Vans Books

This book brings an interesting approach to eating and weight control based on two points. The first is that everybody has a built-in metabolic rate (or burn rate) that determines how a given level of calorie intake affects their weight. The second point is that dfferent foods "burn" at different rates, that is their intake will provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness for only so long (carbohydrates burn quickly and fats burn slowly). The trick to losing weight (assuming that is what most of us want to do) is to mix foods in our diet and spread our eating over the day so that we feel full and acknowledge what level of calories we need to take in (given our internal burn rate along with our level of exercise)to attain a certain weight level.

This diet (really a way of eating) is a very individualized approach that begins with a burn rate test diet in which you a eat specified for 2 weeks and see how that affects your weight. This lets you see if you have a high or low burn rate. From here, you eat pretty much without a lot of strict rules but take account of how the foods you eat are burned by your body and affect your desire to eat. The right mix of foods and the timing of your eating (given the burn rate of the foods) will help you feel full while allowing you to lose weight. As you lose weight, you should then be able to match your eating to your burn rate (which changes with your weight) to get a balance between the calories you take in through eating and those you expend through your basic metabolism of sustaining your body and the calories you spend on your activities, including exercise.

To me, the book seemed to present a credible theory of why people can eat very differently and still have the same weight (or eat the same and have different weights). The book has an good discussion of other diets (such as Atkins and the Zone diets) that links them to the framework of this book. My understanding is that this method of eating is fairly close to the zone diet, i.e., you eat foods over the course of the day with sense of how they affect your blood sugar and feeling of fullness.

The best part of this book is its confident support for the idea that being overweight is not a sign that you are mentally and psychologically deficient, as so many people would have overweight people believe. Being overweight usually means that you have a slow metabolism, something you were born with.

This book is one of two valuable new books on creating a more individualized approach to eating for better health and weight control. The other book is "Live Right for Your Type." I suggest that you read both of these books and apply their lessons together. If you are a woman, I suggest you also read "Outsmarting Female Fatigue" as a good complement to these two books.

One of Dr. Van Schoyck's best qualities is that he listens carefully to his patients when they describe their weight issues. While almost everyone has a stereotype of fat people as binge eaters with no self-control, he has found that "fewer than 20 percent of my patients actually overeat." The culprit instead is a slow metabolism, the rate at which the body burns calories. His book offers you a chance to find out the extent to which your weight level is maintained by overeating, by not enough exercise, and by a slow metabolism. For most overweight people, the last will be the primary reason.

The good news is that with the proper diet, you can actually increase your metabolism to its full potential (which still may not be that of the skinny person next to you) so that you can have a more enjoyable, healthy life. That may also mean that your ideal weight is not what the insurance companies and physicians use. It may be higher than that. But you will probably be healthier at that weight than at a lower one that is all but impossible for you to maintain. So this approach should help you avoid yo-yo weight loss and gain.

Getting started is the tough part. You have to follow a test diet that will tell you what your metabolism is for two weeks. Since I just got the book, I have not yet done that. The diet is not too difficult. It is not designed to cause you to lose weight, and you can substitute a lot. The diet is what a "normal" person could eat and maintain weight. So, for some people, it will be an increase in eating.

The book then tells you how to take the results (how much you gain or lose) and construct an on-going menu-planning system that fits your metabolism. You can also use the authors' web site (for free) to do this, which is what I would recommend. That's easier.

The book has an excellent discussion of other diets and what is right and wrong with them that you will find valuable. It also is very strong on the idea of customizing how you eat to fit yourself. There is a wonderful discussion of how the body burns newly-ingested food, and stored food already in the body that helped me to understand how to adapt how I eat. Some people (I am one of them) can live off of burning stored fat for more hours than others. I always find that I feel best when I only eat once or twice a day. That's because I am burning fat evenly the rest of the time. Other people feel fatigued when they are burning fat, and need frequent meals. My wife is a good example of that. So we each need to eat quite differently for our metabolisms to be optimized. It also happens that we have different blood types. I am an "O" and she is a "B." From reading "Live Right for Your Type" I had learned that we need to eat a different mix of foods. She should strive for balance and more frequent eating while I should emphasize proteins, especially beef, a bit more.

With the combined knowledge from these two books, I should be able to manage both my energy and my weight in much more healthful and easy ways. I look forward to the results!

By the way, if you like to snack, that may be just the right thing for you to do. And this book has many good suggestions for how to make snacking improve your energy and metabolism. You will also get to eat foods that I have never seen on another diet. In fact, it's not really a diet in the sense of a weight-loss diet. Rather it's a way of eating that will maintain your weight at its natural level.

