Book Club: Hungry for Happiness

This month the Page Turners read Hungry for Happiness by James Villas. It's the story of Loretta who has dealt with weight issues her whole life. She has been almost obsessed with losing weight after she had gastric bypass surgery. The book follows her through some tough times with men and food and dealing with a family who like her better fat because they too deal with weight and are unable to be happy for her in her new found life. Loretta has always loved food and after her surgery she loved to share her joy of food with others and begins a catering business. Through the book we find her struggle still with body image, the ups and downs with me and constantly searching for happiness.

Some people think that being skinny will solve all the problems but as we see from Loretta that's not always the case, no matter your size, the grass is always greener.  During our discussion the quote was thrown out there "If everyone threw all their problems in a pile, we would quickly grab our own back." We had a great discussion the best we have had in awhile. It's something everyone can relate to, and as women most of us have some sort of issue with our bodies. But I think the lesson from the book was just finding something that takes your mind off of all of that, something that you can do and be focused and be in the moment; that was our other big theme for this book, "living in the moment". We felt that through cooking, Loretta was able to focus, although out of necessity to not spoil the recipe, she was able to be in the moment and be happy and forget about the other worries and things going on in her life good or bad.

Happiness and living in the moment, most of the time so much easier said than done. Life is too short to worry about tomorrow or yesterday, we have to learn to live in the now and remember Hakuna Matata (it means no worries)