The Happiness Project: News: Oprah and her battle with her weight; she's back at 200 pounds.

The Happiness Project

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT is the memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier – happily, it was a #1 New York Times bestseller. As one of the hundreds of experiments I've conducted, I started this blog. Here, I recount my daily adventures in pursuit of happiness. –

Gretchen Rubin

What Started Me Thinking

"The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." Mark Twain
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
“Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
“Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Sartre: "Hell is other people."
Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

Oprah A few days ago, I saw news reports that in the January issue of O Magazine, Oprah reveals that she has gained forty pounds and now weighs 200 pounds.

The article isn’t out yet, but apparently she says she’s mad at herself. “I'm embarrassed. I can't believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I'm still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, 'How did I let this happen again?'” she wrote.

Hearing that made me feel sad. Oprah is so fabulous, I'm sorry she can't let go of this issue and just enjoy being herself. But weight is such a tough issue.

The relationship between happiness and weight is complicated and under-studied, I think. It’s an issue to which I want to give more consideration. I just read a fascinating book by Abby Ellin, Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat-Camper Weighs in on Living Large, Losing Weight, And How Parents Can (And Can't) Help, that gave me a lot to think about. A lot of people say that weight shouldn’t matter for happiness, but the fact is, for a lot of people, it does matter.

In his book What You Can Change . . . and What You Can't (p. 190), Martin Seligman points out: “All thin-ideal cultures…have roughly twice as much depression in women as men. (Women diet twice as much as men...) [In] cultures without the thin ideal…the amount of depression in women and men in these cultures is the same. This suggests that around the world, the thin ideal and dieting not only cause eating disorders but also cause women to be more depressed than men.” Two root causes of depression are failure and helplessness; dieting makes you feel both. (Note: I can't find my copy of the book to double-check the quotation.)

I also can’t help but think that there’s some major aspect of eating, nutrition, exercise, and metabolism that we don’t understand and that is playing a significant role in the obesity problem. If OPRAH has trouble with her weight, with all the massive support and motivation she has…

*
What a combination. Alex Fayle, of the terrific blog Someday Syndrome, wrote a guest post on Leo Babauta's fantastic blog, Zen Habits. I was thrilled to be included in this post on 11 Ways to Cure Someday Syndrome.

*
New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner of my blog.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.