en*light Life

Another diet book? Not quite. This enlightening book is about making peace with your body, and dealing with weight issues from the inside out.  In this book, the author, Deborah Low, discusses the importance of working on your mental game, rather than prescribing some fad diet.

In fact, the first several chapters of this book present questions that are geared towards making the reader assess his/her beliefs about dieting/maintaining a healthy lifestyle (and those issues that prevent most people from staying on a diet).

As a personal trainer that previously suffered from an eating disorder, Low is able to connect with anyone that has started a new diet to only “fall of the wagon” and return to bad eating habits.  Low even states in her book for every new client, she initially assesses their diet hang-ups preventing them from losing excess pounds prior to prescribing a fitness program.

Improving your mental game as part of adopting a healthy lifestyle makes sense; however, how many of us start a diet by giving up our favorite foods cold turkey? The problem is once we start losing the weight, we might “reward” ourselves by eating those favorite foods we gave up. Low’s approach is to ask several questions that help guide the reader through body image, food, and emotional issues (related to dieting/maintaining a healthy lifestyle).  The end result (hopefully) is to make the rewards of healthier lifestyle outweigh the temporary satisfaction of calorie-rich unhealthy foods.

The first exercise Low asks the reader to do is describe his/her life story in regards to food issues, diets, etc. This exercise is then followed by several questions including:

·         Why do you want to lose weight?