An accessible approach to weight loss delivered in the voice of a supportive coach.
Losing weight and getting healthy are all about the numbers, according to a self-proclaimed “fitness nerd.”
Forget fad diets and fitness crazes: Shedding pounds isn’t as complicated as some people make it out to be, argues Clark in this debut guide. You just need to burn more calories than you consume. Those who want to get off “the weight-loss roller coaster” can do so, but it will require discipline, plus some basic math skills. Drawing on his own experience, the author explains how he decided to “ignore the never-ending stream of bullshit fitness products people try to sell me” and embrace a simpler, more effective way to transform his physique. In frank and often funny language, Clark encourages readers to take charge of their lives and bodies, to set goals that make sense for them, and to not get discouraged by setbacks. Using an inverted pyramid approach, he begins with advice on how to change your mental approach to diet and fitness. He then tackles calorie counting and macros, strength training, and cardiovascular exercise. The suggestions get more complicated as the book progresses. Readers who can handle counting calories and weighing food may find themselves overwhelmed by more detailed instructions on how to measure body-fat percentage and track strength-training gains. Still, the author clearly explains his strategy. He firmly believes that “data from our small, daily goals keeps us excited, responsible, and in control of our trajectory.” By focusing on quantifiable data and measuring daily progress, people can achieve their goals since the fundamental “secret” to weight loss is creating a calorie deficit—“energy out must be greater than energy in.” Yet that deficit has to be achieved in a sustainable, consistent way. Quick fixes in the form of crash diets and severe calorie restriction might work in the short term, but “your body will wage a secret war to sabotage your efforts, and eventually it will win.” Clark also deftly explains why it’s nearly impossible to exercise away extra calories while illustrating how building muscle helps with long-term weight-loss goals.
An accessible approach to weight loss delivered in the voice of a supportive coach.Pub Date: July 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951876-01-2
Page Count: 345
Publisher: FITNRD
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2020
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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