A real-world approach to achieving sustainable weight loss.
A safety trainer and manager shares the 60-day eating and activity plan he created to shed unwanted pounds in this debut health guide.
Sasser (The Good Hand, 2016) says that he tried many ways to lose weight, including hormone injections, but the pounds just wouldn’t stay off. He then realized that “in order to make any real change, I had to find a balance of diet—meaning the foods I ate—and exercise (I didn’t even like the word) that would be sustainable.” In this book, Sasser details the plan he created that allowed him to drop from 223.8 to 194.4 pounds in 60 days. He focuses specifically on his use of a “Food and Activity Tracker,” a grid-oriented tool he developed to capture and chart progress (or lack thereof). He emphasizes the “Nutrition Math” of making better food choices, controlling portions, and limiting sodium and sugar intake. He also prescribes doing at least 30 minutes of physical activity daily, but notes that it doesn’t have to be at a gym: it could be done by walking, dancing, or doing other common activities. He says that he uses the word “activity” instead of “exercise” intentionally for this reason, much as he used the term “incident” instead of “accident” in his safety career. Other elements of his plan (and tracker) urge readers to record weight before having a breakfast of 300 to 500 calories, and to have two low-calorie snacks in addition to regular meals; he also suggests that readers list any daily alcohol intake in a separate column, in order to be fully aware of their extra calories. Overall, Sasser is an appealing, relatable guide to handling the challenges of exercising and eating, particularly when he acknowledges his own fluctuations and missteps, such as an instance in which he quaffed eight light beers in one day, while hanging out at a pool. However, the author’s own, filled-in trackers with accompanying commentary take up too much of this slim book, and readers may sometimes find them wearying. Still, by providing such “evidence,” Sasser does effectively support his contention that “You didn’t put on all the unwanted weight in a day or week, and you are not going to lose all of the unwanted weight in a day or week.”
A real-world approach to achieving sustainable weight loss.Pub Date: July 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4575-3788-2
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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
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