Businesswoman eating and working

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Everything we believe about love, fear, transformation and God is revealed in how, when and what we eat.
Annoyed driver

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Our daily lives, from the mundane to the sublime, from our reactions to sitting in traffic to our responses to the death of someone we love, are expressions of our deepest beliefs.
Woman eating

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Women turn to food when they are not hungry because they are hungry for something they cannot name: a connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life. Something deathless, something sacred.
Woman on scale

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Relentless attempts to be thin take you father and farther away from what could actually end your suffering: getting back in touch with who you really are.
Woman present in the moment

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Ending the obsession with food is all about the capacity to stay in the present moment.
Woman with a broken heart

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There are worse things in life than a broken heart.
Woman eating badly

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Even with aching joints, diabetes, high blood pressure, it's not about food; it's about your desire to flatten your life. It's about the fact that you've given up without saying so. It's about your belief that it's not possible to live any other way—and you're using food to act that out without ever having to admit it.
Woman eating and ignoring man

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What if what you needed was right in front of you but you kept missing it because you were looking for something else?
Woman measuring waistline

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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.
Woman crying

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You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved.
Woman smiling in the mirror

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When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart.
Woman eating healthy breakfast

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Goodness and loveliness are possible, even in something as mundane as what you put in your mouth for breakfast. Beginning now.
Woman meditating

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Meditation helps you discover what you love that you didn't know you loved because you were so caught up in your mind that you didn't realize anything else was there.
Woman aware of what she's eating

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The moment you distinguish between acting out the impulse to eat and the awareness of the impulse to eat you are no longer captive by your past.
Woman eating healthy food

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Food is the direct connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what we put in our mouths and what we feel in our hearts. Passion, strength, joy cannot take place in exhausted, burdened, half-dead bodies.

Do you have a question for Roth about your dieting and food obsessions? Ask her now!

Find out more about Women, Food, and God
Are you a permitter or a restrictor? Take the quiz!
How to truly get to know yourself
Try Roth's 7 eating guidelines
What are you hungry for? Hint: It's not food
Read another excerpt from the book