A lively dieting guide that takes mental health into account.
Bennett investigates the underlying causes of dieting relapses in this health guide.
Even the most health-conscious eaters sometimes crack. Bennett was already a professional health coach, author, and antisugar crusader when she moved to California to care for her dying mother; when her mother died a year later, the exhausted, grieving Bennett turned to carbohydrates for emotional support. “While movie popcorn was my hands-down favorite,” recalls Bennett, “I also went hog-wild over corn-anything, especially popped, fried, toasted, ultra-processed crunchy nibbles and other so-called comfort foods.” Each binge ended in promises to eat right the next day, but each new day led inevitably to backsliding. Within six months—a period during which one of her health books became a bestseller—she had gained 21 pounds. “It was impossible to escape the humbling irony,” she writes. “I felt like a Huge Health Hypocrite.” With this book, Bennett describes how she pulled herself out of her junk food nosedive while offering readers a roadmap to curbing their own self-destructive eating habits. She gets not just at the “what” of an unhealthy diet—the usual suspects of sugars, carbs, and highly processed foods—but the “why.” Why do we blow our diets? Why do we eat to assuage negative feelings? Why do we take comfort in foods that make us so uncomfortable? A healthy diet begins in the mind, and Bennet offers a three-week regimen to get readers in the right headspace to protect their bodies—and their emotions—in a sustainable way. “Coach Connie” writes energetic prose that makes the whole book feel like a conversation. “Admittedly, I’m biased, because I’m a professional writer and author,” she writes in a section about journaling, “but I’ve found tremendous relief, eye-opening insights, and much-needed peace of mind just by putting my thoughts, feelings, and worries on paper.” Bennett is perhaps overly fond of capitalizations and acronyms (like FEASTS—Fast, Easy, Awesome, Simple, Tested Strategies) and she advocates for the controversial ketogenic diet. Even so, much here will prove useful for chronic diet-breakers.
A lively dieting guide that takes mental health into account.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798886452808
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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