Fitness Books

Very comforting with knowledge that Christ is the creator of the life that lives within the pregnant woman. Very helpful information to aide the pregnant couple in their journey thru labor & delivery.

I have really enjoyed reading and learning so much from this book. After reading it I have so much more confidence in myself in having a natural childbirth. My husband has really enjoyed it too. I hope others feel the same way.

The author of this book does a phenomenal job capturing and explaining the essence of Christian childbirth, in a manner useful and relevant to life in today's society. The concept of Christian childbirth infuses the message of Romans 12:2 into a world where childbirth has been culturally twisted from the blessed miracle of life into a medical event tainted by fear and distrust. Parents are called to renew their minds through God's word, restoring faith in the process created by God to bring forth new life. While fostering both medically and scripturally informed decision-making, the book guides the reader through the creation of a new family, from trusting God's will before conception, to prenatal communication and pregnancy stewardship, to the labor process and the physiological effects fear has upon it. It also provides the expectant couple with extensive practical information and scriptural encouragement for labor.
This is a vital guide for bringing spirituality back into birth and reinstating the wonder of its divine design. With a sensitivity rarely seen elsewhere, attention is given to such important topics as a father's valuable presence at the birth, and the profound effects of caregivers' attitudes and postpartum depression upon the well being of a new family. With the helpful addition of resources such as Bible study guides, beautiful birth testimonies, an explanation of salvation, and even her own faith statement, author Kelly Townsend addresses all the essentials!

I definitely appreciate that this book was christ-centered and not "new-ageish" like most of the birthing books I have found. That said, it wasn't as good as I had hoped based on the other 5-star reviews. I had expected more nitty-gritty how-to info for during labor. In actuality, I found that it presented a lot of basic info on childbirth that I already knew and less christ-centered coping techniques. I am a born-again Christian, but I was a little bit weirded out by the part asking you to write down ways that you can assure that you won't be rude or inconsiderate to anyone at the hospital while you're in labor. Rudeness is clearly never something to be carried out by a Christian and should be a non-thought. When you're in transition and getting ready to push the baby out, though, I cannot imaging referring to your list of strategies about how to not be rude and thinking them over, etc. Your focus will be on getting the baby out and not much else!

I am Founder of Blessing God's Way - a ministry that focuses on the blessing of children as well as our other God-given cycles... and I have sold Mrs. Townsend's book for the last 4 years when I do confernces and hold birth related meetings. This book was so helpful to me, personally, with my 5th pregnancy and delivery - I am so grateful for her constant advice to take my thoughts captive and focus on God's goodness and the work of Christ for us and our salvation. I used her ideas, her techniques for focusing and found them to be most helpful in keeping my eyes upon Jesus during my pushing stage. I tell women now, "God doesn't leave the building, so to speak, during the last stage of labor" and then I direct them to Christ Centered Childbirth to understand how I can say such a statement!
Women need to be encouraged, supported and exhorted during this time in their lives. This book is a practical tool in doing so. I am grateful for her ablility to put this great knowledge in book form to share with so many other women, helping create a better birthing world for us all.

Too complex for me! Especially with three kids a job a husband pets and god knows what else. I do believe in his theory, though, and I'm certain it works. Maybe when my last baby goes to college I'll give it a try.

Wish I'd read this book before moving to Seattle, one of the darkest cities in North America, and living there for 17 years! Each year when the rains started and lasted for months and months, I'd typically gain 15-25 pounds. If the sun came out long enough in the summer, I'd sometimes lose most of my winter weight. When the sun was out, diet was easy. When the sun was not shining, I could not stop eating. I arrived in Seattle weighing a petite 103 pounds and wearing a size 5 and left Seattle barely able to sqeeze into a size 14-16.

