FEEDING THE HUNGRY HEART: The Experience of Compulsive Eating

If commiseration were the primary ingredient in ending compulsive eating behavior, this collection of fatty reminiscences from Roth and some of her ""Breaking Free"" workshop participants would really serve a useful purpose. But as support for suffering sisters goes, it is one of the more touching examples. In her own case, Roth spices the pathos with humor: chocolate, she maintains, is not something you love, it's something you have an affair with. But she thinks eating compulsively is a substitute for feeding other hungers--""of regret and sorrow, of unspoken anger, unrealized dreams. . . ."" So she mentions the humiliation of being taunted at school, but she also lauds that moment when the beleaguered fight back: a boyfriend who puts her down for not being model-thin is told in no uncertain terms that she was born with a rounded shape and has come to think of her body as ""quite lovely and womanly."" Roth doesn't believe in diets per se: they're the other side of binging, she thinks, and equally miss the point. The first step is to recognize and feed the emotional hungers; then, presumably, compulsive eating will stop, A limited scope, but one which compulsive eaters may find supportive.