Claire Conger

Like Joan Didion, I used to get migraines.

For me, it was the kind of migraine when you’re so nauseated that you vomit. It was when I was married, or rather living with my baby’s father.

I felt trapped.

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“I don’t have time to be married!” wails Julie in Julie and Julia, a movie about Julia Child and devote Julie Powell. What Julie really should have cried, was “I don’t have time to work all day at my stupid government job!”

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As I was browsing my garden for strawberries just now, I remembered Mireille Guiliano’s number one rule: Excellent food only! In her book French Women Don’t Get Fat Ms Guiliano tells us that fresh in season food satisfies the appetite. You tend to eat more when the food is not so good. Here’s a link for a few Mireille Guiliano recipes. For more, try French Women for All Seasons: A Calendar of Secrets, Recipes: 2010 Engagement Calendar.

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When Mireille Guiliano visited the United States as an exchange student, she got fat. Returning to her native France, she was so chubby that her father exclaimed she looked like a sack of potatoes—devastating to a teenager. Her book French Women Don’t Get Fat tells us how this happened and how she returned to her slim French self.

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Any book that gives me insight into why things are happening to me is priceless. Your Body Believes Every Work You Say by Barbara Hoberman Levine is just such a book.

I read Ms Levine’s section about patients anticipatory thoughts about radiation treatment for cancer predicting their results. The patient who thought of the radiation as “black and red arrows spraying his body” had a bad result while the patient who thought of the radiation as a “golden beam of energy” had a good result. (See page 164.)

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