The Life You Want: Get Motivated, Lose Weight, and Be Happy by Bob Greene

“The Life You Want: Get Motivated, Lose Weight, and Be Happy” is the latest book from fitness author Bob Greene, who also wrote “Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life,” “Keep the Connection : Choices for a better body and a healthier life”, “The best diet to live” and many others. This book, written with psychologist Ann Kearney-Cooke and nutritionist Janis Jibrin, focuses on common barriers to weight loss success and provides practical advice on emotional eating and lack of motivation.

After an introduction, where Greene tells a personal story involving his analysis of the emotional and psychological side of weight loss, and what this book can do for the reader, he begins with a chapter on barriers to weight loss success. of weight. Greene addresses eight barriers, and none of them are eating or exercising, but rather mental or emotional ones.

In chapter two, Kearney-Cooke addresses overcoming emotional eating. This is a big problem for many, and this chapter reveals some simple ways to find your motivation, overcome barriers, and find replacements for eating to deal with emotions. It is a practical chapter with advice on how to achieve your goals in these areas.

The third chapter is from Jibrin, and it focuses on rewiring your sugar, fat, and salt loving brain. There is interesting information on why we eat what we eat, eight reasons why we should control our diet and his nine-step program to follow a nutritious and adequate calorie diet.

Greene is back with chapter four, where he covers conquering exercise aversion. If he’s having trouble getting up and going, this chapter can help him find some motivation to get moving. He lists thirteen reasons to exercise, and he really only needs to pick one to motivate himself to do so. He addresses many common excuses and ways to overcome them, as well as different types of exercises that he should include in his workouts.

Chapter five is about body image transformation, and in it Kearney-Cooke tackles a topic that many people need help with, especially the images we are bombarded with by television and print media.

Greene is back with chapter six, covering how to maintain your weight loss. He examines what works and what doesn’t, and provides some great tips and advice to make sure that when you lose weight, you keep it off.

Being happy is important, and Kearney-Cooke discusses what it takes to be happy in chapter seven. I liked this chapter and I think a lot of people could benefit from following the simple guidelines laid out in these pages.

After chapter seven, there is Appendix 1 which contains The Lifestyle Log. This is an encouragement with a sample worksheet, to record important things about your lifestyle, such as sleep, hunger, food and drink consumption, etc. Appendix 2 covers the Body Mass Index, while Appendix 3 has the Goldberg Depression Scale. Appendix 4 has sample goal setting worksheet instructions, and Appendix 5 has Motivational Interviewing to help you assess yourself. Appendix 6 is Life’s Best Approach to Exercise by Greene. Simple plan with suggested exercises. Brief descriptions of the exercises, but without images.

Overall, this is a good book for many people who are having difficulty losing weight or keeping it off due to emotional issues or lack of motivation. The authors offer a simple and practical guide to overcome these barriers, get motivated, lose weight and be happy. If you need help in these areas, check out this book, but more importantly, apply what the authors teach.