Now I've moved to a sunny state and have quite a few pounds to lose. The high-carb, low-fat diets left me hungry all the time. The low-carb diets left me feeling depressed. The carbohydrate addicts diet was too restrictive, no carbs except at one meal per day. On the Circadian diet, I don't feel an overwhelming urge to eat all the time. In fact, last night, after a very small dinner, I felt more full than I usually do after a very large meal. The diet is palatable, too. While protein is emphasized during the day, a little bit of carbohydrate is allowed, and it makes the meals a lot more appetizing. So, I can have a few chunks of pineapple with my cup of cottage cheese when I'm in a hurry and have to prepare a quickie lunch. Or I can have a piece of high fiber bread with my omlette at breakfast. And I can have some protein with my carbs at dinner. Eating out is easy. After failing at high-carb, low-carb, Weight Watchers, Diet Center, et cetera, I finally have a satisfying way to eat and am losing weight. In fact, I easily lost three pounds my first week on the diet. I learned a lot of useful information from other diet books but could not stick to the diets. After reading The Circadian Prescription, I find losing weight is pretty easy! With the other suggestions in the book, I overall feel much better than I have in years!

This guy makes a lot of sense. check it out.

I had dimly begun to suspect the reasoning myself - advertising bombards us with "Carbohydrates Are For Energy", but they always seem to put me to sleep during the day when I need to think clearly. Peeking inside, Dr. Baker says effectively 'duh you idiot that's right save the carbos for dinner'. Liking this reinforcement of personal intuition, I immediately bought the book !

"Protein-in-day, carbs-at-night" is of course not patentable, but it seems to work, and the details are worth $1.00, plus which it is fairly information-dense, not one of those padded tomes.

This book is a literally a lifesaver! For years I have struggled to stay awake, alert and function with ADD, Candida and other health problems....the diet that is recommeneded allows me to feel alert when I need to be alert and relaxed when necessary by eating differently at different times of the day,and not be famished and weak with hunger in-between. This concept is radically different from anything else that I've ever read..but it works! I've always assumed that somehow each individual was so unique that we needed different diets ....this is a diet that seems to work for everybody, regardless or age, sex, health or lack of it...The breakfast shake in particular is a gem..and can even be used for lunch if needed..it gives me lots of energy and carries me to lunch without the usual mid-morning hunger that usually plagues me.
I have even introduced a friend to the concept and she was blown away too. Thank you Dr. MacDonald, from the bottom of my heart.

I found this book both easy to read and easy to reference for later use. It provides much of the basics (and some intermediates) for incorporating more raw foods into your daily diet.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to add more raw foods into their daily diet.

This is an excellent book! When I bought the book, I was hoping to be educated on how I could adopt more raw food into my diet. I did not expect to thoroughly enjoy reading the book. The book comprehensively covers the ins and outs of a raw food diet in a very clear and interesting way. I strongly recommend it.

I have a number of raw food books. The problem is they are too difficult or too boring. This book gives great info. It hits all the points you always read concerns about. I thought the recipes would not be interesting since this is a basic book. I was wrong. The chocolate-orange pudding is great. The choco tacos were really good. I almost didn't try them. You should. I seem to be the only person who doesn't care for almond milk. The cardamom-almond milk is great. The survivor's cereal is worth the price of the book. I am not a smoothie person and always looking for something else for breakfast.

After making another wonderful dinner from this book tonight, I decided that I should write my impression of the recipes. I have a lot of raw uncook books, so I am familiar with many recipes and food preparation techniques. These authors seem to have perfected the ingredients for soups and breads, and they really understand the concept of taste. I first made the Sweet Vanilla-Almond Dip - so simple but so yummy! I love it with apple. Then I made two salad dressings, the Tahini Dressing and the Fantastic Flax Dressing - both perfect and delightful! I made the Blueberry-Vanilla Macadamia Nut Granola and it is quite good. Then tonight I had for dinner the Carrot Ginger Soup with a sandwich made with the Foccacia. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to try raw cuisine, and I intend to keep exploring more recipes!

