Now, in the dining room, Marie says, “It just occurred to me that everything we believe about our lives is right here. The whole world is on these plates.”

Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said that enlightenment was following one thing all the way to the end, and I soon suspected that if I tracked the impulse to eat when I wasn’t hungry to its core, I’d find every single thing I believed about loving, living, and dying right there, in that moment.

They want to learn how to have different bodies, not occupy the ones they have now.

It’s as if the knowledge of the expanse beyond the concerns of the personal is already there and they are using food to access it. Which—no surprise—leads to more pain.

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

As long as you are striving and pushing and trying hard to do something that can never be done, you know who you are: someone with a weight problem who is working hard to be thin. You don’t have to feel lost or helpless because you always have a goal and that goal can never be reached.

Losing weight on any program in which you tell yourself that left to your real impulses you would devour the universe is like building a sky-scraper on sand: without a foundation, the new structure collapses.

We gravitate toward labels because it’s always a relief to be seen, to find ourselves in descriptions.

unlike Restrictors, who try to manage the chaos, Permitters merge with it. They see no point in trying to control the uncontrollable and have decided that it’s best to be blurry and numb and join the party. Have a good time.