Breathes enthusiasm and inspiration into living healthier.
A thorough guide to weight loss and wellness using the 107 tools provided by California fitness trainer Zerling.
Despite being an athlete and cheerleader, Zerling grew up on junk food in her childhood. She gradually switched her occupational goals from actress to fitness guru, and here, she maps out a strategy—including identifying obstacles to success—to shed unwanted pounds and reach optimum health via tools that encompass mind, body and spirit. Beginning with ways to “unclutter” one’s life, the author sets the inner and outer stage for each individual to focus and make a commitment to positive change and well-being. From cleaning the closet and car to practicing patience, yoga and meditation, the book provides ways to feel good internally, which can lead to a change in health in all areas of living. It covers the many psychological benefits of some relatively easy-to-accomplish actions, including keeping a pet, doing good deeds, having an “accountability” system, checking hormone levels, stocking the kitchen correctly and creating a weight-loss mastermind group. An advocate for overcoming childhood obesity, she underscores obesity’s association with many degenerative diseases, including hypertension, coronary artery disease, generalized atherosclerosis and strokes. Although much of the ground may have been covered in other holistic/health guides, Zerling structures her book in an easy-to-read, organized series of tools, labeled for easy reference. She shares recipes to make healthy eating more fun and includes sample affirmations, letters of intention and personal stories to aid in the journey of a “good loser.” The sheer breadth of the material provides something to motivate even the most recalcitrant binger. She also provides a range of options, depending on fitness level; a few suggestions are hilarious, particularly one that recommends taking a group to a theme park where two teams go on 10 rides and can add an extra challenge of “doing twenty five jumping jacks, push-ups, or squats in front of the operator at each ride.”
Breathes enthusiasm and inspiration into living healthier.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466469907
Page Count: 296
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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