Loss Books

Here's a writer who understands what motivates men to lose weight and keep it off. The author is realistic. He understands the crazy life-style real men lead, their hectic travel schedules, the restaurant meal stresses and the lack of physical activity strains. I can attest to the fact that this program works -- it did for me.

Dr. Shaevitz offers four simple rules to follow to lose weight during the first phase of his program. Then, modifing them a bit, these rules help you keep that weight off during the second phase -- the rest of your life. These rules involve neither calorie nor gram counting, and that constant gnawing hunger that accompanies most weight loss programs is not part of this one. There are no rigid daily diets to follow, no special food products to buy, and no short-term sacrifices to the great hunger god in sky. The program is rooted in common sense and caution, giving the reader the basic information about nutrition that's needed to make the right food choices in virtually every situation.

After detailing why following each rule is so important to the whole program, a signigicant portion of the book addresses the specific eating problems men face while traveling. Guides for what to order in each kind of restaurant (Mexican, Italian, French, fast food, etc.) are followed by a very helpful "Do's and Don'ts" summary.

The chapter directed to the women who love us (wives, girl-friends, etc.) yet who often feed us exactly the wrong things, and worse yet, express their love for us in exactly the wrong ways, is absolutely priceless. If there is some well-meaning woman in your life concerned about how much you weigh, and sometimes known to nag you a bit about it, buy this book, if for no other reason than just to give her that chapter to read.

Even if you already know all about dieting, you will find this book both readable and helpful. That's because it is not so much about dieting as it is about the helping men become the kind of good food consumers that leave them feeling better, looking better, and enjoying life more.

Following "the rules" suggested about 80% of the time, I've lost weight consistently over time and have been able to keep that weight off without going hungry and without giving-up everything that tastes good, the food that I like to eat. But the real kicker (which has motivated my writing this review): I've never felt better!

Here's the culinary and life-style advice I've needed for many years now, and I am happy to recommend it to you wholeheartedly.

Similarly, Bharati Mukherjee's essay, "Imagining Homelands", provides thoughtful elaborations on the nuances and connotations of the words "expatriate", "exile" and "immigrant"; she draws fine and interesting distinctions among these words and carefully entwines these distinctions with an elaboration of her own life experiences.

The strongest essays in this collection, however, are those of Eva Hoffman, Edward Said and Charles Simic. All three of these writers provide classic insights into the experience of "exile, identity, language, and loss" which are worth careful thought and consideration. All three suggest (as does Mukherjee when she describes herself as an "integrationist" and a "mongrelizer") that the exile can only ultimately be redeemed by rejecting irrational devotion to the narrow and myopic tribalism of nation, ethnicity, religion, and ideology which so often encumbers the exile community; that redemption comes only through freedom, reason and syncretism. Thus, Simic writes, in concluding his essay, "Refugees", that the poet "is a member of that minority that refuses to be part of any official minority, because a poet knows what it is to belong among those walking in broad daylight, as well as among those hiding behind closed doors."

Hoffman's essay, "The New Nomads", is clearly the best of this collection. She carefully delineates the universality of the exilic experience, an experience which can be found in the Ur-text of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden. She then discusses the way in which exile can magnify the impulse to "memorialize" the past. The result, she suggests, is that exile distorts the vision of the past, tending to make it an idealized "mythic, static realm" which forever impedes the ability to deal with the present (what Hoffman perceptively characterizes as the "rigidity of the exilic posture"). She then provides an interesting discussion of A.B. Yehoshua's provocative essay, "Exile as Neurotic Solution", wherein he postulated that there were many opportunities for the Jews (prior to the creation of the modern State of Israel) to settle in Palestine more easily than in countries where they had chosen to live, but it was the one location they avoided. In Hoffman's words, "[i]t was as if they were afraid precisely of reaching their promised land and the responsibilities and conflicts involved in turning the mythical Israel into an actual, ordinary home." The ultimate result of the "memorialization" of the past and the "rigidity of the exilic posture" is that exile communities often cannot function in the locus of the larger society; rather, they conceive of themselves as perpetually "Other".

Edward Said's essay, "No Reconciliation Allowed", describes the dislocation of the exile in vivid terms: "a Palestinian going to school in Egypt, with an English first name, an American passport, and no certain identity at all." Thus, he finds himself in a secondary school where only English is permitted to be spoken, even though none of the students is a native speaker of English. While his entire educational experience is Anglocentric in the extreme, he is also trained to understand he is a "Non-European Other", someone who can never aspire to being British in any true sense of the word. While Said has been criticized recently for allegedly misrepresenting his past, he is quite forthcoming in this essay in acknowledging his admiration for "self-invention". In some sense, Said's essay and the narrative of his life reflects his theory, specifically the notion that we can (and do) use language instrumentally to construct social realities (in this case the reality of his life).

While somewhat uneven, as all collections are, "Letters of Transit" ultimately provides a rich, varied and deeply insightful range of readings on what it means to be an exile.

There is not, however, based on just one perspective. We read five different authors' point of view and their personal experiences, which allows for a range of inquiries.

I highly recommend this book.

I have all of Dr. Moody's books. They have helped me understand an out of body experience I had fifteen years ago.

He is one of our brave authors who dares to write of controversial subjects. Thank you, Dr. Moody