Annotated Bibliography
The book list is organized by section:
This list is not meant to be an exhaustive bibliography. It mainly contains books that I think are
especially good, but also includes a few that are well known but in my opinion less good (with comments
as to why). I include only the first three of Geneen Roth's books because I think these were the best
ones.
Click the book cover or the "Purchase" link to purchase the book through amazon.com.
Purchasing books through the links on this page helps to support the Normal Eating Web site.
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Non-diet approach to achieving and maintaining a normal weight...
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Fat is a Feminist Issue was the first non-diet book ever published (the first
edition came out in the 1970's), and it paved the way for all the others.
It's especially useful for its insights into how fat serves
us as women in this society. The book's numerous directed fantasies can help
uncover the personal meaning of food and fat in an individual's life.
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Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry is a must-read
book that documents the history of the diet industry, and when/why/how female slimness
became the cultural mandate. It wasn't always!
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Feeding the Hungry Heart: The Experience of Compulsive Eating was Geneen Roth's first book.
In it she asks women to describe their compulsive eating and how they feel in the grip of it.
Her compassionate treatment of a taboo topic that was traditionally shrouded in shame was a first
of its kind, and can help others with the problem feel more compassionate towards themselves.
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Breaking Free from Emotional Eating (originally titled Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating),
was Geneen Roth's second book, and offers much good advice on how to think about and approach
your eating so as to minimize emotional eating episodes. Her emphasis is on conscious eating and a
compassionate, non-judgmental attitude towards yourself. These are important elements, but don't
fully address the problem. What's missing are effective tools for dealing with the underlying emotional
triggers. Click here for more info.
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When Food Is Love: Exploring the Relationship Between Eating and Intimacy is Geneen Roth's third book.
It explores the symbolic relationship between food and love, and why people who didn't (or don't) receive enough
love in their lives often turn to food instead.
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The Zen of Eating: Ancient Answers to Modern Weight Problems shows how Buddhist principles can be
used to explain and resolve the problem of emotional overeating. The author (a long-time friend of mine)
has a deep understanding of Buddhism, and in a sense this is a book about Buddhism
elucidated by the example of how it applies to a specific problem. This book will be of most interest
to those wanting to learn about Buddhism, and/or how to apply Buddhist principles to
the problem of emotional overeating.
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The best part of Diets Don't Work: Stop Dieting, Become Naturally Thin, Live a Diet-Free Life
is the first chapter, where the author describes an experiment he conducted at his chain of gyms
that convincingly demonstrated that diets make normal people crazy and cause everyone to gain weight.
The anecdote is told with humor and is definitely worth reading. The rest of the book is less useful -
just a bunch of writing exercises which, like Geneen Roth's writing exercises, are not an effective
vehicle for change.
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The Seven Secrets of Slim People is a very fast read and everything it says is correct,
but it doesn't talk at all about how to deal with the emotional issues that prompt people to
eat when not hungry. It tells you what to do, but not how to do it.
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Overcoming Overeating has some useful insights, but can be enabling and destructive due to
its over-emphasis on "legalizing", and underemphasis (virtually no emphasis) on developing the internal
controls that limit eating in a normal way (reconnecting with hunger and satiation cues, dealing with
the underlying emotional issues that trigger compulsive urges, etc.). The result is that people following
the OO recommendations tend to gain large amounts of weight and never lose it (unless they change approaches).
Click here for more info.
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The Tao of Eating: Feeding Your Soul Through Everyday Experiences With Food discourages
turning attuned eating into the "eat when hungry" diet by recommending that food choices balance the
needs of body, mind, and soul - for example, choosing a food you ate as a child because it evokes
memories of comfort. However, the book does not clearly distinguish between this and using food
addictively, as an emotional crutch. Nor does it clarify that the vast majority of food choices - 90% -
should be based on the needs of the body since that's the primary purpose of eating.
The over-emphasis on non-fuel uses of food is dangerous because it can be used to justify
all manner of emotional eating.
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Coping with life problems that people tend to eat over...
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Coming Apart: Why relationships end, and how to live through the ending of yours
is the wisest and most clear-eyed description of what relationships are really about
that I've ever read. Relationship endings are always painful, but this book helps you to
make sense of what happened and why, and this makes the pain so much easier to bear.
Kingma has a profound understanding of human nature and relationships,
and beautifully explains why endings are not failures, but turning points.
