. Now, If
(09:17):
you're using food to self soothe, then the question would
be what underneath that? What do you need self soothing for?
Is it the amount of daily stress spects in your life?
How are you living your life that's causing you to
need food as comfort? Do you have enough time for yourself?
(09:40):
If you have small kids, can you go in the
bathroom and shut the door for three minutes? Um? Is
there any way that you can get more time for yourself?
Usually people can get a little bit more time for
themselves than they take for themselves, especially moms. When we
(10:00):
come back, I want to talk a little bit about
more and more about that, but I also want to
ask you about your personal story. So before the break,
we've been talking about UM women's women in particular, but
(10:21):
the way that we struggle with food and and how
how it's a way that we we cope in the world.
And Um, I wanted to talk to Eujanine a little
bit about your path and how you discovered this and
how you went from because it sounds like that you
weren't actually even heavy, but because you diet it and
you lost the weight. But there was it wasn't. It
(10:44):
wasn't what you looked like. It was what was going
on inside. And it wasn't until you gave up tiding completely,
even the thought of tiding, that you released yourself from
the sort of the possession by food. So I want
to just if we could are your story a little bit. Yeah. Sure.
And by the way, I was sometimes much much better
(11:11):
than I was at other times. So UM not very tall.
UM probably five one or five two. Between five one
and five two. There were times they weighed a hundred
and eighty pounds, which is a lot of weight for
me to carry. When I was in erexic, I weighed
eighty two pounds. So I um was a mad person
(11:37):
in terms of gaining and losing. Wait, I could gain
and lose ten pounds every week. I mean I was
a lot younger then, so my body was a lot
more resilient, uh than I was than I am now
um I it was the self loathing that perpetuated the eating.
(11:59):
I came from UM, an abusive and and an addicted
household family uh in which I just by the time
I and I started using food when I was eleven.
That's when I started dieting with the hope that if
I could just get my my eating under control, I
(12:23):
could be a good girl. Basically, I could be the
girl that a mother could love. I could make things
much better in my family. I took it upon myself
that was the panacea for me losing weight. I convinced
myself that being fat, being a fat kid because I
(12:47):
was UM, was the reason there was so much trouble
in the family. As all kids do, they blame themselves.
That got worse and worse and worse the older I gat.
I got into my teenage years early twenties, I went
on many, many extreme diets, the thousand calorie Days sugar diet.
(13:07):
I was addicted to diet pillars for four years. I
went on the old brown diet, coffee diet, sesta, cream,
soda and cigarettes for two weeks. I mean, I really
did crazy, crazy things to myself, all in the name
of being thin, until finally I became anorexic, limiting myself
(13:31):
to a hundred fifty calories a day and jogging three
miles a day. I'm fasting for ten days at the
change of every season, fasting on water. Uh. And then
because I couldn't stand it anymore, And all the time
there was this self loathing. At eighty two pounds, I
still looked in the mirror and I saw that. So
(13:53):
it's not that I ever ever saw myself as being fined,
because I was looking through the eyes of self loathing.
And how did you escape the cycle? Because eating disorders
have one of the highest recidivism rates of all of
all of these kinds of psychologically driven diseases, and it's
(14:16):
I mean, it's terrifying, it's it's one of the leading
causes of death for under How did you, How did
you get out of this spiral that so many women,
it's mostly women find that find that they can't escape.
First of all, I don't know I was fortunate. I
(14:40):
can't really know if there's one answer there because there
were so many contributing factors for me form. I can
only speak um for what I think it might have been,
which isn't to say what I think it might have
been would work for everybody, although I do you know
in the retreats that I each I see many, many,
(15:02):
many many people breaking free from the cycle. I kept
feeling that there was a deeper and deeper reasons, a
spiritual whole component to this, if you will. And I
don't use that word spiritual very lightly or often, but
(15:22):
because I was much more interested in what was really
going on for me. At some point when I was suicidal,
and I really I wanted to end my life because
I couldn't tolerate be gaining and losing. And after I
sound erexic, I doubled my weight in two months because
(15:43):
I never stopped eating, so I gained eighty pounds in
two months. And that's when I was ready to kill myself.