This publication is quite informative for those of us new to eating raw; however, I suggest you purchase a raw cookbook with quick meals to keep you inspired to eat raw as you dehydrate foods for meals in this publication. One suggestion is "Raw Food Made Easy for One or Two" by Jennifer Cornbleet. There is a transitioning section in "The Idiot's Guide", but again much of the foods require dehydration which can take days.

The "Complete Idiot's Guide" is recommended by me for its informative take on raw eating and meal variety. There is helpful information on the pantry, tools to purchase and websites to check out. You'll be satisfied with this publication. Would have been given 5 stars if quicker meals were incorporated to transition you into raw eating.

I am not quite as enamored of this book as some other reviewers, but it is good. One author is a powerlifter, which both adds some amusing stories but occasionally gives this book an odd slant. I wish they would have fleshed out their weightlifting routines a bit more instead of just providing a skeleton - I am a bit lazy like that. Despite the above comments, the authors do a good job providing information without the hype.

I got this for my husband who is build like a horse, very active, but entirely unatheletic. I wanted to work out again and he never had but wanted to try. He learned alot about how wieght training works and is thrilled with the results (say Arnold!. I still refer back to it regularly to update our workout. It is simple and has all the info you need to get started whether you have lifted before or not.

After many years of doing very little exercise, I returned to the gym about a year ago. I purchased this book 3 months later and read it cover to cover, an enjoyable read. I continue to use the book as a reference to add additional and change exercises on a regular basis. Having followed some of the sample routines they provide, I can attest to a significant increase in strength and in general well-being. There are enough details and variations to satisfy someone just starting or getting more serious about lifting. I recommend this book - and thank the authors.

This is the best book that I have found on weight training. I needed a thorough book to get started and this was it. Other than my very lackluster lifting durig high school I have never seriously lifted, so I am far from an expert on lifting. I must add however that after having looked at many books on weight training I feel like a bit of an expert on the literature. What I found was that most books are geared to those that already know the subject. These books assumed many techniques I did not know, implied that I needed to work out about 3 hours at a time for 8 days a week and rambled on and on and on.

The Idiot's Guide to Weight Training thoroughly introduced me to everything that I needed to get started. After reading this book, I walked into a fitness store, bought the starter equipment I needed and started to lift. As I write this I am bit sore from the first few lifting sesions, but I am excited and looking forward to the future weeks and months. This book helps with equipment, clothing, eating, stretching, excercise instructions, routines and safety. The authors have provided a very thorough, readable and motivating book. In my estimation this book is an extremely valuable addition to the topic, and is indeed as far as I can tell the best book available to the beginner.

I'm glad I started with this book...it's well organized and very thorough. Covers all the essential things a person should know to get started in the weight room. It's also going to stay on my shelf for a long time as a reference, because it gives good tips on form, exercises, etc., as well as for other things that might pop up. you will probably want more info as you get more into training, but this book will continue to be of use as a reference.

This was a fairly easy book to follow. Nice and concise, just like the title says. A nice concise bible to have around. Could have possibly gone into deeper explanations of the muslces. Very thorough for a small book.

The Concise Book of Muscles not only illustrates with great detail but the Latin name of the muscle, along with the action involved are a great tool.
Also, The stretching exercises on the side, are a plus!

I bought this book to assist with my anatomy course, and its the best aid I've had ever. I highly recommend it.

This book was easy enough to read in one sitting with very clear pictures and text. I have a (rusty) scientific background but I think it was readable regardless of one's scientific knowledge.

This concise book is a model of simplicity and clarity. It presents an effective way to locate and identify specific muscles along with exercises to strengthen and stretch them. It highlights muscles that are heavily used and therefore subject to injury in a variety of sports and activities. A first rate resource for athletes and massage therapists.

Very interesting book.
I had a hard time laying the book down.
Everyone should take a look at this.

Dr. Becker is a brilliant medical researcher who has devoted his life to the study of something most doctors barely understand that it exists: the body's electrical system.

