Librarian

French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

The French paradox: dine on Duck à l’Orange and goat cheese, eat chocolate and croissants, and drink wine and champagne while staying slim and healthy. Mireille Guiliano, president and CEO of the U.S. affiliate of champagne producer Clicquot, splits her time between Paris and New York and is in the perfect position to explain this apparent contradiction.

More on my blog: Book Review: French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano
The comments on this post are as enlightening as the book!

Thin for Life: 10 Keys to Success from People who have Lost Weight and Kept it Off by Anne M. Fletcher.

Anne Fletcher, registered dietitian and author of Thin for Life, noticed that weight loss research was decidedly pessimistic. Study after study of various diets showed that none of them worked particularly well, reporting things like “most people gain back the weight within 3 years of loss.” The depressing news, however, never reveals possible underlying causes like these:

• The people who end up in research studies may be the most intractable cases. People who successfully lost weight on their own don’t show up at universities for comparative studies of diets.
• Studies report average weight loss, masking the success stories that are hiding in the data.
• Research studies assign diets to participants. It may be that most people lose weight when they get to choose and tweak their own food and exercise plans to suit their tastes and lifestyles.

Anne Fletcher decided that a better approach would be to examine people who successfully lost weight and kept it off. For the original book, she interviewed 160 people who she calls “masters” of weight loss. By the time of the updated edition, she was up to 208 “masters.”

More thoughts on my blog, particularly about how this book helps with weight maintenance: Book Review: Thin for Life by Anne Fletcher

Woohoo! 70 Books! This feels like a huge milestone.

The Game On Diet by Krista Vernoff and Az Ferguson

The Game On Diet is a diet presented as a game for two or more teams of players to coax themselves and each other into healthier habits, while engaging in a four-week competition for fun, prizes, and bragging rights. Players earn points for following the meal plan, exercising, sleeping, drinking water, banishing bad habits, and establishing new good ones. A score sheet and rules all make it clear exactly how the game is to be played. Weight loss is one reason to play, as is obvious from the title, but players can participate who don’t need to lose weight but want to meet other fitness goals.

I wrote about how I played the game on my blog: Book Review: The Game On Diet by Krista Vernoff and Az Ferguson

Smart Chefs Stay Slim by Allsion Adato

Smart Chefs Stay Slim was the perfect book to follow the one I wrote about last week: Book Review: Culinary Intelligence by Peter Kaminsky. After reading Culinary Intelligence, I felt resolved to take my cooking to the next level as part of my strategy to maintain my weight loss. In Smart Chefs Stay Slim, I met chefs who were already at the next level (or, rather, many levels beyond) and used their expertise to feed themselves and their families with delicious and nutritious meals.

More on my blog: Book Review: Smart Chefs Stay Slim by Allison Adato

Culinary Intelligence by Peter Kaminsky

In Culinary Intelligence, columnist and author Peter Kaminsky approaches the quest for healthy eating by focusing on the quailty of the food we eat.

Good cooking with real ingredients is the only way to eat a healthy, satisfying diet. Some authorities may not be so insistent on this point. I see no other way. (p. 20)

The central concept of Flavor per Calorie makes developing Culinary Intelligence a matter of attentiveness, mostly, aided by some knowledge acquired along the way about calories and even more about what maximizes flavors of foods. Flavor per Calorie, of course, begins with great ingredients, so there’s a whole chapter on that. I was intrigued by the next chapter called “The Fundamentals of Flavor: The Elements of Taste” because it helped me develop a vocabulary of flavor — if I can talk or write about something, it’s much easier for me to be attentive to it.

More on my blog: Book Review: Culinary Intelligence by Peter Kaminsky

31. Read 19 books to support my healthy lifestyle.

32. Met and exceeded my goal to read 50 books in 2012

33. Attended an interesting lecture about Oscar Wilde and his visit to St. Louis Book Review: Stories for Children by Oscar Wilde and a Wilde visit to St. Louis

34. Completed a revamp of our estate plan

35. Got and learned to use my first smart phone

36. Collected a travel wardrobe for the Ireland trip that got me through the summer and fall. Since my weight has stabilized, these are clothes I’ll be wearing for a few years.