And it occurred to me that I didn't care. At
some point I realized there was a choice between killing
myself and or not dieting and not um continuing the
(16:06):
cycle of shame and deprivation. I suddenly understood that I
was using food too. I'm well. I I believed there
was a chance that I was using food to express
a whole cycle of things that I wasn't able to
express any other. In other words, I was broadcasting um
(16:29):
messages to myself that I kept ignoring, and if I
became interested in those, then somehow that would go a
long way. And it did go a long way. I
and and I also felt at that point that I
didn't care if I ever lost another pound in my
(16:51):
entire life. I was not willing to judge, shame, deprive,
and want to slash off pieces of my arms and
legs and face, which I really perpetually did. I just
wanted to slash my thighs off. And the the amount
of self hatred was so intense, and to the extent
(17:14):
that it was caused by dieting and binging. I realized
I just needed to stop and see what happened. And
I did stop, and it felt like being It felt
like I was breaking a ten commandment when I stopped dieting.
So I'm the self loathing probably didn't go away though overnight,
(17:35):
the way like when you just the day you said,
I'm not dieting anymore. It's not like you said, I
love you. I love you. You're perfect the way you are.
We don't need to play this game anymore, right, I
mean that too. Well, what happened was I stopped adding
to it by what I was doing with food, because
(17:58):
food was a huge distraction, if you will, um from
looking at beliefs that I had been inherited about myself,
that we're actually not true, that you were to blame
for everything that happened. I would blame that I was worthless,
that I was too sensitive, that I was too intense,
(18:20):
that I was too finicky, that I was my energy
was too big for the people around me, that I
was too smart. I needed to tamp myself down. I
needed to make myself smaller and smaller and smaller. And
in a way, the ironic thing is when you use food,
although your body is getting bigger, except for you know,
(18:43):
those people who binge and purge and are anorexic, you
are making your life force. You're you're tamping it down,
tamping it down. The bigger your body gets, most often,
the smaller your energy gets. You said, actually something and
your most and book, which is that the true reason
to lose weight is to keep the channel open, which
(19:05):
is the life force channel for the life force. Can
you expand on that a little bit? Yeah? Um, you
know that's a beautiful Martha Graham quote which I love,
where she says, we're all here to um. There's a vitality,
a life force quickening that is translated through you into
(19:25):
this world on paraphrasing here, and if you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium and it
will be lost. It's not your business to judge it
or compare it. It's your business to keep the channel open.
And food is the way that most of us stuff
that channel down, you know. I want to say one
other thing that I have been really focusing on with
(19:47):
my students now and with myself on a daily basis.
We are so conditioned to see what's wrong with ourselves
and what's wrong in the world, and of course we're
living in quite a polarized and very intense time right now.
In order to to antidote that, I ask myself and
(20:11):
I asked my students every single day, what's not wrong
right now? What's not wrong right now? And that brings
me and them and anybody who does it, and they
have to come up with five things every time they
ask that question. And what happens is this fascination and
(20:36):
the seduction that we have, because you know, it gets
exacerbated everywhere we look. We have to fix ourselves. This
is what's wrong. Our thiges are too big, we're not
generous enough, we're not we're not being active enough. Whatever
it is, we're not good enough mothers. That takes the
focus off what's wrong and puts it on what we
(21:00):
have enough of right now, what's right in this moment.
I have legs, I have feet, I have um um uh.
The water comes out of my tap. I just saw
the most gorgeous flower. I just had the most um
lovely interaction. I just met the eyes of the cashier
(21:20):
at the grocery store. We had a moment together. The
extraordinariness of the ordinary moments allows people to right themselves
a couple of times a day. I do it probably
five times a day, twelve seconds each time. That's all
(21:41):
you need. That's from one minute, um and it gets
the brain off of looking for what's wrong, and from
that place you can feel balanced enough to really look at, Okay,
what's actually true about me right now? What's good enough
(22:02):
about me right now? Instead of what's not good enough?
What is good enough? What's not wrong right now? When
we come back, we're going to talk more about what
is good enough in this messy, magnificent life between Roth.
(22:28):
The way we've been talking about looking at what's right
as opposed to always being so critical. Engine it seems
like in your new book that is a big theme
of letting go of the judgment and the criticism and
the complaining. And you personally decided to stop complaining about
anything in public or private. Can first of all, how's
(22:51):
it going? And it's like, can you share? For certain
people that would honestly mean never saying another word for
as long as they live. But but you know what
that would also mean, because that's how it was for me.
I decided to stop complaining because I suddenly realized that
not suddenly I mean it, but the day I decided
(23:14):
to stop complaining itself sudden. As I look back on
my conversations with my friends, with my husband, UM, with
my mother, with my siblings, they were always only about
what was wrong and um, so there was a constant
(23:34):
complaint about here's what's wrong here and and and of
course you know, objectively, there is a lot that that
is so um oh boy, I don't even know what
to call it, but disturbing these days, um, and I'm
just going to stop you for a second, because I
(23:56):
think this is all the more extraordinary given the fact
that you are one of Bernie Madoff's victims, and you've
written about that as well. So you went through something
so unjust, um and so and so terrifying. Can you
can you talk about that a little bit? Like how
(24:17):
are they connected? Yeah, they're really connected. Um, I'll talk
about Bernie made for a second. Now I'll get back
to not complaining. Um, Well, we had invested all of
our money with Bernie Madoff, which of course any four
year old knows not to do, um, to diversify whatever.