Among many other topics, Dr. Becker describes
- the body's inbuilt electrical systems,
- how he was able to use electrical current to get bones that would otherwise not have grown together to do so,
- how he offered to create a means of inducing anesthesia with electrical currents, but was politely turned down by lesser doctors,
- how one can measure electrical currents flowing at acupuncture points (in other words, why there must be something to acupuncture),
- why he thinks there may be something to homeopathy,
- to what extent electrical systems play a role in the salamander's ability to regenerate tissue,
- the harm that (everyday) electromagnetic fields can cause.

The tragedy of Dr. Becker is that he is so far ahead of his time that he is largely overlooked. All the same he sometimes paints with a little too broad a brush. All the same, I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the life sciences.

A great job by Dr. Becker. Electromagnetism affects all lifeforms on earth. The effect it has on our health is dramatic and cannot continue to be ignored by mainstream medicine. Becker is a true pioneer.

The one criticism that I have with this book is that Becker failed to mention the excellent research done by Albert Roy Davis and Walter Rawls.
Davis was the first scientist in the world to discover that magnetism consists of two separate energies with different effects, it's not a singular form of energy with a singular effect, as is still widely believed today. The North and South poles have opposite effects.

Davis found that South pole magnetism is harmful to our health and will cause bacteria, germs, and even cancer to grow and spread at an accelerated rate in the body, while North pole magnetism will quickly stop the growth and assist the body to overcome disease. Just as Becker has said, Davis and Rawls found that many devices used in hospitals actually compound the problem. Radiation, for example, emits positive and negative electromagnetic energies. The positive energies can actually stimulate the growth of the cancer cells, similar to the way positive (South) magnetic energies do.

The first book by Davis and Rawls, "Magnetism and Its Effects on the Living System", goes into detail about how magnetism affects the physical and mental development of animals, the growth of plants, and among other topics, a detailed account of the effects both negative and positive magnetic energies have on cancer. "The Magnetic Blueprint of Life", the last of their books, expresses the relationship of air ions to health, how magnetism can be utilized in energy production, and it has in-depth information on how these positive electromagnetic energies, which are all around us, endanger us to a greater degree each and every day. We are being lied to about the safety of many electrical products on the market today, cell phones included.

If you have the books by Robert Becker and Davis and Rawls you'll be way ahead of the rest of the population in your knowledge of electromagnetism and its effects on all living beings.

If you really want to understand how the body works and is being influenced by our environment you must read this book. What an eye-opener. The author is someone thinking ahead of his time and much of what he predicted has come true.

