Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationship with Food Through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling Paperback – April 13, 2000

Eating in the Light of the Moon may well turn out to be one of the very rare books I return to again and again for inspiration. I found this work so wise and true that I actually read it twice in one week, highlighting nearly half of it the first time around and then, on second reading, underlining with pen the insights and tips I had hoped to commit to memory. What flat-out stunned me about this book is that I had never even heard of it until recently, a whopping 28 years after its initial release. I can't get those years back. So, don't let the publication date fool you into thinking that what it offers is outdated and irrelevant. The wisdom and hope that author Anita Johnston, Ph.D. offers women in this work is and will remain nothing short of timeless and essential. I'm sure of it.This book isn't meant for everyone, however, or even every woman. It's intended for women who struggle with disordered eating, typically those raised by authoritarian parents or caregivers and those prone to internalizing their feelings (as opposed to externalizing them). It's for women who put the needs and desires of everyone else before their own. It's also for any woman who doesn't recognize these traits in herself but does believe food is the real issue behind her eating disorder (ED).In this work, Johnston gently but persuasively sets things straight. It's not food that is addictive, she states, but rather the disordered eating patterns that develop over time. Food, Johnston explains, is simply the metaphor for a host of unmet and often deeply buried needs, including those for nurturance, comfort, self-expression, and spiritual fulfillment. Food, she stresses, is the distraction that keeps women from recognizing and meeting those unmet needs.In addition to shedding light on how and why women develop EDs, the book offers a sensible, holistic and intuitive approach to overcoming them. The most crucial step in the process is learning assertiveness because, as Johnston makes clear, disordered eating cannot be overcome by a woman who can't express "who she is and what she wants." Johnston provides a simple approach that I actually tried myself and found amazingly efficient and effective.With assertiveness comes recovery, which has nothing to do with controlling hunger and everything to do with trusting the body's signals of when to eat and when to stop. The use of a journal to document these signals and accompanying feelings is key.What I've described may seem like a book of sheer common sense but, as Johnston points out, women with eating disorders typically have dominant, judgmental, and controlling inner voices (i.e., authoritarian imprints) that compel them to restrict food to the point at which their eating patterns erupt into full-blown EDs. This book is not a book full of Q&As, nor is it a work promising to suddenly change your life in three short weeks or months, provided you adhere to all its many steps. This book is an approach that seeps into your psyche by way of folk tales, myths and a woman's expert guidance, one that enlightens and encourages you to recover the innate wisdom of your own body. If by chance you've read and have loved Clarissa Pinkola Estes's feminist classic, Women Who Run with the Wolves (also published in the mid 1990s), Eating in the Light of the Moon is a book you won't want to miss. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend you read both of these wonderful works with either highlighter or a pen and notebook in hand. These books will not only open your eyes to yourself, but may well change your life or, at the very least, your perspective.Note: This book does not address eating disorders directly stemming from severe trauma, which is likely due to the time at which it was written. Trauma research has come a long way in 28 years. However, I not only fit the profile described above but have experienced trauma myself. This book did not disappoint. If anything, it explained a lot. I highly recommend it.

This has been a transformational book for me. I have both the kindle version, which I read years ago and loved, as well as the audible version, which I have listened to three times and I would absolutely recommend. This is one of those rare books that transforms you as you read (or, especially, listen to). I struggled with on-and-off bulimia for over 20 years and, while I haven't purged in several years, the mindset is still something I have carried with me. I am finally beginning to acknowledge my feelings and preferences and ideas - my perceptions are important and valid, even if others don't see them or agree. I have always been a people pleaser, melding my personality to suit whomever I was with. This book has helped me to gently see how to change that and how to validate not only my opinions and feelings, but others', too. She says that every person she has ever worked with has had to find her voice and learn to be assertive in order to overcome their eating disorder, and that is certainly true of me. I find that I have no need for food when I acknowledge my feelings and accept them. I am learning to pay attention to my dreams and am learning about myself through them. There are so many gems in this book. It may sound funny that learning by metaphor would have any practical application for recovery, but I have found it SO much more effective than the books that give you checklists of behavior modification and homework assignments. I love myself more, I validate myself more, and in so doing, I love others more and respect their boundaries, because I am setting my own. Buy this book - it is a gentle, loving approach to understanding why you have this disordered eating - it's the best you knew how to do at the time. And now you can learn to love yourself into new behavior that naturally evolves because you are addressing the underlying needs that went unmet before. Buy it!!

This is the first time I've ever written an online book review, but this is such a great book that I wanted to encourage others to read it. I encourage any woman who has ever struggled in her relationship with food, or just wants to feel affirmed as a woman, to read it!I discovered this book a couple of years ago, and it sparked a transformation in my relationship with food by gently helping me understand the deeper reasons for my life-long struggle. The book captured the truth of my experience with disordered eating like nothing ever had, and it gave me tremendous hope that a person can truly recover from it and be free from its grip (which over the past two years has amazingly become my experience & this book is one of the reasons why).I still return to this book when I start to feel out of balance or simply want to learn from its wise stories again. I wish I could personally thank Anita Johnston for writing this beautiful & profound book (hope she reads these reviews sometimes!)- her use of stories & metaphors is so powerful and really captures the deeper truth of how we can learn to understand and love ourselves as women. Furthermore, the book is very well-written and a delight to read.If you struggle from disordered eating (or live under the illusion that you can't enjoy eating or have to be on some kind of oppressive "diet" to be healthy & slender), this book can truly change your life. It's not a quick fix, but if you are willing to embark on the sometimes hard journey of going deeper into the causes for your tortuous relationship with food, this book is a wise and loving guide. For me, the journey into and out of the labyrinth has been well worth taking!