(24:40):
But we have used to blame yourself. It's on It's
on him, not you. Go ahead, Well, um, I'm actually
not blaming myself because we had already had half of
our money embezzled by a friend who was a financial
advisor before that, and then a friend of our who
had been with Madoff for thirty years, out of the
(25:03):
generosity of his heart, and I really know we're still
very close friends with him, UM had offered to let
us into his maide Off fund, which we gladly took
him up on, and over the years we took all
the money we had and invested it with madeoffs. When
I found out that we lost everything, thirty years of
(25:25):
life savings, what we had left. Um, I went into
shock and terror and shame, grief, fear. Uh. It was.
It was a couple of days that were just horrendous.
And then I realized, really because I had a couple
(25:47):
of very good friends who said to me, nothing of
any value has been lost, and it seemed like a
ridiculous thing to tell me when we had no money
left and I didn't know how we were going to
stay in our house another month. UM. I did say
to one of my friends, now is not the time
to be spiritual. Uh, now is the time to be terrified.
(26:11):
But I realized if I was going to make it
through the night, I was going to have to start
focusing on what I had not lost, uh, not what
I had, what I had enough of, not what I
didn't have enough of. And I started being fierce and
(26:31):
vigilant about bringing my mind back every single time it
wandered into terror, into grief, into shame, into um everything
we had lost, and and really vigilant. I would not
let myself go there at all, which is another way
(26:52):
of it's not exactly a complaint that wasn't exactly a
complaint that was more like, oh my god, what are
we going to do? And my husband was away for
a couple of weeks, so um. I relied extensively on
my wonderful support system for this. But what I found
was every single time I brought my mind back to
(27:15):
what I did have this gorgeous teacup, this um piece
of chocolate, the fact that I had such good friends,
the fact that my dog was still wagging her tail,
the fact that I had shelter for that night and
probably the next night that I had sardines in my
bad tree. I mean, it was it was the fact
(27:37):
that I could still walk. It was on that level
every day, and the more I did that, the happier
I got. It was extraordinary. It was shocking to see
that the more I did that, the happier I got,
to the point where I felt joyful. Is um at first,
(28:01):
but then it became your entire m o it and
it became I'm not even sure. Well, yeah, it was
a survival mechanism, but it was more that I really
believed that it was the truth. Because before we had
lost our money, I was anxious already about what happens
(28:23):
if we lose our money, and what if we don't
have enough, and what if one of us gets really
sick and we have to fly to Germany and get
our blood cleaned, and you know, all these crazy things.
I was always living in the future and and in
some kind of anxiety, and that stopped it all. And
I saw that when the mind, well the mind is
(28:45):
you know, just what I would say about our minds
is that they are the tails wagging the dogs. They
just have hijacked our consciousness to the point where many
of us live in fear and most of the time
and what if and we lived and regrett of the
(29:05):
past or anxiety about the future. And I saw that
when I didn't, I was happy and so bringing it
and my mother couldn't believe it. My mother said, I promised,
I won't judge you, just just tell me how it
is that you're happy, you know, two weeks after you
lost everything. And then she asked me how I was
(29:27):
on drugs because she just couldn't believe it was possible.
She just said, are you on drugs? And I wasn't,
and that I would say, this is gonna and this
is not Pollyannic, because believe me, I'm not a Pollyannic
type person. I would say that that was a defining
experience of my life and probably one of the five
(29:49):
best things that's ever happened to me. Well, you say
in your book also that you can't control your circumstances necessarily,
but you can control the stories were we and control
the stories we tell ourselves about it. Andy, And you
have changed the narrative where Bernie made off stole all
my money. It's terrible to Bernie made off sto all
(30:10):
my money. What a blessing my life has been transformed. Well,
I would say that I still, you know, I'm very
glad he's in prison. And as I say to other people,
if you if I ever give you financial advice, run
the other way. So I I would not say, you
(30:31):
know that. So that's how I feel. But I feel
that the experience of losing everything taught me what I
do have, and so the not complaining is a further
iteration of that. It's the way that most of us
live every day. Oh no, I'm sick. Oh my god,
(30:52):
it's too hot. The weather it is horrible. Oh my footaches,
my back aches, my headaches. Um, you wouldn't believe what
this person did for you know, to me, I can't
believe what they said. I have to deal with the situation.