1. "Most technological cures for cancer, for example, were found to be carcinogenic themselves"
2. From the beginning, life has been dependent on Earth's natural electromagnetic environment. Today this natural environment is submerged beneath a torrent of electromagnetic fields that have never before been present...In Cross Currents I will show how both the human body electric and the Earth's body electric have been damaged by this alteration; I will then explain what steps we must take to prevent the disaster that is fast approaching.
3. Hospitals were becoming dangerous places to enter; patients sometimes entered with minor illnesses and left with permanent disabilities resulting from complication after another. Some patients discovered the various disciplines of energy medicine, which appeared to have three outstanding things to offer. First, they would do no harm; second, they often seemed to do some good; and third, they were much less expensive than orthodox medicine.
4. The physicist, biologist, and physicians were absolutely certain that life forces simply did not exist, and that all living things were simply chemical machines. They knew that the living organism was simply a collection of structures, which work chemically and were integrated by means of central nervous system, with no involvement of electricity or magnetism.
5. Nature must have a mechanism of self-repair; otherwise, life would not have succeeded. Self-repair requires a closed-loop control system-that is, one in which a certain signal indicates injury and causes another signal to effect repair. As the repair proceeds, the injury signal diminishes, and when the repair is complete the signal stops.
6. Salamander limbs regenerate at the Neuroepidermal junction and negative electric current signals primitive cells in the blastema to redifferentiate and growth back the limb. As the blastema grows, the salamander current becomes highly negative and slowly returns to its original baseline.
7. In a number of experiments, I was able to show that the DC electric currents I was measuring from a variety of tissues, including nerve fibers, were actual semiconducting. As a result of interest stirred up by these experiments, many people began to make electrical measurements of other growth processes. All rapid growing tissues were found to be negative in polarity. Interestingly, cancers in animals or humans always showed the highest negativity.
8. The frog's red cells could be dedifferentiated by electricity, but only with vanishing small amounts (measured in the billionths of amperes). Electricity was clearly a stimulus to regeneration. Instructions to regenerate were retained by mammals. Therefore, the growth control system required for regeneration was present. For electricity to turn on the control system for regeneration the right amount of electricity and right polarity was required.
9. I proposed that the acupuncture pointes were just such booster amplifiers, spaced along the course of the meridian transmission lines. Metallic acupuncture needles inserted in or near such a point would produce sufficient electrical disturbance that the amplifier could not operate, and the pain would be blocked.
Input DC electrical signals carried the information that injury had occurred along the acupuncture medians to the brain, where parts of this group of signals reached consciousness and was perceived as pain. Output DC signals caused the cells and chemical mechanisms at the site of injury to produce repair.
11. In the 1880s, Dr Allison Apostoli treated cancers of the cervix and uterus with DC electricity by inserting a positive electrode into the tumor and passing between 100 to 250 milliamperes of current through the tumor to a large negative electrode on the abdomen producing electrolysis within the tumor. He reported prompt relief of pain and bleeding, and shrinkage of the tumors, but he reported no long-term results.
12. All rapidly growing tissues were found to be negative in polarity compared with the rest of the body. The highest negativity was found in malignant tumors. In 1977, Doctors Muriel Schaubel and Mutaz Habel used stainless steel needles inserted directly into the tumors. Doctors Schaubel and Habel used three leves of current: 3 milliamperes, ½ milliampre, and 960 millimicroamperes. With the 3 Ma current there was significant destruction of the tumor, with about twice as much at the positive as the negative location. At the ½ MA there was destruction of the tumor at the positive electrode. At the lowest level of current there was a reduction in the weight of the tumors with both the positive and negative electrodes. The conclusion was the tumor destruction was the result of local electrolysis at the needle electrode.
13. The local toxicity of electricity kills cancer cells, but the real hazard is stimulating other cancer growth with the use of electricity.
14. Dr Kenneth McLean claimed that rats inoculated with cancer survived if they were treated with extremely high strength DC magnetic fields.
15. Pulsed magnetic field treatment for bone nonunions also has been reported to slow the growth of animal tumors. Pulsed magnetic fields have a major effect on the stress-response system. Exposure of the whole animal for a short time causes a rapid stress response, with a marked increase in the activity of the immune system. For a time, the immune system has the upper hand and defeats an increased growth of the cancer. However, continuing the exposure beyond the short term results in a decline of the stress response and the immune system falls to below normal levels. Tumor-cell growth is then enhanced by both the drop in immune-system efficiency and the direction of the pulsed magnetic field on the cancer cells themselves.
16. Dr Becker discovered that some human cancer cells in a culture appeared to dedifferentiate when exposed to electrically generated silver ions. An electrical-charge transfer sends a signal to the nucleus of the cancer cell that activates the primitive type genes, and the cell dedifferentiates.

the health benefits of the normal menstrual cycle and the risks of taking birth control pills non-stop to do away with the normal menstrual cycle "for convenience," I recommend The Blessings of the Curse: No More Periods? by Susan Rako, M.D. How many of us know that taking birth control pills puts us at increased risk for HPV and cervical cancer? Dr. Rako's book has information that the drugs companies don't tell us and that has been down-played in the media. It's a book that every responsible parent and every fertile-age woman needs to read.

A ton of easy to understand information for teens! My teen also really liked S.E.X. by Heather Corinna. Each gave her different information and covered simliar subjects differently.

