The Ultimate Weight Solution by Phil McGraw

McGraw, Phil. The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom. New York: Free Press, 2003.

Psychologist Phil McGraw, television’s Dr. Phil, began to build his national reputation as a jury consultant for Oprah Winfrey when she was sued for statements she made about beef. It turned out his psychological practice was broader than reading potential jurors, and included weight management. McGraw has laid out his approach to weight management in The Ultimate Weight Solution.

McGraw describes seven “keys” to weight management. They seem to cover every aspect of life that relates to food. They can be loosely divided into two categories.

The first category involves discovering and counteracting mental and emotional issues that drive or support become on staying overweight. There are many subtle ways people may be sabotaging their weight-loss efforts. Some may have psychological issues that may require professional help, but many can use McGraw’s strategies to change their thinking and use new ways of coping with emotions that are more consistent with good health.

The second category focuses on behavioral change. In general, the approach is to institute healthy behaviors that will supplant unhealthy habits. Each key contains specific actions one can take to make practical changes. These strategies touch on habits, environment and relationships.

McGraw devotes more ink to the behavioral part. Ultimately, if one is going to attain and maintain a healthy weight, one must behave in a way will result in it.

The overall philosophy is that people behave the way they do for reasons. They may not be consciously aware of those reasons. Those reasons might not make sense if they were evaluated rationally. Even so, in some way a person finds the advantages of their behavior to be greater than the disadvantages. Change involves reevaluating the payoffs and costs of old behaviors and implementing new behaviors that have more desirable and rational payoffs.



A secondary philosophy that comes through is that one shouldn’t rely exclusively on one strategy, or even just diet and exercise, and especially not willpower. The keys touch on thoughts, emotions, habits, relationships, environments, exercise and diet. The more supports you have, the more likely you are to succeed.

As you might expect from a book on weight management, there is also information on nutrition and exercise. Obviously, how much we eat, what we eat, and our level of physical activity is behaviors that greatly and directly affect our weight.

McGraw provides some brief explanations of the science behind his strategies, including a bibliography of the works to which he refers. The book is not very technical, though. It is a practical guide aimed at people seeking to control their weight, not a clinical manual or textbook.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen
How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? by Dorie McCubbrey
I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna

Switch on Your Brain by Caroline Leaf

The brain is malleable, and we can, by conscious effort, change our patterns of thought and the structures in our brains. These changes can lead to improved thinking, joy, and physical health. Caroline Leaf considers how to take advantage of our brains ability to adapt, neuroplasticity, in her book Switch on Your Brain.

The first, and longer, part of the book is devoted to making the case that the brain can be changed and that people can change their brains intentionally. People are not biological automata. They can control how they react to the situations they encounter, even if they can’t control those situations. Therefore, they can control the types and intensities of emotions attached to memories, and the patterns of thoughts they form. They do not have to default to toxic thinking (leading to stress, bad health and poor decision making), but can choose healthy thinking.

The central scientific notion that Leaf appeals to is neuroplasticity. She also finds support for her views in other related science, especially related to the structure and functioning of the brain (her appeals to quantum physics strike me as much weaker).

Leaf has a particular religious view as well, and frequently appeals to the Bible. I think it is fair to say that Leaf comes from a particular religious point of view relating to the power and nature of faith, one in which she is comfortable ending her prologue with a quote from Peace Pilgrim.

The science and scripture are in agreement in Leaf’s presentation. Both come across to me as being cherry-picked. Admittedly, this is a self-help book, not a scientific text. The potential damage of being over-selective with scripture is more troubling, though I don’t think Leaf twists them nearly as much as others I’ve heard.

The blunt conclusion of the first part is “mind over matter.” Leaf keeps this to the narrow notion that we can choose our reactions and therefore can alter structures in our brains that encode and manage memories and thought patterns. Of course, these have consequences in our health, happiness, and success in life.

The second part of the book is devoted to a five-step process to weaken toxic thoughts and implant and strengthen healthy thoughts. It begins with awareness of your own thoughts and feelings. This is followed by deep thinking and reflection on those thoughts, especially toxic thoughts you want to weaken and alternative thoughts you want to strengthen. Writing is used to aid this process. After writing your thoughts, you review them with an intention of finding solutions, new ways of thinking, and ways to reinforce those new thoughts in action. Finally, you take action by saying and doing things that reinforce the new thoughts.