There is an ongoing complaint, low level ranting too, just
(31:14):
ongoing complaining, and that's what the mind loves, because the
brain evolved to see what was wrong, other was you know.
I mean, if our ancestors just laid around all day long,
they would have gotten eaten, and so they had to
be hyper vigilant and make sure they didn't get eaten.
But it's now maladaptive and so complaining puts us in
(31:35):
a negative space every single day. And when I stopped,
I just made a decision I'm not doing it, and
I still don't do it. This was a couple of
years ago. Every now and then I I sort of
wander into that's kind of a complaint, and then I'll
stop myself because I only feel worse when I do.
(31:58):
And so this is related to it's not wrong as well.
Jill and I both feel better for having talked with you.
So Jenine, thank you so much. I'm going to try
and do this not complaining things for a day. I'll
do with you. Okay, that's Honestly, Jenny, it's gonna be
a big challenge for me. I would do it for
today is good. When I said this to a couple
(32:19):
of friends of mine, they looked at me and they said,
we wouldn't have anything to talk about. We'll have other
things to talk about, many many other things from your book, uh,
This Messy, magnificent Life. Check it out, Jane. Thank you
again so much for being here. Yes, thank you so
much for being with us and sharing your wisdom and
(32:41):
life lessons and experiences. Also, thank you to Alicia Haywood
or fantastic producer, and thanks to everyone listening. Until next time.
Every single time I brought my mind back to what
I did. Have this gorgeous teacup, this piece of chocolate,
the fact that I had such good friends, the fact
that I had shelter there for that night and probably
the next night, that I had sardines in my bad tree.
I mean, it was on that level. And the more
(00:22):
I did that, the happier I got. Hello, and welcome
to our podcast. This is the place where we talk
about change and transformation and ambling down this wild and
(00:44):
wonderful journey of life. I'm Lisa and I'm Jill Herzing.
And you know, one of the things that people, I
think seek to change most often or or mess with,
it's the dial they endlessly want to play with is food.
What are they eating? What's their routine? What diet are
(01:06):
they on? What are there you know, what are they
cutting out? What are they adding in? Is so much
bigger than that, and it, I mean, as so Janine.
You can't see us, but Jill and I are about
the same height and probably a good forty pounds difference.
Jill has no issues with food to just confused by
the old aspect of compulsive eating. And I, on the
(01:30):
other hand, I am a poster child UM for the
addictive food, UM soother um emotional eater. So you know.
So anyway, I want to introduce you very quickly before
we jump in. Um. We are speaking with one of
my personal idols. I've been such a fan since your book, Women,
(01:51):
Food and God. But we are speaking with Janine Roth,
who wasn't the author of Women, Food and God and
our most many books, but she's a relationship and identity, food, body, image, money,
and the Divine and her most recent book is This Messy,
Magnificent Life. Genny, thank you so much for being with
us today. I'm very happy to be here, glad to
talk to you both. Every time I read anything you, right,
(02:14):
I feel like you've channeled me. It's so weird. And
then I feel like, oh, I'm just such a freaking cliche,
because I bet everyone feels like that when they read you,
because you articulate so beautifully the struggle around self worth
and and self soothing and food, and it's just I
(02:34):
can we just talk about that a little bit? Of course,
just a little bit, just a tiny subject. So can
we just have a little bit of talk about that
teeny weeny bit about food? Yes, and how it relates
to ourselves. You know, I would like to say that
(02:56):
from a very big perspective, or a bigger perspective, everybody's
got something. People who don't have challenges with food sticks
with food, have something else that they're struggling with. Were
we where we're here on the Earth, on you know,
(03:18):
on Earth school basically to learn of the challenges that
push us into learning. Without challenges, now we would just
be gliding along. In fact, probably uh, this is going
to sound like a very big leap, but it's possible
(03:39):
that um evolution wouldn't have happened because there wouldn't have
been any challenges. Maybe the water right up and fish
had to leave the sea, and then you know, we
got to have birds, and it's it's the challenges. And
of course I don't actually know if that's there is
no progress without struggle right there there, there really is.
(04:00):
And um, as somebody once said, what's in the way
is the way. And so I think if we take
a bigger look at it and see, right, okay, this
is what I am struggling with. And what I struggle
with is my relationship with food, or my relationship with money,
(04:23):
or my relationship in relationship to relationships or my work.