I own Toni's first book, "TCOYF" and it completely changed the way I look at my body and my cycles. So I was thrilled that she came out with this book for teens. I purchased it with the intent of giving it to my younger sister, but after reading it; I have decided to return it.

What I loved: The first two parts (Cycle Smart and Cycle Signals) cover all the basics on the female body that I guarentee your kids will never hear about in school. :) Toni discusses the different stages in a woman's cycle, including charting your fertility signs to help understand your body. The book is very well put together with fun illustrations and page layouts. The writing is smart and fun, and very easy to read.
This book does not teach FAM as a means of birth control. In fact, I was hopeful after reading the following in the introduction: "...this book is no more a sex-education manual than it is a primer on tampons."

What I didn't love: The third part of the book (Cycle Solutions) has a chapter called "From Cycle Savvy to Sex Smart" that seemed to contradict this statment in the intro. I will conceed that from a world/secular standpoint, this chapter is presented in a very balanced way. Most of the chapter is filled with stories of teenage girls' experiences with sex. The stories cover the spectrum, from "I had sex as a teen and regret it every day" to "I waited for just the right time with my boyfriend" and everything in between. If you or your daughter are proponents of abstinence, you will definitely want to look over this chapter before buying.

From a Christian standpoint, the information presented in this chapter is completely incongruent with what the Bible teaches. As much as I love Toni and everything she has done to empower women, and as much as I loved everything else about this book, this one chapter was enough for me to return it.

If only this book had been around when I was a teen! Great, solid information shared in a straight forward way that will assist young girls in getting past the hypersexualization that they face today and move into a core of true self respect and self esteem. This book is a blessing.

As a physician specializing in fertility, I see a lot of chronic reproductive health problems (and their devastating consequences)in my adult patients that could have been prevented if the patient had been provided with quality reproductive education as a teenager. This book provides the information young women need to make decisions at a young age that will impact their health across the lifespan. Thank you, Toni for making my job easier and for preserving the reproductive health of the next generation.

Dr. Susan Carr

My daughter was diagnosed in 1997 at 1 month of age. Fortunately for our family we had the best specialist to help diagnose and treat her condition almost from day 1 of her life. And her doctor is none other than Dr. Orenstein himself (or just Dr. O to us). I can speak from personal knowledge that he is without a doubt the most informative doctor I have ever been around. He truly cares about the children in his care and he takes a proactive role in their health and well-being. His book is considered the CF bible by those in the know in the Pediatric Pulmonary field. As you read this picture a man with a bow tie and sandals explaining this to you. It is very easy to read and understand which when it comes to this disease is very important. I am happy to say that my daughter is almost 12 and thanks to Dr. O and his staff is in excellent health. If you know someone with this disease get them this book or better yet get it for yourself as well. Knowledge and understanding of the disease can really help.

This book accurately describes the disease cystic fibrosis (CF) and offers guidance in self-management on day to day problems. As a mother of a son who has CF, I highly recommend this book to any family dealing with CF.

I eagerly await the 3rd edition of this book. As a fully involved CF parent, my 8y/o daughter's care has benefited from my increased knowledge. I can form theories and question her caregivers from a more informed perspective and that is a win-win situation. If you have a child with CF, you should have this book. I call it the CF Bible.(Although encyclopedia would be a more accurate description.) I feel this book should be given to the parents of all newly diagnosed children.

I really enjoyed this book. Anyone who needs to learn anything about Cystic Fibrosis should definitely buy this. It covers everything! I read the whole thing in 4 days and I understand so much more now.

Im a teenager and was diagnosed with CF when I was born in 1989.
It was recently that I wanted to do some more reading on my disease. I looked through some books and was shocked by what I was reading. As many of you know, the out-of-date books on CF can have some very frightening information, like death and more infections, and etc. It was I discovered this book that I was so much more relaxed about my condition. This book is up-to-date and tells the real facts about this disease. After reading this, my disease doesn't scare me anymore.
If you are a teen, like me, I suggest you read thid.
If you know anybody with CF, you should read this book or have them read this. Don't let them read those early books on CF with the grim facts...have them read this with the true and helpful facts.

