Losing your entire life savings is awful. What’s more awful is when you lose it in a highly public way.
Oprah’s eating coach, Geneen Roth, was a victim of Bernie Madoff’s scheme, and she’s now on the rebound with a new memoir, Lost and Found.
She recently sat down to discuss money, food, and life.
Check it out:
Oprah has moved on to her OWN network, and you’ve moved on, or so it seems, to money…
I haven’t moved on. Food is still my main focus. People get turned off [by the book] because they haven’t dealt with the food thing, and they don’t want to deal with money. It’s overwhelming. I want them to know food and money problems are very similar.
What’s money got to do with food?
After my husband and I lost our life savings, many of the patterns I thought I’d worked through with food were surfacing in my relationship with money. It was losing everything and being confronted with the decisions I’d made about money that catapulted me into questions about what is enough, and the sense that no matter how much I had, it was never enough. It was the very same thing I’d experienced with food on an emotional, psychological and, dare I say, spiritual level.
Why do you say the old adage of “You can never be too thin or too rich” isn’t true?
Most people are so focused on what they don’t have, what they’re not allowed to eat, what they shouldn’t eat, what they’ll be able to eat when they finish the diet, lose the weight … it’s a constant feeling of “If only I had this, then I’d be happy.” But they’ve already lost 10, 20, 30, 40 pounds 30 or 40 times, and it didn’t make them happy. It gave them a thinner body, but it didn’t give them the sense that “Now I can rest, now I will be seen for who I really am, now I can be happy.” The same is true with money. Let’s face it, we need money for food and shelter, but after those needs are met, this insane desire for more and more and more … it doesn’t make people happy.
How do you explain how Oprah could say she found the answer in “Women Food and God,” and yet still struggles with her weight?
I can’t speak for Oprah or about Oprah, but I can say when you find something that speaks to you, when you find something that feels like “Now I’m at home,” that’s the beginning, not the end. That “a-ha” moment is wonderful, but when it ends, and it always does, it needs to be followed by some kind of commitment to take action on your own behalf, a daily decision to be there for yourself.
What do you know about quick fixes?
[Real] change is not always visible, especially not at first. While there’s a pay-off to being conscious about eating — losing weight — with money, there’s a different kind of pay-off. I’m not saying if you’re conscious about money, you’ll get rich. I am saying your relationship with what you have in life will change. Everyone reading your blog in this moment has five things they have enough of, but because they’re focused on what they don’t have, they’re focused on lack. If all you’re valuing is what you can see, touch and accomplish in this second, it’s going to be hard going. You have to value your inner process.