I don't love my work, or what is my purpose
in my life? I don't know what that is. Everybody's
got something. I feel as if the people who are
challenged by food are are twice blessed. And by that
(04:47):
I mean we get to have something as concrete and
daily as meals or not meals, because a lot of
people don't eat meals. They graze to show us what
we actually believe about who we are, what we deserve,
(05:09):
what we want? Uh? Do we deserve to have delight, joy, pleasure?
Are we constantly berating and comparing ourselves? Do we ever
feel like we have enough? All that is reflected in
the food on our plate? If you're actually interested now,
if you're coming at the relationship with food with the
(05:32):
attitude of this is horrible, I need to fix it.
I wanted to go away, and I did that for many,
many years. I was not interested in what my insane.
I mean, if anybody had looked at me from the outside,
they would have thought I was deranged. And I actually
(05:53):
did feel deranged around food because food was the way
that I was expressing every single thing that was going
on in my life. So if you look at it
that way as the derangement and I need to fix it,
then you're going to feel perpetually crazy if you look
at it as Okay, what's going on? What are my
(06:14):
beliefs that would be here? Whether or not they express
themselves through food, they'd still be here. Am I interested
in them? Do I want to look at them? You know?
What are they? So that's a place to begin. Okay. So,
so if you're to get to what your beliefs are
(06:38):
and to separate your beliefs from food and the rituals
around eating and self soothing with food, what's the first step? Uh?
The first step is to look at the food you
took on your plate, to look at what you're eating.
At the retreats that I teach, we do eating agitations,
(07:00):
and they are the most stunning moments of the retreat
because people usually don't think about the food. They think,
I'm hungry. That muffin looks good, those mashed potatoes look good.
I don't like vegetables. Um, somebody else is eating strawberries.
I want some strawberries. You look, and you see what
(07:24):
drives you to food. Who's actually choosing the food on
your plate? Now? Most of the time, it's it's a
part of ourselves with which were identifying that feels deprived,
doesn't feel like it has enough, feels like we deserve more,
and so if we can't get what we want in
(07:46):
the rest of our lives, okay, well I'll just take
a lot more mashed potatoes right now than I really want,
because this is a thing that I can get a
lot of. And so there's all. There's usually an adult
child thing happening there, and we're usually rebelling again some
(08:07):
voice in our heads that say, you shouldn't. You're bad,
you can't look at you. What's the matter with you?
You're worthless? And so we turn to food as a
way of saying, I don't have to listen to you.
Look at this. The first thing is just simply to
to look at the food. Do you like it? Are
you interested in it? Do you really are you really hungry?
(08:30):
Number one? Is this what your body, not your mind wants?
Because we mostly eat to feed the mind. Do we
feel like we can ever get enough? There are certain
questions to ask yourself. Now, I understand that this is
often difficult to do alone. You can do it, but
support is very helpful having a body or a partner,
(08:55):
a friend you can call on the phone and and
and say, here's what I'm doing with food. What are
you doing? Who's not interested in making it go away?
But who is interested in finding out what you're trying
to get enough of in your life that you don't
have enough of? So you're turning to food. Now, If
(09:17):
you're using food to self soothe, then the question would
be what underneath that? What do you need self soothing for?
Is it the amount of daily stress spects in your life?
How are you living your life that's causing you to
need food as comfort? Do you have enough time for yourself?
(09:40):
If you have small kids, can you go in the
bathroom and shut the door for three minutes? Um? Is
there any way that you can get more time for yourself?
Usually people can get a little bit more time for
themselves than they take for themselves, especially moms. When we
(10:00):
come back, I want to talk a little bit about
more and more about that, but I also want to
ask you about your personal story. So before the break,
we've been talking about UM women's women in particular, but
(10:21):
the way that we struggle with food and and how
how it's a way that we we cope in the world.
And Um, I wanted to talk to Eujanine a little
bit about your path and how you discovered this and
how you went from because it sounds like that you
weren't actually even heavy, but because you diet it and
you lost the weight. But there was it wasn't. It
(10:44):
wasn't what you looked like. It was what was going
on inside. And it wasn't until you gave up tiding completely,
even the thought of tiding, that you released yourself from
the sort of the possession by food. So I want
to just if we could are your story a little bit. Yeah. Sure.
And by the way, I was sometimes much much better
(11:11):
than I was at other times. So UM not very tall.
UM probably five one or five two. Between five one
and five two. There were times they weighed a hundred
and eighty pounds, which is a lot of weight for
me to carry. When I was in erexic, I weighed
eighty two pounds. So I um was a mad person
(11:37):
in terms of gaining and losing. Wait, I could gain
and lose ten pounds every week. I mean I was
a lot younger then, so my body was a lot
more resilient, uh than I was than I am now
um I it was the self loathing that perpetuated the eating.
