Women, Food and God

Maybe I need to stop watching Oprah? It seems whenever I get the chance to watch, I end up buying a new book.

Not that I should be complaining, I guess...the results have been so enlightening.

Oprah mentioned (in passing, really) that she had learned more about weight and her relationship with food from this one book, than she had in a lifetime of other sources:



Of course, this peaked my curiosity and I had to check it out. After reading the reviews, I clicked and thanks to Amazon Prime...it was here in a jiff.

I'm almost done with it...it's a quick read...but I'm quite certain this is one I'll be reading over again. I alternate between feeling like the message is going way over my head (having to read a passage several times)...and having huge "A-ha" moments.

I'm really glad that I read The Kind Diet first, and took the challenge to implement its ideas for 30 days. This gave me a great foundation...because I actually had the experience of feeling what it's like to put only excellent food into my body...and let me tell you, it feels great!

As an added bonus, I found my favorite poem ever, as it was quoted in the book, so I had to go look it up. I'll share:

When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me,
and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes like the measle-pox:

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
 I was a bride married to amazement.*
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular,
and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited
this world.

(*Most epic line in a poem, ever...and taken straight from my heart)

{I will make a couple of disclaimers, however. She drops a couple of F bombs (sharing her self-loathing thoughts)...and she refers to God with more of a "Twelve Stepper" mentality, so you really have to replace the generality with which she speaks of God with your own beliefs about Him. I didn't find this hard to do, however. It should also be said that there is nothing particularly exclusive to women in this book...other than maybe we struggle with the concepts more? I'm guessing the author chose the title because People, Food and God just didn't sound as sexy.}