This process has analogs in other psychology and self-help literature. Cultivating awareness is encouraged by proponent of the mind-body connection. Awareness and reflection both relate to forms of meditation. Even the 21-day length of the program (based on the amount of time it takes to form new structures in the brain) is in keeping with other literature on making new habits.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

Leaf, Caroline. Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013.

The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall

Sometimes it seems like we’re all sick and crazy. This may stem from a focus on trying to find and fix what is wrong with us. Psychologist Paul Pearsall referred to this as a pathogenic focus. In his book The Beethoven Factor, he discusses the field of positive psychology, which focuses on what is right with people and what we can learn from those who are well adjusted, happy and healthy. In particular, Pearsall focuses on thriving.

Thriving is growth in the aftermath, and even in the midst of, stressful situations. The people he discusses and learns from in his book, some patients of his and many his fellow patients in a cancer ward, often suffered greatly from disease, war, poverty and other hardships. These people had there ups and downs, but they managed an emotional upward trend.

The heart of thriving is a flexible explanatory style. We’re all telling ourselves stories that interpret and evaluate our lives. People who thrive are adaptive and creative in the stories they tell themselves, which allows them to savor and find meaning in their lives even while suffering.

Thriving can be paradoxical, especially from a pathogenic outlook: someone is becoming stronger in a situation that is expected to make them weaker. Those who thrive can defy the expectations the traditional view of healthy thinking. They work on themselves, which can sometimes make them seem aloof or insensitive. They can be in denial, but they use it to give themselves a temporary escape for pain and time to think. They can be hard to like because of their intensity; when someone is getting the most out of life, they may have little patience for interruptions, naysayers and whiners. They are reflective, which can make them seem withdrawn. They can be depressed, down on themselves and loose hope as they make their journey. Thriving is a process of learning, so it can take a long time, though sometimes someone will catch on quickly.

Pearsall offers a lot of advice on how to thrive, especially in the second half of the book (the first half focuses on introducing positive psychology and defining thriving). This section focuses on four aspects of thriving: hardiness, happiness, healing and hope.

Hardiness comes from our beliefs. Hardy people have beliefs that help them commit to engaging in living, finding a sense of control—which includes knowing when to let go of control—and seeing the difficulties they face and challenges they can cope with if not overcome.

Happiness is rooted in flow. It is focus and engagement in life. Happy people push aside distractions, expectations and striving for things that don’t really bring them joy.

Healing is fundamentally learning. We all suffer to some extent in our lives, and these periods of sickness or other hardship are telling us to slow down and pay attention. Healing people learn to make sense of what happens (in their own ways),  cope with it, and find meaning in their experiences.

Hoping is what Pearsall calls “cautious optimism.” People who hope find a way to hold onto their dreams, or come up with new dreams, without expecting on depending on them. They imagine that the world, imperfect as it is, may be the best possible world, so they get on with seeking all they can enjoy in it.

Pearsall offers his readers a big dose of practical grace. If you’re really finding your own way to cope with adversity in a way the truly engages life as fully as you can, you’re on the path to thriving and it is okay that you may not be the upbeat, outgoing, positive, realistic person that your psychologists, physicians, self-help books and friends think you should be. Living is learning, especially in times of sickness and difficulty; learning is challenging, slow work that requires focus and imagination. If you’re learning, you will struggle and be worn out sometimes. You’ll also be engaged in life in a way that puts you in an uneven, but upward trend, instead of spiraling downward in despair.

Paul Pearsall also wrote

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need

Toxic Success

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Pearsall, Paul. The Beethoven Factor: The New Positive Psychology of Hardiness, Happiness, Healing, and Hope.  Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2003.

How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? by Dorie McCubbrey

McCubbrey, Dorie. How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? Diet-Free Solutions to Your Food Weight and Body Worries. New York: HarperResource, 2002.

Dr. Dorie McCubbrey calls herself the “Don’t Diet” Doctor. McCubbrey has a real doctorate in bioengineering. She bases her approach to better health and life from not dieting more on her work as a licensed professional counselor.

Success in weight management and overcoming eating disorders is an inside job. Throughout the book, this is contrasted with the external sources of weight problems and attempts to deal with them.

