A quirky and useful guide to gradually adopting healthier eating habits.
A self-help book on how to achieve sustainable weight loss by eating for pleasure as well as health.
Although this guide’s subject is weight loss, it isn’t a conventional diet book. Instead of prescribing what foods to eat or avoid, health writer Alvear focuses on howto eat, promising to guide readers toward healthier eating habits by borrowing principles and discoveries from the fields of anthropology, physiology, neuroscience, psychology, and biology. He asserts that food manufacturers have contributed to skyrocketing obesity and ill health by manipulating consumers into eating larger amounts of food, even as its taste and nutritional quality plummets. Standard portion sizes have increased dramatically since the early 20th century, the author writes; even dishes and utensils are significantly larger. He discusses how the general public is constantly bombarded with advertising for junk food and fast food, and how messages about “good” and “bad” foods are full of bewildering contradictions. However, he also notes that research into human biology and behavior can point the way to healthy, enjoyable eating without deprivation or guilt. For example, the book notes that strategies that involve quick, drastic changes are sure to backfire, but mindful eating practices that focus on sensory pleasure can make smaller portions more enjoyable and help people to naturally eat less. The author outlines clear, actionable steps for tapering off poor eating habits, substituting better ones, and rebounding from occasional lapses. Some of the detailed techniques, such reducing soda portions a few spoonfuls at a time, seem impractical, as somewhat less gradual tactics would likely be just as effective. Still, the writing is often persuasive, with plenty of humor, as when it calls dieting “the main exhibition at the Museum of Failure.” It also clearly explains challenging terms, such as “systematic sensitization” and “alimentary alliesthesia.” However, specific citations for research studies mentioned in the text would have been helpful.
A quirky and useful guide to gradually adopting healthier eating habits.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 151
Publisher: Woodpecker Media
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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