37. Attended two events at the St. Louis Art Museum where we learned about modern photography as art

38. Attended many fun events at the Missouri Botanical Garden

39. Facilitated the diversity book club through another year

40. Instigated planning for an African American Read-In during Black History Month at my local library in 2013

41. Enjoyed many family activities with DH’s family, including an overnight trip to his nephew’s college town

42. Enjoyed several activities with my brother and his new pre-built family

43. I turned 50, feeling happy and healthy!

21. Worked my way through Slim in 6 exercise video series and most of the way through the 30 Day Shred workout video (I’ll have 30 days by the end of Dec)

22. Finally gave up Diet Coke!

23. Worked in the yard many times without injury (knock on wood) thanks to my new stronger muscles

24. Maintained the 70 pound weight loss that I achieved in the two+ previous years

25. Wore a form-fitting very sparkly top to a Christmas party

26. Continued planning my meals and snacks nearly every day

27. Continued exercising nearly every day.

28. Continued checking in with my diet buddies nearly every day. Beck Diet Solution forum on 3 Fat Chicks

29. Ate many yummy salads with home made dressings, making salad my visual art form

30. Began Readers’ Workouts on my blog, a weekly event for bookish types to support each other’s athletic endeavors—and watched it grow over time

11. I was published in the Huffington Post! A Librarian’s Tips for Healthy Holiday Parties

12. I kept my book blog going for another year—it’s 2nd birthday will be in less than a month! Joy’s Book Blog

13. Completed the April Platform Challenge for writers

14. Increased my Twitter followers, Facebook friends, blog readers and other social media contacts

15. Completed two on-line writing classes

16. Wrote the first third of the first draft of my memoir

17. Completed a pitch boot camp, writing a good pitch for my memoir

18. Found two different writing tribes on Facebook to help me with my writing goals

19. Established a habit of virtual writing “dates” with a friend in Texas

20. I wrote 50,000 words in two different months

1. We went to Ireland!

2. Getting to know people on the Ireland trip

3. Read some really good books including Ireland: Awakening and Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd

4. Bought two wonderful sweaters and scarves in Ireland that I love wearing now that we’re getting cooler weather

5. A romantic and wonderful Irish meal in Killarney

6. A delightful trip to Kansas City

7. Seeing and photographing the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in KC

8. An enjoyable rainy Sunday afternoon in the Nelson-Atkins Museum in KC

9. A relaxed and relaxing trip to Northwest Arkansas

10. Being in and around the amazing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, designed by architect Moshe Safdie

The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl by Shauna Reid

Shauna Reid started her weight loss journey at 351 pounds in Australia, followed it through two different diet programs (and some ups and downs). After losing over a hundred pounds, she moved to Scotland and continued to lose weight in a more non-dieting fashion. The book is in a diary format to match its original source, her blog: The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl.

More thoughts about this memoir on my blog: Book Review: The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl by Shauna Reid

American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America by Michelle Obama

American Grown by Michelle Obama tells the story of the White House Kitchen Garden beginning with some concerns shared by all gardeners and others completely unique to her garden:

When I first arrived in Washington, I wasn’t even sure that we could plant a garden. I didn’t know whether we would be allowed to change the landscaping on the White House grounds, or whether the soil would be fertile enough, or whether there would be enough sunlight. And I had hardly any gardening experience, so I didn’t even really know how to go about planting a garden in the first place.

Of course, she had a lot of help, including the assistance of the National Park Service, since it turns out that the White House grounds are a National Park. The proceeds of this book go to the National Park Foundation, the charitable partner of the National Park Service.

More on my blog, including the story of how I converted the Sweet Potato Quick Bread recipe into a yeast bread for my bread machine (with recipe and photo): Book Review: American Grown and Sweet Potato Yeast Bread — Weekend Cooking

Wishing you a year filled with wonderful adventures including a trip to Europe (woohoo!), lovely hikes, and many reasons for gratitude!