I have just finished reading this book. I finished my treatment for breast cancer this past April. How I wish I had found this book at the beginning of my diagnosis - it would have helped me see that what I was going through was normal and that there were even others who had experienced the same things. Even now, it has made me feel okay about my fears and about some side effects I am still experiencing. I think what is so sad is that the fight against breast cancer has been going on for so MANY years and yet there is still so much that doctors don't tell their patients about this disease and what they are experiencing. Thank you for putting this book together. I feel like I know all the women who responded to your questionnaire. I'm so glad I found your book - thanks to Amazon for suggesting other reading sources when I was searching for a book about survivors! You've done a great service for all women. It should be required reading for every woman diagnosed with breast cancer.

I read this book cover to cover in 2 days and loved the quotations, experiences, suggestions, wisdom, thoughts and feelings of those touched by breast cancer.

I was particularly struck by the cover of the book to start with. I have had a recurrent dream starting in the long ago past in which a huge wave (looks almost exactly like that picture) is coming which will wipe out all life on earth. I have to decide if I'm just going to stay put, try to outrace it with my car (useless) or try to swim through it. I decided to start swimming. I wonder if this was a message to me in advance to "just keep swimming" as Dory in Finding Nemo kept singing. Most of the stories written here encourage us all to do just that.

I checked this book out of the library and now I am buying it, along with Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book. I also like the Mayo Clinics Guide to Women's Cancers. I was diagnosed a month ago, am recovering from a mastectomy, have Stage 3C cancer, and will be starting chemo and radiation. I love this book because it's written in plain english, it deals with the practical and the emotional, and it presents many sides of the issue. Every woman's cancer and treatment is different, and this book gives you an idea of the spectrum of what to expect every step of the way. It's also an easy book to flip through -- I plan to bring it to chemo, and I am copying my favorite bits of advice and quotations into a small journal. I hope to contribute to the sequel.

It is filled with wonderful quotations and proverbs (not about breast cancer, but about life, healing, fear, etc.)

This may sound silly, but I also like the size of the book, the title, and the cover art.

I've checked some 20 books out of the library, and this is one my favorites.

Hi Leila! I am a survivor who has many quotes in your book, Dancing with Fear. I just got a copy yesterday and I couldn't put the book down. It truly is a wonderful and inspiring thing to read. After I finished it, my husband read it and was brought to tears. He wants to order some copies for both of our daughters and at least one friend of his whose wife is going thru cancer, but not breast cancer. As my husband said, this information is useful to anyone!

I have continued to have problems related to my treatment which have given me and my family more challenges to overcome. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to work as an RN and am not able to keep up my "normal" fast pace of life. I find that I go back to this book from time to time to get some strength again.

I am a three-year breast cancer survivor and have read many, many books on the subject, but "Dancing With Fear" was one of the most personal. By the time I finished reading it, I was thinking of the women quoted as friends of mine! They seemed so real, because they ARE real, and that made the book one of my favorites!

I liked this book so much I bought one for everyone in my family. I am only 21 years old, but I'm so glad I found this book now so that I won't have to deal with a lifetime of diets and not accepting myself. This book reveals the b.s. associated with the diet industry, and teaches you both to love yourself and to treat your body the right way for YOU. The authors really seem to know what the struggle is like and the best way to handle it--like what it feels in the exact moment you want to binge eat and how to accept yourself, and then change the situation. It consists of short chapters, and sometimes guide charts, which makes it easy to go right back to the information you need at a particular moment. I definitely recommend this book for anyone and everyone, especially teenagers!

