Susie Orbach - On Eating

PENGUIN BOOKS

ON EATING

Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist. Her books include Fat is a Feminist Issue (1978), Hunger Strike (Penguin, 1986), Whats Really Going on Here (1994), Towards Emotional Literacy (1999) and The Impossibility of Sex (Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 1999), With Luise Eichenbaum she has written Understanding Women: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Account (Penguin, 1982), What Do Women Want: Exploding the Myth of Dependency (1983) and Between Women (1988). She is a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.

Susie Orbach

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2002

Copyright Susie Orbach, 2002

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192790-9

To Lianna and Lukas

Take this book slowly. Read a few pages at a time and read them as often as you find helpful.

You may absorb the ideas at first reading. Or you may want to go back to particular parts again and again to understand the ideas and put them into practice.

Sometimes just one key or one page will give you the clue you need.

Order the keys in your personal way. Start with what works best for you. No key is more important than any other. They work together, although any particular one might have special meaning for you.

These ideas are simple. But they will also make demands on you. Grappling with the difficulties you come up against will repay you a thousandfold. You will be free of eating worries for the rest of your life.

First things first.

We each have a mechanism our personal set point that regulates our body size. It works best when we eat when we are hungry and stop when we are full.

Eat too little and your metabolism slows down. Your hunger increases as your body tries to get you back to the size that is right for you.

Eat too much and your metabolism also slows down. It cant process the excess food effectively.

Eat whats just right for you and your metabolism will be efficient. Your body will be stable and content at its set point.

As well as our personal set point, we each have an inner register that can tell us:

how to eat

when to eat

what to eat

when to stop eating.

Eating is like other bodily functionssleeping, peeing, walking, sneezing. Our body sends us signals, which we can respond to.

This book will help you to respond to your bodys inner register. It will be your personal guide to eating.

Undoing years of chaotic or unhealthy eating takes time. Learning to eat in a new way, a way that will work for you for the rest of your life, is like an injured person learning to walk or talk again.

It takes practice before it becomes second nature.

Eating well can become that for you if you give it a chance.

Take your problem seriously. Give it the attention it needs.

This book shows you how to eat with your hunger and stop when you are full. It isnt magic, it may not happen overnight: it takes work. Sometimes a lot of work. But once youve got the knack, it feels magically different from the way youve eaten before.

Dont expect miracles. Follow the keys. In time you will notice that your eating is relaxed and easy. Better than a miracle.

Eating this way means:

an end to diets

an end to binges

an end to special schemes to control your food

an end to denying yourself the food you would really like to be eating.

Thank you to Lianna for delightful help with the mocking up of the pages more than once; to Caradoc King, Joseph Schwartz and Caroline Pick for their enthusiasm; to Margaret Bluman for another hugely enjoyable and productive time of working together; to Ruth Killick, Rosie Claisher, Nellie Flexner, Jenny Todd, Andrew Barker and the whole Penguin team for their thoughtfulness and energy.

Eating is pleasurable.

Eating is delicious.

Eating is sensual.

But for lots of people, it is also anguishing and fraught with difficulties.

This book gives you keys to transform your eating. From eating that hurts or is chaotic into eating that calms and nourishes you.

Five keys will help you eat in a new way and enable you to be the size that is right for you.

With these keys you will always have the resources to transform your eating if it feels out of control.

Return to them whenever you feel the need. They will provide you with immediate solutions.

These keys give you the way to trust yourself around food, even if you have never been able to do so before.

If you follow them, they are foolproof.

No diet, no doctor, no trainer, no scheme can know better than you what suits your body.

These five keys ore always therefor you to go to if you get into difficulties or forget them. They dont change.

They give instant relief to troubled eating.

You dont have to wait until next Monday.