(11:59):
I came from UM, an abusive and and an addicted
household family uh in which I just by the time
I and I started using food when I was eleven.
That's when I started dieting with the hope that if
I could just get my my eating under control, I
(12:23):
could be a good girl. Basically, I could be the
girl that a mother could love. I could make things
much better in my family. I took it upon myself
that was the panacea for me losing weight. I convinced
myself that being fat, being a fat kid because I
(12:47):
was UM, was the reason there was so much trouble
in the family. As all kids do, they blame themselves.
That got worse and worse and worse the older I gat.
I got into my teenage years early twenties, I went
on many, many extreme diets, the thousand calorie Days sugar diet.
(13:07):
I was addicted to diet pillars for four years. I
went on the old brown diet, coffee diet, sesta, cream,
soda and cigarettes for two weeks. I mean, I really
did crazy, crazy things to myself, all in the name
of being thin, until finally I became anorexic, limiting myself
(13:31):
to a hundred fifty calories a day and jogging three
miles a day. I'm fasting for ten days at the
change of every season, fasting on water. Uh. And then
because I couldn't stand it anymore, And all the time
there was this self loathing. At eighty two pounds, I
still looked in the mirror and I saw that. So
(13:53):
it's not that I ever ever saw myself as being fined,
because I was looking through the eyes of self loathing.
And how did you escape the cycle? Because eating disorders
have one of the highest recidivism rates of all of
all of these kinds of psychologically driven diseases, and it's
(14:16):
I mean, it's terrifying, it's it's one of the leading
causes of death for under How did you, How did
you get out of this spiral that so many women,
it's mostly women find that find that they can't escape.
First of all, I don't know I was fortunate. I
(14:40):
can't really know if there's one answer there because there
were so many contributing factors for me form. I can
only speak um for what I think it might have been,
which isn't to say what I think it might have
been would work for everybody, although I do you know
in the retreats that I each I see many, many,
(15:02):
many many people breaking free from the cycle. I kept
feeling that there was a deeper and deeper reasons, a
spiritual whole component to this, if you will. And I
don't use that word spiritual very lightly or often, but
(15:22):
because I was much more interested in what was really
going on for me. At some point when I was suicidal,
and I really I wanted to end my life because
I couldn't tolerate be gaining and losing. And after I
sound erexic, I doubled my weight in two months because
(15:43):
I never stopped eating, so I gained eighty pounds in
two months. And that's when I was ready to kill myself.
And it occurred to me that I didn't care. At
some point I realized there was a choice between killing
myself and or not dieting and not um continuing the
(16:06):
cycle of shame and deprivation. I suddenly understood that I
was using food too. I'm well. I I believed there
was a chance that I was using food to express
a whole cycle of things that I wasn't able to
express any other. In other words, I was broadcasting um
(16:29):
messages to myself that I kept ignoring, and if I
became interested in those, then somehow that would go a
long way. And it did go a long way. I
and and I also felt at that point that I
didn't care if I ever lost another pound in my
(16:51):
entire life. I was not willing to judge, shame, deprive,
and want to slash off pieces of my arms and
legs and face, which I really perpetually did. I just
wanted to slash my thighs off. And the the amount
of self hatred was so intense, and to the extent
(17:14):
that it was caused by dieting and binging. I realized
I just needed to stop and see what happened. And
I did stop, and it felt like being It felt
like I was breaking a ten commandment when I stopped dieting.
So I'm the self loathing probably didn't go away though overnight,
(17:35):
the way like when you just the day you said,
I'm not dieting anymore. It's not like you said, I
love you. I love you. You're perfect the way you are.
We don't need to play this game anymore, right, I
mean that too. Well, what happened was I stopped adding
to it by what I was doing with food, because
(17:58):
food was a huge distraction, if you will, um from
looking at beliefs that I had been inherited about myself,
that we're actually not true, that you were to blame
for everything that happened. I would blame that I was worthless,
that I was too sensitive, that I was too intense,
(18:20):
that I was too finicky, that I was my energy
was too big for the people around me, that I
was too smart. I needed to tamp myself down. I
needed to make myself smaller and smaller and smaller. And
in a way, the ironic thing is when you use food,
although your body is getting bigger, except for you know,
(18:43):
those people who binge and purge and are anorexic, you
are making your life force. You're you're tamping it down,
tamping it down. The bigger your body gets, most often,
the smaller your energy gets. You said, actually something and
your most and book, which is that the true reason
to lose weight is to keep the channel open, which
(19:05):
is the life force channel for the life force. Can
you expand on that a little bit? Yeah? Um, you
know that's a beautiful Martha Graham quote which I love,
where she says, we're all here to um. There's a vitality,
a life force quickening that is translated through you into
(19:25):
this world on paraphrasing here, and if you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium and it
will be lost. It's not your business to judge it
or compare it. It's your business to keep the channel open.
