Book Review: Hungry Heart
This is perhaps my favorite quote from this brand new autobiography. This is a book review: Hungry Heart. In it she tells about how her life led her to college, to being a stay at home mom, and back to work again. It tells about her struggles with weight, insecurity stemming from being an overweight woman, and how it colored every aspect of her life from high school through adulthood.
I have to agree with the sentiment above. I have tried dieting, and even as a super thin high-schooler, found it nearly impossible. Cutting calories just made weight pack on, and as a mother of 4, it’s not even a contest. I have to eat just to be able to function, and mom going without meals or on reduced calories both inhibits milk production (making for a pissed off baby) and makes ‘hangry’ seem like a polite person waiting for a meal. My blood sugar drops, nausea sets in. I immediately get exhausted.
Most of the time when people say they need to diet, it’s not for health reasons at all. It’s because they feel like they should fit this super thin ideal of our time. The one unattainable by 99% of women, but keeps us counting calories, declining things that bring us joy and raising our stress levels, and thereby our waistline, because stress=weight gain? The one that makes us focus on only our bodies and not on the things we COULD be doing instead? This one ideal that guys never have to face, ever? Yeah that ideal. I love her focus on exercise as being something you do just for you-but it being anything. I feel the best when I get to talk to my spouse. We spent a few minutes the other day kicking a soccer ball back and forth, and just laughing out loud. The best exercise, EVER!
I love how her book wraps up all her experiences, even some of the most tragic with honesty. Having had a miscarriage (even further along than her), I can attest at how horrible and true her experience was. Mine continued on for 5 months afterward. My body simply did not want to let go. I felt like a human being again after my D & C. It was at a terrible price, but life was determined to go on, with or without me. I chose to go on, too. It took until after my third surviving child to feel like I was just fine as I was. I struggle, but I carry on.
Do you struggle with body issues, advanced maternal age, being single, or pretty much any issue that women face? Then this book is for you. It has with humor, sadness, and hope.