According to McCubbrey, weight problems have their source in trying to fit ourselves to standards that come from the world around us. Even seemingly healthy people can have weight problems and eating disorders that come from this external orientation. To deal with these, people play “games” which are strategies and behaviors for controlling weight that don’t deal with the real problems.



McCubbrey herself suffered these problems and played many of these games. Her struggles with body image and perfection led hear into anorexia, bulimia, excessive exercise and periods of being overweight.

The solution to these issues, and to the broader issue of living well, is intuitive self-care. Practicing intuitive self-care involves getting in touch with one’s inner wisdom about what is good in eating, exercise and living. It is living from the inside out instead of the outside in.

McCubbrey offers strategies for practicing intuitive self-care. She describes them as feeding the soul. This “diet” for the soul involves learning to love, listen to, and express your true self. To help readers practice this soul diet, she offers several recipes, which are exercises to practice. Some of these deal directly with the way people eat and think about eating. Others are directed toward meditation and discovery of one’s true desires.

The book is in many ways more of a self-help book that a diet plan. It doesn’t focus on changing behavior of lifestyles (lifestyle change is one of the games), but on living from the soul.

Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

In Making the American Body, journalist Jonathan Black explores the history of health and fitness from aerobics to Zumba. Promotion of physical fitness goes back to the founding of the United States; Black notes that Benjamin Franklin praised the use of dumbbells. Franklin was known to be a fan of swimming, too. It began to gain some momentum in the middle 1800s when German immigrants brought the gymnasium (they called it a Turnverein) to the U.S.

I was draw to the book because it has a touch of Missouriana in the person of Bernarr Macfadden, self-proclaimed “Father of Physical Culture.” Macfadden had a classic story of the early bodybuilder. He was a sick, weak kid from the Ozarks who was transformed into a paragon of masculine pulchritude by his commitment to weight training, healthy eating and clean living. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Macfadden believed clean living included an active sex life and he campaigned against prudery. His magazines, headed by Physical Culture, featured photographs of nearly naked men and women in swimsuits.

Fitness promotion is a small world, and many of its leading figures are connected. Macfadden organized a contest (probably fixed) that crowned Charles Atlas the “World’s Most Beautiful Man.” Atlas’ ads in pulp magazines and comic books are probably some of the most well-known ever, especially the bully of the beach ad. The story of this ad, told in comics form, is based on a real event in Atlas’ life when he was shamed by a muscular life guard for his scrawny form and weakness while on a date at the beach.

Macfadden and many others were inspired by Prussian strongman Sandow. They saw him at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, where his show was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.

California became a focus of health and fitness trend that would spread across the country. Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach was a place for weight lifters and gymnasts to have fun and show off. Steve Reeves, known for playing Hercules in several films, was a product of Muscle Beach. Jack LaLanne, another wimpy kid transformed, opened gyms, brought workouts to television, and encouraged women to exercise and do strength training.

Other trends gained popularity, especially fitness focused on cardiovascular health. This brought into popular culture Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a physician to astronauts whose 1968 book Aerobics launched an industry. That industry provided a career for Richard Simmons and a second career for Jane Fonda, who was the first to emphasize exercise as a way for women to lose weight (though this was an unspoken appeal long before the 1970s). Bodybuilding made a comeback, though, especially fueled by the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’m not especially interested in the health and fitness industry, but I found this book to be very interesting. It provides a historical context for many of the health and fitness trends that are still part of American culture.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Black, Jonathan. Making the American Body: The Remarkable Saga of the Men and Women Whose Feats, Feuds, and Passions Shaped Fitness History. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

New & Interesting Stuff July 26, 2012

Bill Gates To Reinvent The Toilet

Bill Watch - 112th Congress (Updated)

Dramatic Digs Mark Panama Canal Expansion Progress

God is most glorified in use when we are most satisfied in Him

Great Wall of China Longer Than Previously Reported

It’s Not About Me by Max Lucado

Links to Infrastructure-Related Organizations (Updated)

New & Interesting Stuff July 12, 2012

One Bad Mama

Operation Get Healthy

Republican Candidates Speak About Infrastructure

Sewer Overflow Bill Introduced

Stop Whining, Start Living by Dr. Laura

What Does a Toilet Do?

