Cogent, thoughtful, and actionable weight-loss advice.
A debut guide to weight loss emphasizes behavioral changes.
Weight loss is a perennial subject about which countless books are published annually. Many of the titles recommend specific diets while others concentrate on combining healthy eating habits with exercise. Typically, these works are authored by weight loss “experts” who are often doctors or nutritionists. This clearly written manual departs from the more traditional paths to weight loss by instead focusing on two primary “keys,” which Flett depicts in oversize capital letters as “YOUR MIND” and “HAVE YOUR HORMONES WORK FOR YOU—NOT AGAINST YOU.” The author’s credentials are also nontraditional; he learned how to control his own weight and then decided to write a book to help others. Flett based his work on seven years of research, which included sending out over 2,000 questionnaires. The guide is neatly organized into four parts. Part 1 discusses human nature and foods in general; Part 2 presents a thorough plan for weight loss as well as covering specifics such as types of food, the evils of sugar, and frequency of eating (including a fasting strategy); Part 3 offers tactics and strategies for implementing fundamental change and maintaining a healthy weight; Part 4 is comprised of three appendices with apps and websites, a comprehensive list of weight-loss topics, and a look at the questionnaire and accompanying results. Much of this material will undoubtedly be familiar to readers who have explored dieting, but the overarching theme of Flett’s book is essential to those who want to achieve permanent weight loss: “There must be a fundamental change of nature that occurs within an individual.” That theme, more than the common advice about what foods to eat and which to stay away from, is reinforced in a positive, meaningful way. For example, the author provides some very simple yet clever and powerful methods of behavioral change, such as eliminating just a single unhealthy food or drink from one’s diet to “feed your new nature,” eating “facing a mirror,” and learning “to hate or at least strongly dislike and avoid foods that have power over you.”
Cogent, thoughtful, and actionable weight-loss advice.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4602-9473-4
Page Count: 277
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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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