And food is the way that most of us stuff
that channel down, you know. I want to say one
other thing that I have been really focusing on with
(19:47):
my students now and with myself on a daily basis.
We are so conditioned to see what's wrong with ourselves
and what's wrong in the world, and of course we're
living in quite a polarized and very intense time right now.
In order to to antidote that, I ask myself and
(20:11):
I asked my students every single day, what's not wrong
right now? What's not wrong right now? And that brings
me and them and anybody who does it, and they
have to come up with five things every time they
ask that question. And what happens is this fascination and
(20:36):
the seduction that we have, because you know, it gets
exacerbated everywhere we look. We have to fix ourselves. This
is what's wrong. Our thiges are too big, we're not
generous enough, we're not we're not being active enough. Whatever
it is, we're not good enough mothers. That takes the
focus off what's wrong and puts it on what we
(21:00):
have enough of right now, what's right in this moment.
I have legs, I have feet, I have um um uh.
The water comes out of my tap. I just saw
the most gorgeous flower. I just had the most um
lovely interaction. I just met the eyes of the cashier
(21:20):
at the grocery store. We had a moment together. The
extraordinariness of the ordinary moments allows people to right themselves
a couple of times a day. I do it probably
five times a day, twelve seconds each time. That's all
(21:41):
you need. That's from one minute, um and it gets
the brain off of looking for what's wrong, and from
that place you can feel balanced enough to really look at, Okay,
what's actually true about me right now? What's good enough
(22:02):
about me right now? Instead of what's not good enough?
What is good enough? What's not wrong right now? When
we come back, we're going to talk more about what
is good enough in this messy, magnificent life between Roth.
(22:28):
The way we've been talking about looking at what's right
as opposed to always being so critical. Engine it seems
like in your new book that is a big theme
of letting go of the judgment and the criticism and
the complaining. And you personally decided to stop complaining about
anything in public or private. Can first of all, how's
(22:51):
it going? And it's like, can you share? For certain
people that would honestly mean never saying another word for
as long as they live. But but you know what
that would also mean, because that's how it was for me.
I decided to stop complaining because I suddenly realized that
not suddenly I mean it, but the day I decided
(23:14):
to stop complaining itself sudden. As I look back on
my conversations with my friends, with my husband, UM, with
my mother, with my siblings, they were always only about
what was wrong and um, so there was a constant
(23:34):
complaint about here's what's wrong here and and and of
course you know, objectively, there is a lot that that
is so um oh boy, I don't even know what
to call it, but disturbing these days, um, and I'm
just going to stop you for a second, because I
(23:56):
think this is all the more extraordinary given the fact
that you are one of Bernie Madoff's victims, and you've
written about that as well. So you went through something
so unjust, um and so and so terrifying. Can you
can you talk about that a little bit? Like how
(24:17):
are they connected? Yeah, they're really connected. Um, I'll talk
about Bernie made for a second. Now I'll get back
to not complaining. Um, Well, we had invested all of
our money with Bernie Madoff, which of course any four
year old knows not to do, um, to diversify whatever.
(24:40):
But we have used to blame yourself. It's on It's
on him, not you. Go ahead, Well, um, I'm actually
not blaming myself because we had already had half of
our money embezzled by a friend who was a financial
advisor before that, and then a friend of our who
had been with Madoff for thirty years, out of the
(25:03):
generosity of his heart, and I really know we're still
very close friends with him, UM had offered to let
us into his maide Off fund, which we gladly took
him up on, and over the years we took all
the money we had and invested it with madeoffs. When
I found out that we lost everything, thirty years of
(25:25):
life savings, what we had left. Um, I went into
shock and terror and shame, grief, fear. Uh. It was.
It was a couple of days that were just horrendous.
And then I realized, really because I had a couple
(25:47):
of very good friends who said to me, nothing of
any value has been lost, and it seemed like a
ridiculous thing to tell me when we had no money
left and I didn't know how we were going to
stay in our house another month. UM. I did say
to one of my friends, now is not the time
to be spiritual. Uh, now is the time to be terrified.
