Mini Habits for Weight Loss: Stop Dieting. Form New Habits. Change Your Lifestyle Without Suffering.

"Fat loss is a side effect of living healthier." ~ pg. 153I have a diet saboteur in my house! Often this person will bring home six donuts or bags of candy and leave them on the counter. I myself have been known to buy candy on occasion and hide it from this person because they will eat it all up and I think of sugar as a treat for good behavior. I also sometimes get in the mood to make 24 cupcakes but I give 99% of them away. Usually I have one or two and that is about it. I just really love baking!So between me and this person we are causing ourselves ill health because of ingesting some of the wrong foods. What to do? I figured reading a book on developing good habits couldn't hurt! I was right. This book has a lot of helpful tips and tricks to make healthy living much more easy and not as challenging.One of the best sentences in the book is this:"The home eating waris won and lost in the grocery store."I figured this out years ago actually. I knew if I bought it, I'd eat it so I stopped buying sugary chocolates on impulse and started ordering stevia sweetened chocolate from amazon. That alone cut down a lot of sugar cravings because I wasn't feeding the addiction.Some of the things I'm going to do more after reading this book is freezing bananas because they really do taste like ice cream. After considering further I do remember I lost some weight drinking green tea so maybe I should go back to that habit!What kind of questions does this author answer? Well a lot of good ones!Why is dieting only going to make you gain more weight?Why does your brain need to change before your body will follow?What can you control and what should you let slide?What is the best exercise to lose weight?What foods are best to eat on a regular basis? (Do more research on brown rice before you go for it!)Is fruit bad for weight loss or just the opposite?What is the real reason people gain weight in the abdominal area?What I noticed about this book is the author's sense of humor. He made me lol several times and be amused quite a bit. Just thinking of him doing his mini habits was funny.One thing the author didn't say was that when you go to a restaurant you should put half the food they bring you in a to-go box right away. This helps with the decision to eat all your food on your plate. If there is only half the food there, bingo!This book made me hungry for cucumber slices dipped in hummus, spaghetti squash with pesto and fruit-infused water. Basically it made me want to eat healthier because it all sounded so delicious. This book is inspiring me to buy more fruits and vegetables.In the section on exercise and fitness the author does mention guided meditation but that is a whole other thing and if you don't want to get caught up in changing your religion, look for non religious meditation and yoga. Sometimes I love just watching DVDs of ocean waves breaking on the shore. That can make me quite sleepy and ready for bed.However, since I've been using a slow cooker a lot lately I'd say preparation times are more like 20-30 minutes not one minute! Unless you have all the vegetables cut up for your lentil soup it is going to take 30 minutes to put it all in the slow cooker. But hey, once that is done you are free for five hours to exercise and read a book. The author may not have come across kosher hot dogs either. I buy those. He seems to think all hot dogs are the worst. I agree I only eat the special kosher ones.So this book is mostly about easy does it. Make changes slowly and make them into habits that you will do automatically and eventually your body will just start changing on its own and you will have less to think about.So on my next shopping trip I'm going to remember the lettuce because I really like making salads and I've gotten out of practice in the past few weeks. Habits can come and go and when you have one that is working write it down so you don't forget to do it. I will go write "lettuce" down on my shopping list. Having a running list is essential for success.It is good to know that this book has advice that I can accept 99% of the time. I think however if I'm putting on my gym shoes I'm going to do more than one minute on the treadmill. Or better yet just jump on my trampoline for ten minutes without shoes on. I have no problem doing exercise once I start doing it and I think that is the point of the book and methods. Usually my problem is that I have a thought: "should I exercise right now" and I put it off thinking "I'll have more energy later." Then comes ten at night and I'm sleepy.So this is a convincing and inspirational pep talk about getting healthier with small changes in your eating and exercising habits. Reading this book seriously with a highlighter in hand will clue you into all the most important stuff for your lifestyle. Then it is a matter of writing a shopping list and putting a post it note where you can see it to do your mini habits. That is about it...easy peasy!To your success,~The Rebecca Review

Stephen Guise does it again! Having been a long time reader of his weekly emails, I was pretty familiar with his style and some of his ideas, so by the time I received the printed copy of this book, I had already been trying to incorporate some of his approaches in both my personal development and weight loss efforts (with success, mind you!)... but I was surprised by how the information in this book was new (to me at least!) and altogether wise, compelling, and informative!Guise has clearly done extensive research. In part one, he provides a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies in a friendly and approachable tone-- which is very idiosyncratic of his style-- and informs us on the latest on healthy lifestyle research. I have read diet books before and I have read research journals, but I have never particularly enjoyed or LAUGHED while reading either. Guise is a talented writer, so it's a fun and quick read! As he said, this isn't a diet book, it's a book about understanding the affects of food and the food industry on the personal and national level, how that can affect our health, and what we can do about it.In part two, Guise writes about his area of expertise: how to apply this new information into personal development with MINI HABITS. He describes strategies and approaches to apply to your everyday-- literally something you can DO everyday and feel good about-- to achieve your goal. This is the part that requires some effort on the reader's part to be introspective and realistic about themselves, which is something so REFRESHING. By generously acknowledging the humanity of his audience, Guise teaches readers how to deal with the psychology of weight loss, including the emotions of shame, deprivation, etc. involved, and gives them the tools to move forward!This is a wonderful book with very helpful and even life changing ideas-- I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to make a lasting change in their health and feel good while doing it! I commend the author on this work and I can't wait to see what he'll do next!

This was a fast and enjoyable read. I agree with the majority of what Stephen said about nutrition, but I felt that for this type of book he gave too much nutrition advice given he is not a nutrition expert. I especially disliked that he said that eating a vegan or vegetarian diet is not sustainable and then said that if you already are vegan or vegetarian you could "do much worse". Eating a Whole Foods plant-based diet is one of the ways I actually maintain vibrant health and a healthy weight, and although it may not be desirable for everyone it is an evidence-based healthful way of eating.I think the mini habits idea is a great one that could help a lot of people accomplish all sorts of goals.Overall I would recommend this book for the practical advice about habits, but would caution about the nutrition advice.