A well-researched, smartly written self-help book that encourages readers to achieve their ideal shape.
Meine (Ideal Shape for Life, 2012), a certified hypnotherapist specializing in weight loss, writes persuasively about helping dieters harness the power of their minds to change negative behaviors.
This self-help book includes stories of the author’s and his patients’ weight-loss struggles and explores the importance of the mind-body connection. “If the brain is not engaged in creating your ideal shape, ultimately any weight you lose will eventually come back—plus a few more pounds,” Meine writes. The way to optimize one’s brain, he posits, is through motivational hypnosis, either with a certified hypnotherapist or an audio program. Such an approach, he explains, “quiets” the conscious mind and allows the subconscious mind to more readily accept positive, healthy suggestions. Meine describes studies, quotes experts and cites statistics to convincingly support his method. For example, he details 10 negative behaviors that derail individuals from creating and sustaining their ideal weights: not getting a good night’s sleep, not drinking enough water, eating until (or after) one is full, self-sabotage or sabotage from others, not dealing with stress, not being able to visualize an ideal shape, eating too infrequently, eating quickly, eating and drinking too much sugar, and lacking the motivation to exercise. While many of these ideas have been explored in other diet books, the combination of all 10, with clear, well-supported explanations, sets this book apart. Meine not only defines each behavior, but also offers coping strategies to curb each one. The book includes a personal contract for readers who want to take the plunge, as well as charts, questionnaires and exercises; this interactive approach may inspire readers to better understand and take control of their lifestyles. The author suggests that a person can change a negative behavior in just 28 days, but “it’s critical to take them one at a time.” Meine has also developed an audio hypnosis program, “Brain Training for Effective Weight Loss,” for readers who can’t afford hypnotherapy, feel uncomfortable working with a hypnotherapist or want to augment one-on-one sessions.
A well-researched, smartly written self-help book that encourages readers to achieve their ideal shape.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477288818
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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