(26:11):
But I realized if I was going to make it
through the night, I was going to have to start
focusing on what I had not lost, uh, not what
I had, what I had enough of, not what I
didn't have enough of. And I started being fierce and
(26:31):
vigilant about bringing my mind back every single time it
wandered into terror, into grief, into shame, into um everything
we had lost, and and really vigilant. I would not
let myself go there at all, which is another way
(26:52):
of it's not exactly a complaint that wasn't exactly a
complaint that was more like, oh my god, what are
we going to do? And my husband was away for
a couple of weeks, so um. I relied extensively on
my wonderful support system for this. But what I found
was every single time I brought my mind back to
(27:15):
what I did have this gorgeous teacup, this um piece
of chocolate, the fact that I had such good friends,
the fact that my dog was still wagging her tail,
the fact that I had shelter for that night and
probably the next night that I had sardines in my
bad tree. I mean, it was it was the fact
(27:37):
that I could still walk. It was on that level
every day, and the more I did that, the happier
I got. It was extraordinary. It was shocking to see
that the more I did that, the happier I got,
to the point where I felt joyful. Is um at first,
(28:01):
but then it became your entire m o it and
it became I'm not even sure. Well, yeah, it was
a survival mechanism, but it was more that I really
believed that it was the truth. Because before we had
lost our money, I was anxious already about what happens
(28:23):
if we lose our money, and what if we don't
have enough, and what if one of us gets really
sick and we have to fly to Germany and get
our blood cleaned, and you know, all these crazy things.
I was always living in the future and and in
some kind of anxiety, and that stopped it all. And
I saw that when the mind, well the mind is
(28:45):
you know, just what I would say about our minds
is that they are the tails wagging the dogs. They
just have hijacked our consciousness to the point where many
of us live in fear and most of the time
and what if and we lived and regrett of the
(29:05):
past or anxiety about the future. And I saw that
when I didn't, I was happy and so bringing it
and my mother couldn't believe it. My mother said, I promised,
I won't judge you, just just tell me how it
is that you're happy, you know, two weeks after you
lost everything. And then she asked me how I was
(29:27):
on drugs because she just couldn't believe it was possible.
She just said, are you on drugs? And I wasn't,
and that I would say, this is gonna and this
is not Pollyannic, because believe me, I'm not a Pollyannic
type person. I would say that that was a defining
experience of my life and probably one of the five
(29:49):
best things that's ever happened to me. Well, you say
in your book also that you can't control your circumstances necessarily,
but you can control the stories were we and control
the stories we tell ourselves about it. Andy, And you
have changed the narrative where Bernie made off stole all
my money. It's terrible to Bernie made off sto all
(30:10):
my money. What a blessing my life has been transformed. Well,
I would say that I still, you know, I'm very
glad he's in prison. And as I say to other people,
if you if I ever give you financial advice, run
the other way. So I I would not say, you
(30:31):
know that. So that's how I feel. But I feel
that the experience of losing everything taught me what I
do have, and so the not complaining is a further
iteration of that. It's the way that most of us
live every day. Oh no, I'm sick. Oh my god,
(30:52):
it's too hot. The weather it is horrible. Oh my footaches,
my back aches, my headaches. Um, you wouldn't believe what
this person did for you know, to me, I can't
believe what they said. I have to deal with the situation.
There is an ongoing complaint, low level ranting too, just
(31:14):
ongoing complaining, and that's what the mind loves, because the
brain evolved to see what was wrong, other was you know.
I mean, if our ancestors just laid around all day long,
they would have gotten eaten, and so they had to
be hyper vigilant and make sure they didn't get eaten.
But it's now maladaptive and so complaining puts us in
(31:35):
a negative space every single day. And when I stopped,
I just made a decision I'm not doing it, and
I still don't do it. This was a couple of
years ago. Every now and then I I sort of
wander into that's kind of a complaint, and then I'll
stop myself because I only feel worse when I do.
(31:58):
And so this is related to it's not wrong as well.
Jill and I both feel better for having talked with you.
So Jenine, thank you so much. I'm going to try
and do this not complaining things for a day. I'll
do with you. Okay, that's Honestly, Jenny, it's gonna be
a big challenge for me. I would do it for
today is good. When I said this to a couple
(32:19):
of friends of mine, they looked at me and they said,
we wouldn't have anything to talk about. We'll have other
things to talk about, many many other things from your book, uh,
This Messy, magnificent Life. Check it out, Jane. Thank you
again so much for being here. Yes, thank you so
much for being with us and sharing your wisdom and
(32:41):
life lessons and experiences. Also, thank you to Alicia Haywood
or fantastic producer, and thanks to everyone listening. Until next time.
Road to Somewhere News
Hosts And Creators
Lisa Oz
Jill Herzig
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