Hi 43 Thingers!

I recently made a loan to Houda of Lebanon. Her loan is nearly funded but we need six more people to chip in. I chose her because she has a well-established clothing business.

There are no loans available to help Syrian business owners. I hoped that helping a business owner in neighboring Lebanon might be a tiny step toward future stability in the region.

Here’s the link to her profile: http://www.kiva.org/lend/448483?_te=lew&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=expiration_warning

Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs

This is the funniest book I’ve read for this challenge!

After explaining that he has made a list of healthy things to add to his life that is fifty-three pages long, A.J. Jacobs expounds on his plan on page 2:

I want to do everything on my list because my quest isn’t just to be a little bit healthier. My quest isn’t to lose a couple of pounds. My quest is to turn my current self — a mushy, easily winded, moderately sickly blob — into the embodiment of health and fitness. To become as healthy as humanly possible.

Drop Dead Healthy is the story of that quest, taking place over two years plus a little.

More here: Book Review: Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird contains the wisdom that Anne Lamott imparts to the students in her writing classes. A mix of personal experience, student struggles, and expert advice from other writers, Bird by Bird encourages the writer with a mix of humor, tough love, and commiseration.

More thoughts here: Book Review: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

2 Reloans:

Rabab who sells cosmetics, including sunscreen in Lebanon

Houda who sells clothes, also in Lebanon

I chose Lebanon today because my heart is breaking for Syria. Loans to Syrian business people aren’t an option, so I’m loaning to business people in a neighboring country.

The Hundred Year Diet: America’s Voracious Appetite for Losing Weight by Susan Yager

As the title suggests, The Hundred Year Diet covers the history of dieting in America from about World War I to the present day, with much of the message being “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” In parallel, of course, it also covers the history of weight during that time, changes in the Met Life charts and in the weights of Americans throughout the last century. Here the message is that the US has been declared too fat since at least the 1950s, even when the data didn’t support that claim. Now that the numbers of overweight and obese Americans really is high, we don’t seem to have learned much in all those years of what to do about a real obesity epidemic.

More thoughts here: Book Review: The Hundred Year Diet by Susan Yager.

Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill by Daniel Imhoff

The book I read for number 61, Why Calories Count by Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim, recommended “Get Political” as one strategy to combat obesity both on a personal and societal level. So, I chose a book about the 2012 Farm Bill as book 62.

Food Fight by Daniel Imhoff is about what we colloquially call the Farm Bill with a special emphasis on being a guide to the 2012 version. In order to do that, though, a lot of background and history is required to understand how we got to the complicated and confusing state of affairs.

More here: Book Review: Food Fight by Daniel Imhoff

Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics by Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim

This is a science book that covers science the way that I most like to learn it — from history. The book begins with a definition of calorie in the first chapter, but then takes us all the way back to Ancient Greece to trace the knowledge of food energy forward from that point. The history covers two separate but related branches — how calories are counted in foods and how calorie use is measured in living bodies.

With that solid background, we’re then ready to tackle what calories do for us, the complexity of determining how many calories we need, and the problems of too few and too many calories. The final section covers the current “eat more” environment and the economic, political, and social factors that created it and make it difficult to change.

While this is not a diet book, a concluding chapter “How to Cope with the Calorie Environment” provides a framework for maintaining a healthy weight.

More here: Book Review: Why Calories Count by Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim

Do I Look Fat in This? Get Over Your Body and On With Your Life by Rhonda Britten

This is the second book I’ve read with the same title—see Book 58.

Rhonda Britten was a life coach on the reality TV series Starting Over during the time this book was written and published. She has written several other books beginning with Fearless Living in 2001. In Do I Look Fat in This?, Britten covers the issue of body image and weight. The book is part memoir, part self-help.

Many more thoughts about clothes designed for women without curves and other body image issues on my blog: Book Review: Do I Look Fat in This? by Rhonda Britten