I suggest that you also share this book with everyone else in your family. Since you will be eating a lot of meals together, that will make it easier for all of you to follow through on what makes sense for each of you. Otherwise, your new eating plans could simply cause disruptions in your relations with everyone else. I can still remember my Mother happily feeding us "O" people in the family her idea "A" meals. They didn't work very well for us, but she sure loved them.

May your life be filled with lots of health, happiness, peace, and prosperity as a result of the new understanding of your metabolism and how to eat that this book provides you!

The book goes over the information quite thoroughly. However, there are a few things that can be improved upon. The book only mentions one method of doing things while there are actually several that make more sense.
The answers in the back of the book help you check your work, but it does end up being a crutch that you lean on (once you figure out there are answers there).
A lot of good information, even if it is a high-school level book used in colleges.

Well organized and informative, this text educates and challenges today's young business math student whether the course is being taken as a requirement or as an elective. Either way, the successful student, upon completion of this course will walk away a better business student and a wiser investor/consumer.

Write for Business is a comprehensive guide to effective business writing. The book's well-structured, easy-to-use design makes it a great desktop reference. Strategies for writing e-mail, letters, proposals, and more are explained using guidelines, models, and checklists. All the models in the book are available as MS Word templates on the included CD-ROM.

This book covers many aspects of business writing. I use it regularly. The clean design and spiral binding make it very easy to use as a reference tool. I highly recommend this book to any company that has employees who need to sharpen their writing skills.

Busy Body: My Life with Tourette's Syndrome by Nick van Bloss is the most powerful and touching TS autobiography I have ever read. His descriptions for this very challenging condition are quite clear, revealing and help the reader get an idea of what it may be like to go through this ordeal day after day after day. TS is such an unusual disorder. Sure there are more painful and more life threatening conditions (I don't mean to dismiss any other disorder as "not difficult"), but TS is unusual and particularly difficult because you often have no choice but to let everyone know that "something is wrong." TS "tries" to break every social convention and rule." It is astounding how many social situations require silence or general quietness - most every classroom situation, movies, waiting in line, traveling in a public setting, shopping, theatre, etc. Until you experience TS (yourself or with a family member or friend), you have no idea how much of our society requires participants to "not make a scene" and "stay reasonably quiet." This book was difficult for me to read because I have a son with a pretty strong case of TS. I noticed many connections between Nick and my son. It helped me develop a better understanding of what my son is going through. I really don't think most people understand how painful TS can be and Nick pointed this out pretty clearly. He didn't elaborate too much on this point and based on my son's experiences, I know that Nick must be dealing with pain all the time and is actually pretty heroic about it. Although it was painful, I found this to be the most uplifting book on TS I have ever read. It reinforced teh idea that a TS sufferer can live a pretty good life and that many gifts may be associated with the condition. Nick is also a VERY humble human being who is compassionate, intelligent, sensitive and perceptive, not to mention his incredible sense of dedication and perseverance. This book is worth the read just to know him as a human being, whether he had TS or not. I only hope that this book is read by a great number of people. If anyone knows how I could e-mail or write to him, please let me know.

I heard about this book on a TS webboard and decided to order it. I was not sorry I did. It is an excellent book and he really portrays what it is like to have TS in a candid, funny way. I recommend this to anyone who has TS or would like to know what it is like to have it.

Called OUT: The Voices and Gifts of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Presbyterians, edited by Jane Adams Spahr (Chi Rho Pr; ISBN: 1888493003), can also be bought on Amazon.com. Called Out With, excellent as it is, is the companion to this first book.

This is a wonderful book from the straight-allied point of view to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered ordination rights in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Yet it is meant to be a companion piece to an earlier book published by Chi Rho Press entitled Called OUT: The Voices and Gifts of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Presbyterians, edited by Rev. Dr.Jane Adams Spahr. Shouldn't Amazon carry this book as well?

Canadian Summer is about the Mitchells' first, well, Canadian Summer. They rent a cabin, go exploring, fall off a boat, go exploring, meet the Jolicoers, go exploring, meet Mr. Magic, go exploring, get lost, go exploring, lose their dog, go exploring, help Peter with his wounded leg, go exploring, stop a forest fire, go exploring, throw a party, go exploring, get a new house, go exploring, and did I forget to mention that they went exploring?

Canadian Summer is a book that makes you count your blessings. Hilda VanStockum has become our family's favorite author. Her writing is magical. She draws you into the story so you feel as if you are a part of it.

