The Happiness Project: 14 Tips for Controlling Holiday Eating.

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.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about my eating habits lately—probably because the holiday season is so full of temptation. Here are some guidelines that I’ve been trying to follow, whether eating in or eating out, with various degrees of fidelity.

1. Wear snug-fitting clothes.

2. Buy food in small containers. Studies show that people give themselves larger portions out of larger boxes, so I don’t buy that economy box of whatever.

3. Make tempting food inconvenient—put cookies in a hard-to-reach spot, set the freezer to a very cold temperature so it’s hard to spoon out ice cream, store goodies in hard-to-open containers.

4. Order the appetizer size.

5. Use smaller plates, bowls, and cutlery. I often use the plastic plates we have left over from when my daughters were young.

6. Dish food up in the kitchen, and don’t bring serving platters onto the table (except vegetables).

7. Pile my plate with everything I intend to eat, and don’t get seconds once that food is gone. (I can do this with everything except my favorite Thanksgiving food, served every year in my family: sweet potatoes with marshmellows.)

8. Keep serving sizes small: get a small frozen yoghurt instead of a large (ok, I would get a medium not a small, but still); get a single hamburger instead of a double.

9. Skip the add-ons: tell the waiter that I don’t want the side of fries, don’t add croutons or bacon to my salad. I feel like Sally from When Harry Met Sally as I quibble about how my food should be served, but oh well.

10. After dinner, signal myself that “Eating’s over”: brush my teeth, clean up the kitchen, turn out the lights.

11. Don’t allow myself to get too hungry or too full.

12. Realize that, with some things, I can’t have just a little bit. In the abstainer/moderator split, I'm a hard-core abstainer. It’s far easier for me to skip cookies, bagels, and chocolate than it is to have a sensible portion.

13. Never eat hors d’oeuvres.

14. Don't eat food I don't like, just because it's there. No one cares if I have a serving of asparagus or cranberry sauce.

I've realized that although it seems festive and carefree to indulge in lots of treats, in the end, I feel guilty and overstuffed. Which doesn't make the holiday happier. It's a Secret of Adulthood: By giving myself limits, I give myself freedom.

* I had a lot of fun reading through this list of the Top 100 Movie Taglines. Example: Star Wars -- "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

* The biggest shopping day of the year is nigh! If you need a gift suggestion, please consider The Happiness Project (can't resist mentioning: #1 New York Times bestseller).
Order your copy.
Read sample chapters.