Living Low Carb y Johnny Bowden

If you are overweight and having trouble losing the extra pounds (or keeping them off), there is a good chance that carbohydrates are your problem. In Living Low Carb, nutritionist Johnny Bowden describes the link between carbohydrates, insulin and fat storage. (I previously summarized this relationship in my review of Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes.)

 Bowden lays this information out very thoroughly in a way that will be accessible to most readers. What he adds is a lot of information on how to implement a low-carb diet that works for you.

 One way he does this is by reviewing 23 diet books and programs. Not all are strictly low-carb, but all limit carbs more than the typical American diet, and Bowden feels they are good blueprints for generally healthy eating. He rates most of the programs highly. The book has been through several editions, so he has weeded out the lesser programs.

 Part of his review of each is his ideas about who might benefit most from the program. Everyone is different, especially in their lifestyles. An otherwise sound program that is a poor fit for your life and personality is going to fail. Bowden’s advice will help you had off a false start.

 He provides a lot of advice that will be helpful for any low-carb diet you may pursue. In addition to the books reviewed, he provides a lot of other references. Some of these are cookbooks. I think this is great. If you want to eat differently, you need ideas about what to eat. I intend to check out some of the cookbooks he recommends.

 Bowden pulls his information from a lot of nutrition and medical research, but his style is conversational and easy to understand. Readers can expect to be informed about carbohydrates and how they affect our bodies and health, especially related to weight., without being overwhelmed by technical terminology and figures.

 Bowden, Johnny. Living Low Carb: Controlled-Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss. New York: Sterling, 2013.

Vital Friends by Tom Rath

Rath, Tom. Vital Friends. New York: Gallup Press, 2006.

Do we need scientific research to tell us that friends make us more happy, healthy, engaged, and productive? Apparently we do, at least in the context of work.


Tom Rath describes the work he and his associates at The Gallup Organization have undertaken to study friendship and identify important friendship roles in his book Vital Friends. He uses the term vital friend to describe someone who significantly improves your life, who you wouldn’t want to live without, to distinguish him or her from less close friends or acquaintances.

Rath begins with a discussion of friendship in general. He describes the benefits of friendship to human health and happiness.

From there he moves into friendships at work, which is more the focus of the book. People who have a best friend at work enjoy many benefits in terms of their satisfaction with their employer, work, and compensation. Employers benefit from more engaged, safe, and productive employees.

Unfortunately, the traditional culture of many workplaces discourages friendship, both among peers as well as at different levels. Those businesses suffer the results of less engaged employees like lower productivity, quality and customer satisfaction (at the extreme, actively disengaged employees may sabotage their employers).

Part of Rath’s purpose is to help organizations turn this around and create opportunities for their employees to develop friendships with each other. A part of the book is devoted to these ideas.

A larger part of the book is useful to individuals who are looking to indentify vital friends, or friends who might become vital. Through their research, Gallup identified eight roles that friends play in our lives that correlate to our engagement at work and our overall sense of wellbeing. Each is described in some detail. Rath provides pointers on how to find people who may fill these roles for you, strengthen friendships with those who do, and how to be a better friend of this type if it is your inclination. He assumes that no friend can fulfill all these roles, and you and your friends will be more satisfied if you rely on them for their strengths and not try to fit them into another mold.

This aspect of the book is supported by on online tool in which you can answer questions about your friends and the way they relate to you. It’s designed to help you identify which friends play what roles in your life. It is meant to be a launching pad for discussions with your friends, both as a way to express you gratitude for the ways they help you and to help them be even better friends to you (you may find them responding in kind). I didn’t use this tool because the book was loaned to me. Even so, reading the chapters on the roles will give you ideas to make your own determinations of what friend are filling these roles in your life and who might fill the gaps.

The book wraps up with a description of the research that supports the ideas it presents. The research-oriented sections are in appendices; the main text has a much more casual style.

I started this review with a somewhat flippant question about needing science to tell us what we should already know about needing friends. The thing Vital Friends adds is a framework for identifying and discussing important friendships. You probably don’t want to over-intellectualize your friendships, but you may find it helpful to have some specific ideas and terms you can use as a springboard for your own thoughts and discussions with friends.

Tom Rath also co-wrote How Full Is Your Bucket?

