Daily Thoughts

Paul Alexis Reading a Manuscript to Zola. Paul Cezanne.

Daily Thoughts

Right now, I am reading I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna as well as Building Hope. I Can Make You Thin is a behavior management program for eating. It admonishes you to eat what you want, stop eating when you are full, eat when you are hungry, and eat slowly. There are sections on how to make exercise fun as well as how to identify eating when you are angry, stressed or frustrated. I am about halfway through the book. It includes a hypnosis tape which runs for about half an hour. I have not played it yet. The book is not complicated and it is not like most diet books.

I finished reading the book in about two and half hours. There is also a hypnosis cd which has a guided relaxation and positive reinforcement session that runs for about half an hour. I found it quite relaxing.

In addition to the hypnosis tapes there are short meditative exercises focused on changing your body image, preventing cravings, and picturing yourself differently. My favorite example is an exercise with a mirror which asks to look at how you would look if you were in excellent physical shape.

This is not a diet book, it is a behavior modification book focused on food. It asks you to change specific behaviors and gives you meditative exercises on how to do this. I have to say reading this was quite different than what I expected. I don't know if it will work until a later date.

I found this book on Twitter, Sterling Publishers was advertising it on Twitters as part of a book marketing campaign. The book is in british english which makes it read a bit differently than many books which I have read. It does have a slightly new age feeling to it because of the meditation exercises, but it is not overbearing.

This was a nice short break from Building Hope. We have hundreds of diet books at the library. People are asking for The Zone, Pritikin, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, the American Heart Association diet, and many different diets. There are not just popular diets, there are also diets for specific conditions; heart disease, kidney problems, cancer, diabetes, celiac disease and many other conditions.

The diet books have even spun off into the cookbooks section. Now, you can get your American Heart Association diet book, get your American Heart Association cookbook, and get your American Heart Association exercise book in one step. Diet books are no longer diet books, they are a package of different books. Maybe, after you get your books, you can go to a meeting to discuss the three books at your local American Heart Association chapter. I am using American Heart Association because it is reputable much like the American Diabetes Association. I have trouble believing the commercial companies like Jenny Craig or Weightwatchers.

It is very hard to make sense out of the proliferation of these books. You wonder every time someone gets a diet book whether or not they will actually help. I sometimes am a little cynical about these kind of books.