The Nine Rooms of Happiness by Lucy Danziger

Author:Lucy Danziger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2010-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

I REFUSE TO EVEN GET ON THE SCALE!

“Some women have bad hair days; I have bad weight days, ones that are miserable from the start because I wake up feeling heavy and guilty about the food I ate the night before, and I don’t even want to get on the scale because I know I won’t like the number it will tell me.”

—Jenny, 44; Portland, Maine

Jenny has grappled with body image issues for many years, even though she has always been fit and healthy and never truly overweight, though every now and then she says, “I feel a little flabby, especially around the middle.” She never felt so fat that she had to diet, since she considered eating a form of self-love and she enjoyed her treats. She thought this was a good attitude, mainly because she was active. “After I’d go running, I’d think, I deserve my chocolate cake for dessert!” But the pounds crept up on her over the years. “Sitting at a desk all day, I didn’t burn enough calories to justify what I was eating. I got heavier and more unhappy about my growing waistline.”

Then she had a health scare—at the age of forty-two she felt her heart racing and thumping in her chest, and thought she was having a heart attack. Her doctor explained that the racing heart had nothing to do with an impending heart attack, but did indicate that she was under too much stress. She also told Jenny that she had high cholesterol, and unless she changed her diet she’d have to go on a medication to lower it.

“I gave up ice cream and cheese and cut way down on meat, ate more fish, and guess what? I lost ten pounds in about six weeks, and now I think totally differently about food. It’s about being healthy, and my cholesterol dropped from 275 to 205, and it’s still going down, so now I know that what I eat really matters.” Jenny now wants to eat well for the right reasons, not because she feels fat, but because she values her healthy body.

The problem was that Jenny liked herself enough to indulge in the post-run chocolate cake, which was sabotaging her health. The unconscious process at work here is a form of “undoing, where she does a good thing (running), and undoes it with another (eating cake).” Not only was she undoing all her hard work, but she was also threatening her good health long term. Once she realized that, she could learn to stop eating like a teenager and think of herself as an adult who had to take care of herself.

Most people don’t understand that in a few quick minutes of noshing you can eat more calories than you could burn in two hours of working out at the gym. For Jenny, the fact remains that her body image is making her unhappy, but it may not be because of the extra pounds she’s carrying—though those are her focus—but because of the self-destructive patterns she’s engaged in.

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