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Ravenous: A Food Lover's Journey From Obsession To Freedom (2011)

by Dayna Macy(Favorite Author)

3 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1401926916 (ISBN13: 9781401926915)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Hay House

review 1: The memoir parts were interesting and engaging. The parts where she visited farms, the slaughterhouse, etc. were fairly informative. I was not fond of the recipes at the end of each chapter and skipped right over them. The "orange" recipe at the end felt forced and trite. Furthermore, the conclusions she came to at the end of her journey were cliche at best and patronizing at worst. For what this book is presented as, it really didn't address the deeper issues of over- and emotional eating or the basic differences in body composition and metabolism and how to develop a healthy relationship with food.SPOILER ALERT: She basically ends up going on yet another diet. Even though she calls it a "practice", it's a diet and it's exactly what she (and most of us who struggle with o... moreur body image) vowed never to do again. Particularly disturbing is that she cooks "normal" food for her family while she meticulously measures out her own "healthy" (read: diet) food, all the while justifying her actions as "discipline." That ugly "W" word even makes an appearance (willpower). Yikes.This is a diet memoir. Period, end of story. It's silly to me that she wouldn't openly own that. I truly wish her the best of luck as it is painfully apparent to me that her journey to developing a healthy relationship with food and an appreciation for her body "as is" is far from over.
review 2: While someone without issues with food might not find RAVENOUS: A FOOD LOVER'S JOURNEY FROM OBSESSION TO FREEDOM compelling, I did. It spoke to me. I understood Macy's squashing of feelings with food, her memory-infused love affair with traditional meals, and her inability to stop eating even when full. Dayna Macy is a middle-aged mom who begins to take an honest look at her journey with food. Rather than begin a diet, she wants to go to the core of food and her issues swirling around it. Curious about how the food that she loves like cheese, sausage, olives, greens and even beef come to her table, Dayna's inside look makes her reexamine her relationship with nourishment in a way that no diet ever could. Following each food type that she delves into is a recipe, many of which I am anxious to try myself. Why might there be recipes in a book about overeating? Because food is not the culprit. Our inability to stop eating it is. RAVENOUS is an easy-to-read book with beautiful phrases peppered throughout. Although Dayna kicks herself for not venturing into writing sooner, she absolutely has a way with words. This is a book for anyone who has tied feelings with food and who struggles to turn away from the table even when your body says "no more." *ebook provided by Netgalley"Eating greasy, salty, fatty food literally pads me, thickens me from the inside out, and that extra padding helps me to feel safe.""It will be another 20 years before I figure out that eating can't replace creating. And that no one can give me permission to write except myself.""If people understand where their food comes from and how it grows, they become more connected to their health and to themselves.""The kitchen is modest, serviceable, and small. No granite countertops, Sub-Zero refrigerator, or Wolf range in sight. Being a chef and a meditation teacher porbably doesn't pay much. Then again, maybe being a meditation teacher means you don't need the fancy gadgets.""Salt, grease, tasteless pulp in my mouth," he says, koan-like. "I can never eat enough corn chips to be satisfied because there's no there there. And if I wasn't paying attention, I'd keep eating them to try to get what isn't there.""My idea of what constitutes real food changed 15 years ago when I started getting a weekly vegetable box from this farm.""We talk about the rise of genetically modified seeds, which are patented and therefore owned and legally protected by the huge corporations that produce them. In many cases, farmers sign contracts in which they agree not to save and replant seeds, though farmers have replanted seeds since the dawn of agriculture. Sometimes these contracts also have other clauses, granting access to the farmer's land and business records. 'I'm surprised that anyone signse these contracts,' Judith says.I'm not. I know companies sell these seeds because they make billions of dollars doing it, and farmers use them because they boost yields and short term efficiency. I'm sure some people at these companies believe they are doing the right thing, but patenting the very foundation of our food supply seems deeply short-sighted and wrong.""Ask yourself, why does industrical agriculture only want to feed people starch and sugar?...Because it's subsidized and cheap.""In his seminal work Stalking the Wild Asparagus, Euell Gibbons wrote: 'We live in a vastly complex society which has veen able to provide us with a multitude of material things, and this is good, but people are beginning to suspect that we have paid a high spiritual price for our plenty...don't we sometimes feel that we are living a secondhand sort of existence, and that we are in danger of losing all contact with the origins of life and the nature wich nourishes it?'""The meaning of life is love. I also catch a glimpse of something else that will take me many more years to really learn: that food is notlove. Food is food.""I need to make peace with my father. And whatever emptiness his life and death left in me needs to be healed with something other than food.""Glancing back at my old bedroom window, I remember how, as a young girl, I couldn't find the courage to write a book, and how grateful I am to write this one now. Sometimes there are promises you make to yourself that you have to keep, because if you didn't life would be too dispiriting.""I mourn the creeping invisibility of middle age and the gradual thickening of my body. I mourn the loss of my youthful beauty and all the time I wasted not seeing just how beautiful I was. All because I was never thin enough." less

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