A useful manual that effectively opens the door to the underlying causes of eating problems.
A specialist in eating problems addresses how readers can change their relationships with food in this debut motivational guide.
Parente, who has treated hundreds of patients with eating disorders, focuses on a theme not often expressed in traditional diet books: “To change your relationship with food you must work through and grieve loss. A change in one’s eating presents an emotional loss, sometimes manifested in feelings of emptiness.” With this intriguing notion driving the content, the work is as much about psychological factors as it is about eating problems—primarily overeating and binge eating, as noted by the author. Parente approaches the challenge in a methodical way, leading readers through a logical process of understanding the problem and embracing the need to change. Most notable is the volume’s reliance on numerous case studies—self-contained anecdotes based on patients treated by the author. These stories are particularly impactful because they delve into the issues behind specific eating problems, pointedly depicting why a dramatic change in attitude is both difficult and empowering. “The Story of Angela,” for example, demonstrates the relationship of food to loss. Angela endured a 20-pound weight gain without realizing that it was related to the loss of her spouse: “The loss of her husband represented emptiness, fear, and anxiety; thus, she began to fill the void with food. You might identify with how Angela used food to cope with her loss.” Parente weaves these tales throughout the book to illustrate the six steps in her “Template for Change,” a tool intended to guide readers in overcoming any eating problem. The six steps—Acknowledgment of the Problem, Shame, Anger, Fear & Anxiety, Inner Voices, and Belief & Acceptance—are explained in individual chapters and tidily tied together in a Summary section at the end of the book. While designed to address eating problems, it seems as if this process could generally apply to any major change one may need to make; as such, the template has residual value. Parente writes compassionately and knowledgeably about a thorny subject.
A useful manual that effectively opens the door to the underlying causes of eating problems. (appendices)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982254-18-6
Page Count: 122
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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