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Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay : A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether
to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship offers a uniquely insightful approach
to making this hard decision. Trying to weigh the good against the bad doesn't work
very well, so instead you're asked a series of questions that reveal whether the
problems in your relationship are truly showstopping or fixable. The questions reflect
the author's deep understanding of relationships. Very wise book.
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When Smart People Fail: Rebuilding Yourself for Success is about the experience of job
loss - or worse, career loss. It explains why failure hurts so much, and how how to turn
the experience into a learning opportunity that leads to even greater success and happiness.
This is a very special book filled with profound insights, practical suggestions, and real-life
examples. Highly recommended.
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Nutrition (for people at Stage 4 of Normal Eating)...
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The Protein Power Life Plan was written by two MDs who are married to each other, and specialize in helping people to lose
weight through excellent nutrition. This book has one of the best summaries of what makes for good nutrition
that I've seen. It also talks about the other health effects (besides obesity) of eating of different foods.
It's a great book. If you only want to read one book on nutrition, read this one. There are other books by these authors,
but this is the one that has the great section on nutrition.
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The Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth About Weight Loss, Health, and Aging was writting by an doctor -
and endocrinologist - whose practice focuses heavily on helping people to lose weight. She's Suzanne Somers'
doctor. The book is an excellent source of information about nutrition, and explains very clearly why many
widely held ideas are simply wrong - in particular, the erroneous belief that dietary fat is bad for you
or causes you to gain weight. In fact, dietary fat is essential for health. Only damaged fats are bad for you.
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Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
is a gigantic cookbook (about the size of the NYC telephone directory) filled with excellent, meticulously
researched information about nutrition, and interesting anecdotes about food history. The recipes show how to
cook in a way that's both delicious and healthy.
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NeanderThin: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body was written by a computer
programmer with numerous, debilitating autoimmune diseases that conventional medicine could not cure.
He did some investigating on his own, and discovered a mass of research strongly suggesting that obesity and
autoimmune disease is caused by changes in the human diet that occurred at the end of the paleolithic age
10,000 years ago, when humans shifted from 2 million years of hunting and gathering to farming.
He switched to a paleolithic diet and all his autoimmune diseases went away. Click
here for a brief overview
of paleolithic nutrition.
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| Testimonials |
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It is when I learned to let go of the idea that I had to get to a
certain ideal weight, and I had to reach this weight by a certain
time, that I actually stopped gaining weight. And then I stopped
overeating. And then the excess weight began coming off at its own
pace.
-Support Group Member
> "I never imagined that I would still be at it at 53".
You hit the nail on the head, I think. Which one of us ever did think
it? Did not everyone think that some diet somewhere will fix our life
once and for all, while we, figuratively speaking, hold our breath?
Then it turns out that our whole life is slowly turned into prolonged
breath holding, with tremendous sense of guilt whenever we gasp for
some air. This is no way to live.
-Support Group Member
Even if you are overweight, I am here to tell you can get a job, have a fulfilling career,
fall in love, and have a fabulous time figuring out what you want to do with your life.
There is a lot of joy to be had, and every person- tall, short, thick, thin, blue, white or
purple deserves to have some of it. There's a lot of pain in life too, but in a strange
way that is part of the beauty. Believe it or not, most other people don't care how much
you weigh - they care what kind of person you are. The weight will not hold you back, but
the obsession about the weight (endless dieting, etc.) will keep you from fully participating
and realizing your potential as a person.
-Support Group Member
I have been overweight my entire life. About 3 years ago, I did Weight Watchers and actually
stuck with it. I lost 80 pounds. I kept that off until this summer, and since then I have
gained back 30 pounds. I have been bingeing about 2 days a week. I cant stop. but as I
look in my closet full of cute clothes that I cannot wear anymore and pull on my size 12 jeans,
which are too tight, I make a decision. I decide that I cannot do this anymore. I am not happy.
I hate the way I look. I hate being uncomfortable in my clothes and my skin. Today is the day
that I do not diet anymore.
-Support Group Member
I have always battled with my weight, and the irony is that the smaller I get the more I obsess
about it! I think I have a worse relationship with food as a size 10 than I did when I was a size 22!
I've battled with an eating disorder, recovered from it, but still hate the "control" food has over
me and am so unhappy.
-Support Group Member
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