Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: weight

  • I’m So Effing Hungry

    I’m So Effing Hungry

    Why we crave what we crave – and what to do about

    Have you tried endless weight loss programmes with little success? Dr Amy Shah’s latest book ‘I’m So effing Hungry’ could be the answer. It helps you manage hunger and cravings while at the same time breaking free from the oppression of diets and battles with food. 

    Dr Amy Shah considers herself a practitioner of integrative medicine, as not only is she a graduate from medical school, but she also trained at the Cornell University’s renowned School of Nutrition. Her book focusses on the well documented science behind hunger and cravings; she breaks down the reasons why people feel hungry, thus removing the feeling of guilt.

    It’s about eating more not less. Instead of eliminating foods, she encourages the reader to add healthy natural, high in fibre, non-processed foods to their diet; rewiring the brain so that it wants and craves nutritious, wholesome food.

    The comprehensive discussion of her five step plan (Replenish, Rewire, Reset, Refresh and Restrain), provide the reader with helpful information about the body, how it functions and ways to lose weight and generally feel healthier. In order to reset the reader’s hunger and cravings in two weeks, the author has included wholesome recipes which are hunger tamers and craving crushers.

    Warning to readers: Intermittent fasting is at the core of this approach to weight loss, healthy living and a feeling of wellbeing.    

  • The Fast 800 Keto Recipe Book

    The Fast 800 Keto Recipe Book

    Well known, award winning television personality Dr Michael Mosley’s best-selling book “Fast 800 Keto” now has a companion recipe book written by his wife, Dr Clare Bailey. This well written and research cook book offers a variety of low-carb Mediterranean-style recipes, which helps reduce appetite and hence accelerated weight loss. It promotes intermittent fasting, keto and the importance of protein, which will result in more energy, better sleep and ultimately better mental and general health.

    Readers new to the concept of ketogenic diet, whereby the body shifts from burning carbs to burning fat for fuel, will find this a most interesting and helpful guide to the Keto way of eating and safe weight loss; it’s about simple, good food, which as far as possible is cooked from scratch.

    The Fast 800 Keto Recipe Book provides the science behind this alternative approach to sustainable weight loss by providing ways to get back to eating real, non-processed food.  The recipes in this book are usually made from easy-to-find ingredients and improve protein intake while reducing the consumption of starchy carbohydrates and sugars. The Introduction contains a helpful section on which foods to avoid and the ones to embrace. By including ‘A Flexible, Three-stage Programme’ the author guides the reader through the implementation of the Keto diet.   

    Each of the 150 easy to follow nutritious recipes includes a guide to the number of calories, a ‘cook’s tip’ and how to expand it if it’s being served on a ‘Non-Fast Day’. Those new to this diet will appreciate the ‘Index of Recipes by Calories’, to assist its easy implementation.

    It’s a must for people, who want to have a healthier diet and life style. 

  • Your Best Year Ahead: Small, easy steps to wellness

    Your Best Year Ahead: Small, easy steps to wellness

    Your Best Year Ahead; small easy steps to wellness is an extremely practical way to present information on healthy living. Written by an experienced doctor who sees many patients with conditions they could avoid, or questions about issues they are facing, the facts are presented using evidenced based theory.

    Dr Chris Beer began to research healthy living, seeking her own answers, when she was diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

    When you look at the table of contents it is hard not to recognise something that is of pressing concern in your life. Whether it is losing weight, sleeping well, or warding off cancer cells, there is something here that will attract your immediate attention. It is not a bad idea to begin with this chapter, so it is immediately relevant to you and you understand how your progress is intended to be monitored.

    The book can be used as a week by week health guide and the challenge is to take the year to work through the various chapters. There is a week by week goal tracker as a visual record, and habits to develop and tick off.

    Knowing your motivators, and habit formation is discovered in the first few chapters, then once the reader understands and is willing to follow the guidelines, the chapters flow on from this. The chapter on sleep begins with the science. How much sleep do you need? Why do we need sleep? These answers are quite fascinating… sleep slows the aging process and also helps to repair our tissues.

    There are more interesting facts, such as, it should take you between 10-15 minutes to fall asleep. Then there are bullet points to help you sleep. Some of the take home points suggest that adults need between 7-9 hours’ sleep. Then the Weekly challenge is to get a good night’s sleep for a week. You should aim to be in bed by 10pm.