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

Self-help books are baloney. Psychologist Paul Pearsall didn’t go that far, but he encouraged readers of his book The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need to have a healthy skepticism about the advice and claims of self-help books. Much of the standard advice in the genre is unsupported by research and sometimes just wrong.

Pearsall’s chief criticism of self-help is its focus on the personal and individual. He argued that there is more joy and fulfillment, along with better solutions to our problems, to be found in the interpersonal and relational aspects of life.

Good relationships are largely a matter of the value you place in them. If you want to others to like you, find ways to like them first. To get love, give love. To find a partner, become someone who would be a good partner. Look for the best in others and overlook their faults. Lasting, loving relationships are based on commitment, not passing, emotional passion.

Another important aspect of Pearsall’s perspective is that there is much to be said for accepting life as it is, good and bad, instead of buying into self-help’s striving for the perfect life.

Life is never going to be perfect anyway. There is no reason to make yourself crazy trying. Instead, aim for a good life of deep enjoyment and engagement. Life is chaotic. Remain calm and learn to enjoy the messy reality. Practice mindfulness; accept the facts of life as it is, but do not passively accept the interpretation you may receive from others. You find the great pleasures and great challenges of living in thinking for yourself.

The themes of relationships and mindful acceptance run through all the chapters of the book. In addition to those areas already mentioned, Pearsall address health and work.

If you’ve read a lot of self-help, you may feel burdened by the gap between where you are and where self-help authors say you can be. Pearsall’s book may be an antidote for that. At the very least, reading it may put things in perspective and help you give yourself a break.

Paul Pearsall also wrote

The Beethoven Factor

Toxic Success

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Pearsall, Paul. The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need. New York: Basic Books, 2006.

The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry

Newberry, Tommy. The 4:8 Principle: The Secret to a Joy-Filled Life. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2007.



Newberry takes the title of his book, and his theme, from Philippians 4:8. The verse is an admonition to think on good things. According to Newberry, our potential for joy in life is greatly influenced by our predominate thoughts.

The book has three major divisions dealing with the development of a joyful life: thinking and self-worth, emotion management, and developing good habits. The first section may be old ground for those who’ve read similar books. It asserts the connection between our typical thoughts and the results in our mind and actions. If we want more joy, we must think on those things that bring joy. To have a healthy expectation of joy, we must have an appropriate self-image. Newberry gears his book toward a Christian audience and defines self-worth as “authentic self-esteem rooted in your uniqueness as a child of God.”

Thoughts and emotions are not independent. They influence each other. Because of this, we can affect reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions by out thoughts and the way we look at situations. Newberry devotes a chapter to identifying thought habits that magnify negative emotions and strategies for developing new thinking for better emotional responses. He provides a list of Bible verses that one can dwell on to help combat negative reactions.

The final section deals with lifestyle changes that support joy. It is about taking control of your environment, associations and behavior to protect yourself from negativity and concentrate on joy. Not everything is in our control, but the idea is to respond productively to negativity rather than simply reacting by reproducing the negativity in ourselves.

As part of this, the final chapter is devoted to gratitude. Gratitude is a powerful supporter of joy. One of the best habits to develop to increase joy is to consider what you have to be thankful for and express that gratitude.

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
-Philippians 4:8 (NKJV)

The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology

Surgeon Maxwell Maltz proposed that we are powerfully motivated to—actually must—produce in reality our self-image. If one wants to improve his life, he must improve his self-image. Maltz elaborates this theory, along with advice on improving self-image, in The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology.

In an early chapter, Maltz introduces a though experiment. He encourages you to imagine yourself in a theater. You’ll find that you are also the primary actor in the show. In addition you are the writer and director. This is your self-image and you are in control—if you want to be.

Maltz returns to this concept of watching a film or play throughout the book. You can recall previous successes and bring that sense of confidence and accomplishment into the present moment to help you act with boldness. You can imagine yourself taking on challenges and overcoming them before it happens. You can use your imagination to anticipate problems. People often do this to stir up their fear and talk themselves into withdrawing, but you can also do it to invent solutions and find answers to objections so that you can proceed with reasonable confidence.

