if compulsive eating is anything, it’s a way we leave ourselves when life gets hard.

There is nothing like having chocolate cake three inches away to reveal your fear of chaos or your desire to melt into it.

I ask her to do this not so that she can comfort her “inner child.” I don’t believe in inner children. I do believe that there are frozen places in ourselves—undigested pockets of pain—that need to be recognized and welcomed, so that we can contact that which has never been hurt or wounded or hungry.

Failing is built into the weight game. There is no way to play it and win.

Overeating was my way to punish and shame myself; each time I gained weight, each time I failed at a diet, I proved to myself that my deepest fear was true: I was pathetic and doomed

if you wait to respect yourself until you are at the weight you imagine you need to be to respect yourself, you will never respect yourself, because the message you will be giving yourself as you reach your goal is that you are damaged and cannot trust your impulses, your longings, your dreams, your essence at any weight.

Tell me if it has a color. Tell me if it has a shape. Tell me if there is tingling or vibrating or pulsing when you feel alone.”

They realize that brokenness is learned, not innate, and that their work is to find their way back to what is already whole.

Change, if it is to be long lasting, must occur on the unseen levels first. With understanding, inquiry, openness. With the realization that you eat the way you do for lifesaving reasons.