This book is the best approach to learning WHY you feel the way you do about dieting, body image and food and to turning around the negative feelings to help you become healthy again. The individual lessons can be done in any order once you've read it through - very helpful if you have a particular issue come up. I've used it over and over again to help me on my journey away from compulsive and binge eating. Judith and Ellen encourage taking small steps, one thing at a time and focusing on health and self-care - a completely different viewpoint than I've ever used and it has changed my life. I'm relaxed around food, wear clothes that fit me NOW and have opened new areas in my life because I'm not obsessing about food, points, weights, portions, etc. I've rediscovered the joy of movement for how good it feels instead of only working for results - and so I move more often than I ever have.
I now know I am a diet survivor, and this is the the book that started the change in my life.....I highly recommend it.

I am a text book case of the yo-yo dieter that Judith & Ellen describe in their book. For a few years in a row I would gear-up, diet, lose about 10 pounds, get antsy after about 3-4 months, binge, then gain back the 10 and then some.

I had the opportunity to attend a presentation the authors gave about the book at a local book store. I was intrigued by the idea that you could avoid having to restrict yourself , track points, calories etc., and simply get in-tune with your own physical comfort as it relates to food and eating.

I made some subtle modifications to the way I eat. I never feel stuffed anymore after a meal, and literally felt light enough to start an exercise regimen which resulted in further weight loss. (The down side is that I've
had to replace much of my wardrobe - from size 12 to around jr. size 9)

This book turns the whole idea of dieting on its head. I hope Oprah sniffs it out so she can share it with the world.

Read it!

Andra Kossy
Skokie, Illinois

This book is a wonderful guide for people who are trying to learn to trust their bodies again. The journey towards becoming an attuned or intuitive eater can be hard, especially for anyone battling back from an eating disorder. This book gives you easy lessons, in short, easy to digest chapters. Its also a small book... perfect for slipping into a purse or backpack. That may seem like a silly comment, but I love it because it means I can take the book with me anywhere, for when I need some extra support.

American women and girls (and, increasingly, men and boys) are bombarded with messages about ideal bodies and acceptable weights, "good" and "bad" foods and the health risks of "obesity." Toss in the wealth of other stresses related to contemporary life and a recipe for disordered eating is born.

The disordered eating often takes the form of socially sanctioned and even professionally encouraged dieting and weight-loss behaviors. At the turn of the millennium about 116 million Americans (55% of the adult population) were dieting, supporting a $50 billion weight loss industry.

The result -- a lot of people "walking around feeling that something is terribly wrong with their bodies and themselves," as Matz and Frankel write. "Dieters of all sizes feel their body is unacceptable because it fails to meet the societal view of perfection....The truth is we live in a shame-based culture that says that if your body differs from the coveted thin physique, something is intrinsically wrong with you and in need of fixing."

Matz and Frankel document the damage dieting and other weight-loss focused attitudes and behaviors can do to physical and emotional health, including ways they contribute to compulsive eating. They offer strategies to identify ways in which uncomfortable feelings are channeled into "bad body" (or "fat body") thoughts and sensations, for which dieting or other forms of restrictive eating or weight-loss behavior are grasped at as possible solutions. And they point out that grasping at weight loss as a solution is no more a healthy (or potentially successful) strategy for truly fat women (or men) than it is for those who merely think they're fat, or who are just a few pounds over the societal ideal.

Dieting (restricting what one eats) is often viewed as a solution to compulsive eating (as well as to "obesity") -- but instead is actually a significant CAUSE of compulsive eating. In fact, dieting and other weight-loss related behaviors reinforce bodily dissociation, as individuals override their natural sensations of hunger and satiety in attempts to lose or "manage" weight. Ironically, dieting also tends to make people fatter, due to lowered metabolism and the tendency of many people to regain more weight than they lost as their bodies compensate (and protect) for the self-induced famines.

Is there any other industry in which a failure rate of almost 100% (almost all people who lose weight through dieting will regain it) is blamed on the CONSUMER rather than the product? But the truth, as Matz and Frankel point out, is that people don't fail at dieting....their diets fail THEM.