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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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