Encouraging core advice to balance one’s diet while still consuming favorite foods.
Sourour counsels consistency in this metabolism-focused food management guide.
The author, a real estate investor, shares the strategy that he developed to lose 134 pounds over 12 months between 2017 and 2018 (still off five years later) after tipping the scales at 364.4 pounds. “A fixed menu—of any food under the sun—into a fixed metabolic rate—that we all have under the sun—makes weight loss as easy and predictable as the Earth’s orbit around the sun,” proclaims the author. His system is focused on eating three “high-density meals” (35% carbs, 40% protein, 25% fat) in five- or six-hour blocks of time throughout the day to create a “steady stream” to maximize your own unique “metabolic burn rate.” Additionally, given “our circadian rhythms reconcile and reset weight loss...within a 24 hour time frame,” Sourour advises weighing yourself every morning before meals to evaluate your unique burn rate and then sizing meals accordingly to achieve weight-loss goals. The process is gradual; according to the author, one should expect losses of only up to a half-pound a day amid expected daily gains from slip-ups as well as from an intentional “formula cycle” implemented once a week to double typical food volume, ensuring your body is “routinely reminded it’s not in a permanent caloric deficit phase.” Some recipes are supplied. Sourour’s own successful weight management is, of course, a ringing endorsement for his system. The notion that favorite foods can and should be included in meals makes his plan very appealing. Sourour also offers realistic tweaks, including allowing for balanced snacks as part of the process of figuring out how to build a meal that satisfies for six hours. Some of Sourour’s points (e.g., eat fruits and vegetables for “the micronutrients and not the satiation”) may be confusing or misinterpreted. Overall, however, this book provides a sensible one-day-at-time approach to taming mindless overeating.
Encouraging core advice to balance one’s diet while still consuming favorite foods.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781738791736
Page Count: 339
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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