This past week I have shared my struggle with the scale and the weight that has crept up over time. I am not one to weigh, record, or measure my food. However, from all the great books and resources I have been reading lately, that seems to be the trick to be successful with long term (and even short term) weight loss success.
On the quest to lose these dreaded last few pounds, I have been reading some pretty amazing books lately.
I wanted to share these books with you, if you too are struggling to lose weight, struggle with food, or are just wanting an inspirational read to get you back on track with your goals. Here are five books that I am reading this week.
The Skinny Rules ~ This book is the latest book by Bob Harper, the trainer from the Biggest Loser. If you are familiar with the show, Bob, and the way he inspires and motivates the contestants, you will enjoy this book. As I read this book, I could hear Bob talking.
The skinny rules that Bob discusses in his book are pretty common knowledge if you are at all familiar with losing weight and dieting. However, I do love how he breaks it down step by step into simple skinny rules.
Distilling Bob’s vast knowledge of nutrition, weight-loss strategy, and human nature down to twenty simple, nonnegotiable principles, The Skinny Rules will help you step away from a reliance on processed foods and the need for so much sweet and salt and step into a newly thin lifestyle. And it couldn’t be more straightforward about what you need to do.
Bob offers a month’s worth of menu plans and delicious, rule-abiding recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks to keep you cooking and eating skinny for life. He also includes terrific tips for what to stock in your fridge and what to prepare every weekend in order to set yourself up for success during your too-busy-to-cook weekdays.
Eating Mindfully ~ What a perfect title for this book. This book is all about learning to eat mindfully. So often I find myself with a full plate of food, distractedly eating, and before I know it my food is gone and I haven’t even tasted any of it. I didn’t enjoy it. Dr. Albers educates the reader on how to eat mindfully and provides the mental tools to guide those afflicted with disordered eating, body image issues, or plain old shaky willpower toward a healthier relationship with food.
Dr. Albers is not about self-denial. The common theme in all her work is self knowledge: understanding why we eat. Is it hunger, or is it frustration, sadness,
boredom, or habit masking as hunger that is driving us towards those golden
arches?
The strategies and tips that Dr. Albers has to offer can lead to a healthy relationship with food that doesn’t require giving up foods we love, or living half-starved existence.
The Full Diet ~ There is so many conflicting evidence on how to eat healthy and lose weight. The average American, myself included, thinks about their waistline and the number on the scale. We cut calories. We cut fat. We cut carbs. We eat five times a day. We eat three times a day. We join the gym. We take the stairs. We try to change our lives. Yet the weight epidemic continues to grow.
Michael Snyder teaches you to reject the diet mentality that thrives on restrictions, deprivations, and total reversals of lifestyle. Using the science of fullness and introducing a new definition of “healthy,” he brings us weight-control strategies that are rooted in our physiology and proves that the narcotic effect of fullness is the ultimate weapon in the battle for weight loss.
With these new strategies and definitions, you will move from persistent dieting to living true to yourself and from being unhappily overweight to being a healthy individual who knows a happy weight better than a scale does. Dr. Snyder knows that it’s not the surgery that creates success in his patients; it’s what they do afterward that counts.
Setting Boundaries with Food ~ Oh how I need to learn how to set healthy boundaries with food. This is the fourth book in Allison Bottke’s series. She turns our relationship with food, a problem that affects more than 200 million Americans (68% of the adult population – obesity).
I have made no secret about my love of food and my struggle with setting healthy boundaries with food. My weight has yo-yo’d through the years as a youth through pregnancy and now as a busy mom juggling life’s expectations. At times the cycle seemed never ending full of dieting, deprivation, and despair. Learning to set boundaries is key to success.
By introducing readers to her popular S.A.N.I.T.Y. steps, she encourages readers to turn away from the insanity of dieting and deprivation and to focus instead on establishing healthy relationships with food, self, others, and God. Her words will strike a chord with millions who have struggled for years to lose weight as they are encouraged to examine the emotional and spiritual aspects of their bondage to food and obsession with weight.
The Lean ~ If you’ve ever dieted, you’ve undoubtedly worked very hard to achieve results — only to experience the disappointment of having the pounds creep back on. But what if losing weight didn’t have to be difficult? The Lean is a gentle approach, a lean, to make small realistic changes to your lifestyle to yield healthy changes.
Wellness expert Kathy Freston lets you in on her secret. With this book she shares the powerful concept of The Lean — a radically effective approach to positive change — with an incredibly easy 30-day plan to transform your health. You can jump-start weight loss in the most gentle and automatic way possible.
“Leaning in” is about setting an intention for what you want, and then nudging yourself ever so gently in that direction, even if getting there seems impossible. It’s about making choices to eat foods that are delicious, filling and supportive of your weight loss goals. All you need is the willingness to take just one step. As you add the healthier foods to your diet, eat the new foods first.
By gradually adding in these nutrient-dense, fiber-rich foods, you’ll simply stop feeling cravings. Complete with more than 45 recipes, and grounded in the latest science and research, this breakthrough book reveals the missing link to weight loss that you’ve been waiting for.
Disclosure: I purchased the above books on my own and/or belong to a book review club called NetGalley where I am free to read and review/share books that I enjoy. No compensation was received. I hope you are blessed with some of these books too.
Courtney @ Journey of a Dreamer says
I loved the Skinny Rules! I need to read it again to remind me of them all…