After introducing the idea of self-image, Maltz uses the remaining chapters to discuss building a healthy self-image to help you be happier and more successful in various situations or aspects of life. This covers a lot of ground, which is not easily summarized. Some of the advice seemed useful and interesting to me.

For instance, he discusses goals. Goals should be your own (not someone else’s). They should be realistic. Visualize your success (in that theater in your mind).

It’s important to be yourself. Don’t be afraid of being different. Don’t be afraid of seemingly perfect people. Accept yourself as a human being with strength and weaknesses; don’t beat yourself up. Express yourself in positive ways.

It’s natural to experience fear. Be open about it; fears seem less bad when they are brought out into the light. Solve problems as well as you can—imperfect solutions can still make things better. Once you’ve done what you can, think about something else.

Throughout the book, Maltz reiterates the basic theme. Your unconscious mind is working to produce what you want. Give it good and clear instructions by having a good, positive, realistic self-image. Your imagination, Maltz refers to it as your “success mechanism,” will guide you.

Maxwell Maltz also wrote Creative Living for Today.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

This Year I Will... by M. J. Ryan

Maltz, Maxwell. The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology. 1964. New York: Pocket Books, 1970.

Walk Away the Pounds by Leslie Sansone

Sansone, Leslie. Walk Away the Pounds. New York: Warner, 2005.



Leslie Sansone says people can improve their health and lose weight without changing their eating habits. They have to exercise, but it’s mostly putting one foot in front of the other.

The opening chapters deal with the benefits of exercise. There is a particularly focus on the benefits of walking.

This leads to a description of the exercises that are used in the program that makes up much of the book. It walking and several moves that can be done while walking to mix things up. It also includes resistance exercises that can be done with light dumbbells, weighted balls or bands. There is also a chapter devoted to shoes and other equipment to help you get off on the right foot.

The middle of the book lays out a 6-week program of walking. It starts out with a mile of walking (about 2,000 steps) and builds of up to 4 to 5 miles (8,000 to 10,000 steps). Along the way, it adds periodic resistance exercises. Following the program, you’ll walk 64 miles in the six weeks. The pages make a diary for keeping track of your progress through the program.

From there, walkers can keep going. Sansone devotes a chapter to continuing the program, ramping it up, and overcoming plateaus.

What about eating? Though Sansone says it’s not a necessary part of the program, she suggests that you’ll probably want to improve your eating habits as your health improves and your body demand nutrition to support its new level of activity. She discusses this in a chapter that includes a nutrition primer and several tips on better eating habits.

Sansone also devotes chapters to dealing with stress and having a balanced life. Exercise can alleviate stress and its negative effects, but there are other things busy people can do to reduce stress, make life less hectic, and find more balance.

The book wraps up dealing with motivation. Proper motivation is needed to stick to a healthy lifestyle and Sansone discusses perspective, habits, and environmental changes to help walkers stay on track.

The book is written to a female audience, though program is probably just as suitable to men. Several short success stories appear throughout, briefly discussing the success of women who have tried the program.

A DVD is included with the book. It is a walk-in-place program that leads the viewer through a 1-mile walk in about 18 minutes.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The 6 Day Body Makeover by Michael Thurmond
8 Minutes in the Morning for Extra-Easy Weight Loss by Jorge Cruise
How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? by Dorie McCubbrey

Daniel

Daniel was a prophet during the Babylonian captivity. He was carried to Babylon as a youth and eventually rose to high office in the courts of Nebachudnezzar and other rulers.

When the Babylonians occupied Israel and Judah, they carried forcibly resettled the aristocratic, wealthy and others they deemed valuable. Daniel was among these. He was brought to Babylon and trained to serve in the court of the king.

Daniel rose to prominence early on. He had a passion to serve God. He showed this by asking to be fed a diet of vegetables rather that the food from the kings table. This was probably food from sacrifices to Babylonian gods (though it may have just not been kosher). He must have been persuasive, for he prevailed. Because he and his friends were very healthy on this diet, he gained a reputation for wisdom.

His reputation grew when God began to show him interpretations of Nebachudnezzar’s dreams. In one of these dreams, Daniel saw the rise and fall of empires from the Babylonians to the time of Christ (the Roman Empire with the Persian and Greek empires in between). Much of his prophecies deal with the kingdoms to come from his own time to the first coming of Christ and the fate of Israel in that time.

