A lively dieting guide that takes mental health into account.
Bennett investigates the underlying causes of dieting relapses in this health guide.
Even the most health-conscious eaters sometimes crack. Bennett was already a professional health coach, author, and antisugar crusader when she moved to California to care for her dying mother; when her mother died a year later, the exhausted, grieving Bennett turned to carbohydrates for emotional support. “While movie popcorn was my hands-down favorite,” recalls Bennett, “I also went hog-wild over corn-anything, especially popped, fried, toasted, ultra-processed crunchy nibbles and other so-called comfort foods.” Each binge ended in promises to eat right the next day, but each new day led inevitably to backsliding. Within six months—a period during which one of her health books became a bestseller—she had gained 21 pounds. “It was impossible to escape the humbling irony,” she writes. “I felt like a Huge Health Hypocrite.” With this book, Bennett describes how she pulled herself out of her junk food nosedive while offering readers a roadmap to curbing their own self-destructive eating habits. She gets not just at the “what” of an unhealthy diet—the usual suspects of sugars, carbs, and highly processed foods—but the “why.” Why do we blow our diets? Why do we eat to assuage negative feelings? Why do we take comfort in foods that make us so uncomfortable? A healthy diet begins in the mind, and Bennet offers a three-week regimen to get readers in the right headspace to protect their bodies—and their emotions—in a sustainable way. “Coach Connie” writes energetic prose that makes the whole book feel like a conversation. “Admittedly, I’m biased, because I’m a professional writer and author,” she writes in a section about journaling, “but I’ve found tremendous relief, eye-opening insights, and much-needed peace of mind just by putting my thoughts, feelings, and worries on paper.” Bennett is perhaps overly fond of capitalizations and acronyms (like FEASTS—Fast, Easy, Awesome, Simple, Tested Strategies) and she advocates for the controversial ketogenic diet. Even so, much here will prove useful for chronic diet-breakers.
A lively dieting guide that takes mental health into account.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798886452808
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
An above-average celebrity memoir from an intriguing spirit.
The longtime Hollywood actor looks back.
“What does it mean to be a ham?” asks the author, rhetorically. “Was I a ham? I was naturally and inordinately theatrical. I liked to carry on. I liked attention. I liked extravagant speech. I liked to emote. I liked to talk.” All of these qualities are abundantly evident in Kilmer’s memoir, which is as much a spiritual journey as it is a chronicle of his life and career. The author recounts the depth of his Christian Science faith, his formative years in a family of privilege in Los Angeles, his teenage romance with fellow actor Mare Winningham (“my first real girlfriend”), his training and rebellion at Juilliard, and his decision to leave Broadway for Hollywood. There, he writes, “I was not yet a burgeoning talent but ‘Cher’s lover,’ ” when she was in her mid-30s and he in his early-20s. After scoring big with Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Kilmer turned down Blue Velvet and Dirty Dancing: “Neither part spoke to me.” He played Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, which he considers “one of the proudest moments of my career.” Marlon Brando and Sam Shepard went from being idols that Kilmer worshipped to becoming friends. He was slated to star as Batman in three films but jumped ship after Batman Forever, which he considers “so bad, it’s almost good.” He married and divorced British actor Joanne Whalley and wooed Daryl Hannah (“kind of the female me, only better”), and he wrote and starred in a one-man show as Mark Twain. When he was hospitalized for surgery due to his throat cancer, he prayed, he read Twain and Christian Science’s Mary Baker Eddy, and he “didn’t wrestle with my angels. I sang and danced with them.” Kilmer was never a shrinking violet, and he still refuses to wilt.
An above-average celebrity memoir from an intriguing spirit. (photos)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-4489-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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