    Individual chapters are easy to read and short enough to retain the essence. This is such a useful reference book that one could refer to it many times if one didn’t use it as a year-long challenge.

    Your Best Year Ahead; small easy steps to wellness published in 2020 ensures the information is up to date and well explained.

  • Your Own Kind of Girl

    Your Own Kind of Girl

    If you sit and listen to a song by Clare Bowditch, you will instantly sense the warmth and passion behind this mellow voice. To read her story, told with candour and courage, you begin to understand how the depth of her emotions has been tapped, challenged and resolved.

    Most women would associate with many of the trials that beset Clare, however, she certainly faced more than her fair share of troubles. To grow and find success from such a disastrous early life is a tribute to her intelligence and spirit. To want to share this so that others may benefit is a tribute to her heart.

    This is an easy story to read in that it is written with humour and honesty. There is no mistaking the love and care of Clare’s family in her early years. She has a remarkable memory for details in her younger days.

    However, it is partly these memories which burdened her and contributed to her breakdown in later times. Interestingly Clare says because she was too young to process what was happening in her life linguistically, it was difficult to speak about her feelings at a later time. Her language then was not developed enough to explain what was happening.

    So many issues are addressed in this story and each one is worthy of attention. Society rewards women who can control their weight and major aspects of their lives. Although Clare was told by her mother that she was “A peach and an Amazon,” it was not enough to overcome the taunts and bullying that she endured during her school years.

    Later she went on a strict diet and lost a great deal of weight. She was perplexed by people’s attitude toward her as a slim woman: she felt she was the same person yet viewed so differently.

    The voice in her head, which was the negative deriding voice that most of us have experienced, was harder to control. By giving it a name and getting to the stage that she could tell it to F ..Off was one of the strategies that Clare used.

    This came after many sessions with a councillor, many years of intense reading and discovering just how one can conquer anxiety. The book concludes with suggested areas to seek help if you need. This is such a happy ending story, from such a disastrous beginning.

     

     

  • Weight Off Your Mind

    Weight Off Your Mind

    Much has been touted in the Press, on television, on medical programs and cooking shows about obesity, diet, what foods to eat, exercise to do or not to do, the latest hype diet fad and the effects of all the various ways and means of losing weight.

    Not a lot is discussed about how to keep it off once the goal of losing the weight is reached. Regardless of whether you have ever struggled with serious food related issues or not, the undeniable fact is that obesity in all its forms is far from good for general health and wellbeing, as well as the social issues, along with host of other issues that go with what could be termed as a medical condition; one which is seriously difficult to overcome and one that is in reality, only beginning to be understood for its levels of complexity.

    In Weight Off Your Mind, Richard tackles the issue of weight loss on a permanent basis from a vastly different perspective, that of utilising the age old craft of Hypnosis to help unlock the blocks in order to prevent a reoccurrence of binge eating, food addiction and emotional eating.

    Based on personal experience, she realised early in her a career as a Clinical Psychologist working with people who had addictions, that there was far more to weight loss than simply losing weight and keeping it off. There had to be triggers, as there were with other forms of addiction.

    As a young woman she studied Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy and as a practitioner was achieving excellent results in treating a wide range of conditions using only hypnotherapy. She realised some years later that dealing with issues of weight loss was more than just a medical or dietary issue, it was a lifestyle issue and had to be dealt with by combining medicine, diet and psychology to work as a team to achieve positive, long lasting results.

    Richard address all the many issues that need to be taken out into the light such as self-esteem, stress management, commitment, psychology, addiction, exercise, self-image, binge eating and how this system of hypnosis, based on Emotional Self-Management (ESM), or Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing  (EMDR) can have a beneficial and positive effect for permanent weight loss.

    Designed as both a tutorial and workbook, the way forward is made considerably easier, with each of the chapters clarifying the issues, so that a far better understanding of this condition is presented.

    The strong message evident throughout this book is, leave off the fad diets, the stress of do it yourself eating control and take a serious look at an excellent lifestyle change, one which has thousands of clinical studies world-wide undertaken, is backed with solid scientific evidence, which verify the many case studies of people who have had continuing success using this program, or system.

    Set out as Step-by- Step guide to weight loss, there is absolutely nothing to lose other than unwanted kilos. By working your way through the pages, seeking the correct professional help and achieving a more positive outcome it can only be a win, win, finale!