The most famous story of Daniel is his survival of a night in the lion’s den. He was cast into it as a form of capital punishment for his devotion to God. This book also contains the story of Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego who were cast into the fire of a hot furnace for refusing to worship and idol, a statue in the image of Nebachunezzar. God brought them through unharmed.

Daniel is also mentioned in the book of Ezekiel.

Daniel. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

Blastland, Michael, & Andrew Dilnot. The Numbers Game. New York: Gotham, 2009.

The media is full of numbers that purport to tell us something important about our health, government programs and other things affecting life. These numbers can be confusing. Too often, they are misleading or meaningless.

The authors of The Numbers Game uncover the weakness and occasional strengths of the numbers in the news as they did on their BBC television series More or Less. However, the book is not an exposé. It’s a guide to making sense of these numbers. They provide perspective and pointers to make the numbers less confusing.


The perspective on numbers is that counting people and things related to their behavior is very difficult. People don’t fit tidily into neat categories, they move, change their minds, experience misfortunes and luck and sometimes even lie. The people who count people can have problems of their own like bias, poor methods and plain wrongheadedness. Even well meaning people and organizations call fall prey to logical fallacies. Blastland and Dilnot want you to have a healthy skepticism, but not to become cynical about the whole affair. Careful counting by people aware and respectful of the limitations of numbers can produce very useful information.

When you see numbers in the news, you can turn to the pointers to make sense of them. For instance, keep things on a human scale. When you see the huge cost of a government program, what does it cost per person or per unit of whatever is to be increased or decrease? On that scale, is it reasonable and realistic? Another tip is to remember that correlation is not causality. That two things rise and fall together (or inversely) doesn’t necessarily mean one causes the other, something else my influence both. In addition, though it seems unlikely, improbable things happen all the time.

Each of the pointers on how to understand numbers can be turned around. The people that count, make decisions based on numbers and report on numbers can do a better job by keeping numbers in perspective and making them more understandable.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
1089 and All That by David Acheson
Chance by Amir Aczel
Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel
Fortune’s Formula by William Poundstone
The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

A large creative project of the type Phyllis Korkki references in the title of her book The Big Thing can be hard to finish, or even start. Korkki identifies several characteristics of big things that make them challenging.

-Big things are personally meaningful. The dread of failing or falling short of a dream can keep us from crossing the finish line, or even the starting line.

-They have no deadline. It is your personal project that you get done on your own schedule.

-They are large and complex. At first, the structure of the thing you want to create may not be clear in your mind.

-They require sustained concentration and effort. It can be hard to keep going and going, especially in the face of the other challenges of taking on a big thing.

Creative projects are not just novels, movies, painting or other thing we typically think of as art. A healthy relationship, especially marriage and family, can be a creative undertaking. Other types of creative goals might lead to you to organize people and resources to make a difference in the world.

In order to find a way to complete her big thing, Korkki looked into areas that you might not find in other get-things-done type self-help books. For instance, she looked at the effects of health and sleep. Along the way she received coaching in breathing, posture and mindfulness. The bottom line is that if you’re going to have the energy, stamina and mental clarity you need to finish a major creative work, you’ll need to take care of yourself.

She also found that constraints were helpful. For her, her sense obligation help her design constraints around accountability to her editors and others. My background is engineering, so I tend to think of creativity in terms of dealing with constraints and how they can be overcome or possibly used to achieve a purpose.

Creative projects are rarely the work of one person. Korkki gives credit to her agent, her editor, and the many people at her publisher who turned her words into a book. Ego can get in the way of working with other and Korkki offers advice on how collaboration can work.

Something I found helpful was Korkki’s advice on figuring out when to let something go. Get real with yourself. Do you have the motivation, especially if you must learn and practice something new to achieve your creative goal? Are you committed to work on it regularly? Is it worth the sacrifice you’ll need to make? You may find that something else is more important to you, or that you don’t realistically have the desire to push through the obstacles that will inevitably show up. Instead of torturing yourself because of what you’re not doing, put you energy and talents into something else you want to do.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Korkki, Phyllis. The Big Thing: How to Complete Your Creative Project Even if You’re a Lazy, Self-Doubting Procrastinator Like Me. New York: Harper, 2016.