Because of a job transfer and limited resources, the Mitchell family was forced to move to a rustic cabin in the mountains. The cabin was far from a town and they had no transportation. VanStockum makes us love the Mitchell family. We can feel their humiliation as they come into church, the first morning in a new town, all bedraggled or dirty for various reasons.

This book is a glimpse into family life with all of its ups and downs. When the book is finished you will feel a loss, but then you will appreciate the relatively easy life we all live due to modern conveniences.

sorry! i do not have the book yet. i'm a professor of "consumer behaviour" in Universidad Iberoamericana in México, city. so if you have any comments about it i'll be ready to heard them.

I'm a Consumer Behaviour teacher in a Marketing University in Portugal, and I had problems in finding texts to work with, about this subject.
I usually used some magazines, but it's not easy to build special cases to study and to make some examples, to demonstrate the theory.
I've already read this book, and I can garantee that it's a very helpful book. I adopted it for this year in IPAM (Marketing Administration Portuguese Institute).
... the book is really good.

This is a great book that explains the basic ins and outs of chiropractic from a persponal perspecive of the author. It helps you understand that health is way more personal and is highly influenced by the individual.
The author manages to explain a very difficult and at times contraversial subject of chiropractic and health by incorporating celebrities and sportsmen and some of the philosophy and science behind it. He also manages to help the reader understand what the mind has to do with health and the stresses and strains in life too.

A truly inspirational book that everyone should read. Dr van Zyl explains Chiropracic in simple terms that everyone can understand and enjoy.
This book is a must for anyone looking to make vital improvemnts in their lives: from sportmen , to businessmen, to the family person.
This book gives vital information on how to improve ones performance and quality of life and on how to live a life of true health and well being.
Dr Storm Singleton, Chiropractor

Mr. Van De Weyer's book is one of the most remarkable skinny little church books I've come across. He presents a terrifically imaginative change in church structure and communal life, simply, directly, convincingly, thoroughly. I came across a reference to this book in another excellent book on the positive use of Celtic Christian theology, Celtic Christian Traditions, by Ian Bradley. I recommend Van De Weyer's book for leadership development study within governance groups. The leaders will have a good time while quickly getting a long ways forward in a difficult subject.

Mr van de Weyer describes in an easy-to-read narrative way, far from hiding behind theological issues, how Christianity (here in an example the Anglican church, but it could be adopted by all denominations!) could become more easily accessed by all people by involving them in ministry. Church must be a concern for everyone, not only for vicars, the author states. And the Celtic Church with its numerous saints (who really were holy women and men, judged by their lives) has enough examples to provide us all with ministries, according to our abilities and gifts. I can recommend this book to all who think of changes in their church and don't know how to begin.

When I first saw the title of this book all I could think of was oh no, another saves the century for the ages with one more literary anthology. The Ancient Library at Alexandria could never have contained more papyrus than we have currently available some short story theme involving the century. Though I have fully enjoyed each of the previous collections leisurely reading them over a couple of weeks (which seems like a century when compared to my normal pace), I vowed no more. Than I opened this book just to glimpse at who contributed and soon was hooked again all because Lawrence Block submitted a Batman tale.

Once again the quality is top rate as the thirty-six well-written stories run much of the suspense gamut submitted by a notable cast of writers. The tales include police and legal procedurals as well as the classic private sleuth investigative story among the assortment of other twist and turn tales. None of the stories shortchanges the ensemble, as this is a triumphant aggregation that is worth unhurriedly reading over a couple of weeks.

Harriet Klausner

Certainly Jeffery Deaver should know good mysteries when he sees them, and in his
personal compilation of a century of these great stories, the reader should assume it's just that, a
collection of great stories! And they are! Deaver exercises an ecumenical spirit here, practically
running the gamut of the genre!

It goes without staying that short stories generally don't carry the impact that novels do on
the same subject (not to patronize short stories, of course, as they are great in their own "write").
With the exception of some personal favorites of mine, such as P.D. James and Ellis Peters, which
he omits, Deaver's wide assortment of writers is a real treasure! For students of the history of the
suspense story, Deaver shows off Anna Katherine Green's story (Ms Green is often considered to
have written the first American suspense novel) to provide a historical perspective, and then
continues on down the time line. Such luminaries as Ellery Queen, John D. MacDonald, Ruth
Rendell, Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Sara Paretsky, and Robert Barnard light up these pages.
Indeed, a nice collection to keep around. Fun reading, too! (...)