Hi everyone! New to the group, but not new to binge eating. I am a senior in college and have been struggling with body image issues since middle school and compulsive eating since freshman year.

It was impossible for me to understand and forgive myself for a long time as well. But my friend introduced me to Geneen Roth and her books have changed my life. I wanted to share a few quotes from her most enlightening book, "Women, Food, and God."

I copied these quotes from her book onto notecards and they serve as good reminders for me.

"Our work is not to change what you do but to witness what you do with enough awareness, enough curiosity, enough tenderness, that the lies and old delusions upon which the compulsion is based become apparent and fall away. When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted, or overwhelmed, or lonely, you will stop. 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. You will stop turning to food when you start understanding in your body, not just your mind, that there is something better than turning to food."

"When you are lonely, your body feels empty. When you are sad, it feels as if there is a Mack truck sitting on your lungs. Grief feels like tidal waves knocking you down, joy like champagne bubbles welling up in your arms, your legs, your belly. Our minds are like politicians; they make stuff up, they twist the truth. Our minds are masters at blame, but our bodies... Our bodies don't lie. Which is, of course, why so many of us learned to zip out of them at the first sign of trouble."

"There are many ways to deprive yourself: You can deprive yourself of cookies, or you can deprive yourself of feeling well after eating them. You can deprive yourself of feeling your sadness or you can deprive yourself of the confidence and well-beig that come from knowing you won't be destroyed by feeling it."

"The most difficult part of teaching people to respect and listen to their bodies is overcoming their conviction that there is nothing to respect...The possibility that there is a place in them, in everyone, that is unbroken, that has never gained a pound, never been hungry, never been wounded, seems like a myth...But then I ask them about babies...and how they come into the world already gorgeous and utterly deserving of love. They nod their heads. They realize that brokenness is learned, not innate, and that their work is to find their way back to what is already whole."

Even with all of these resources and understanding, I have re-entered some very harmful patterns lately. I would like to start tracking food again as a way to keep mindful of and present with what I am eating.

I would love to have some friends help me along the way.

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