Valuable information for anyone who eats.

Its pretty long, but an easy listen. The narrator is pleasant and there is a bit of relaxed humor tossed in. I found the descriptions of the food studies long enough for validation, but brief enough to keep things moving along. The results are some tips that everyone can incorprate into their lives to keep on top of the battle of the bulge:)
Most importantly, this book gives tips for lifestyle changes that can be permanent. Enough fad diet books already out there!(They don't work.)

9 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Best diet book on the market

Any additional comments?

I've read every Michael Pollan book (in defense of food, omnivours dilemma, cooked), Gary taubes book (why we get fat, good calories bad calories), Skinny Bitch, Jungle Effect, Rethinking Thin, Eat More Weigh Less, Atkins, South Beach. I had been obese for 15 years. I've been thin for almost two years now with a BMI of 23 and body fat of 8 percent. My BMI is the same as Lance Armstrongs in his prime. That being said, this book is as close to the most perfect diet book I've ever read. It gives solid advice and explains a lot. It explains why low carb works then stops working. It explains why we eat too much. But also, it entertains. The science is sound. The studies are interesting. The reading is good. Skip all the other books. Drink a few protein shakes and read this book.

8 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

A Revelation

A real eye-opener: the author (a food psychology researcher, associated with a university, with grad students and everything) identifies the factors that influence us to eat just a little more, and shows how these can be consciously manipulated to eat just a little bit less.

(And that's all that's needed: most people gain about a pound a year, on average, which corresponds to about a +10 calories per day surplus. Tiny tricks can get this down to -10 calories per day, or even the -260 calories per day deficit needed to lose a 1/2 a pound a week (26 pounds a year).

8 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Strategies and Tactics for Taking Control

I understand where Jim from Laredo was coming from; the author largely avoids the deeper philosophical implications of his work in exchange for a tighter focus on tactics. Read this book in order to begin to understand your eating and to begin to take control of the "mindless" portion of it.

7 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Mindless Reading

I'd hoped for insights on more deeply psychological reasons for mindless eating, and tips for overcoming mindless eating. Alas, this is mostly just a recitation of the author's numerous field and academic studies proving (or attempting to prove) that packaging, portion size, relative dish or bowl or glass sizes, and the like affect the amounts people eat and drink. Only near the very end does he address how to cope with these variables, but it's pretty obvious by then. My main gripe is the excess of needlessly detailed and repetitive study data going to prove a few not very original or helpful points about what makes people misjudge portion sizes and, as a result, overeat. Would have made an okay 4-page magazine article; maybe that's how it started? Certainly the tone of the book reflects the stale cliches and puffy and quickly dated pop culture references one expects in popular magazine writing--and the result sounds stiff and insincere. Sorry, the topic does not merit and the style does not suit a book of this length.

74 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Psychology theory, not a dieter's book

I was intrigued by the title because I thought the book could give me tips for weight loss. Why do I eat what I do? What can I do to change it? The book is a very good psychology theory book on why we eat what we do and backs up those findings with live studies performed by college professors and students. The findings are real and make sense, but if you're looking for quick weight loss tips or several chapters to help you with uncontrolled eating, this is not the book for you. I was looking for tips on weight loss and found some nuggets of wisdom (and common sense) buried in lots of data and studies. I rated this book relatively highly because, as a former psychology student, I did enjoy hearing about the studies and their results. But if I was just looking for quick diet answers, this book would have been disappointing to me.
In a nutshell,
- Think about the mindless things you eat out of habit. The author, Brian, provides the rule of thumb that you should take a "0" off the end of the calorie count of some snack you habitually eat and that will be the weight you will gain in a year if you continue that habit. For example, if you eat a snack every night that has 100 calories, in a year you will have gained 10 pounds. The reverse, he says, is also true. If you cut out a snack every night that has 100 calories, you will lose 10 pounds if your calorie intake is otherwise balanced.

5 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Frustrating book on a lot of levels...

I liked the premise of the book, but found actually listening to it frustrating on a lot of levels. He spends a lot of time on specific food interactions, but never really steps back to look at the question of why people are having such strong food cravings and eating so much junk food. Advice like "if you eat one fewer donuts per day that adds up to losing 20 lbs a year" doesn't really do much for me. He also doesn't really seem to examine whether the people who avoid junk food by not walking through the kitchen when they got home didn't go back later. The book also suffers from the author's conviction that pretty much all weight gain and food related issues arise from the context of people's day to day interactions with food. The obesity epidemic had a physical beginning in the early 1980s and if you were to take this book literally you'd have to assume that this was entirely due to secretaries moving their candy jars from 6 feet away to 3 feet away and more people entering their home through the kitchen rather than the garage, combined with increasing the size of dinner plates and using short wide glasses rather than tall thin ones. I'd suggest that rather than studying what makes a person eat 30 M&Ms vs 50, the author should start to work on studying how to get rid of these cravings. You can move a bowl of candy further away from you, but you're deluding yourself if you think you'll lose much weight with a bowl of candy around to begin with.

15 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Socially Engineered To Eat!

The concept that stayed with me from the first time I read this book back in 2011 was that: 100 calories per day = 10 pounds per year. To this day that lingers when I am tempted to have a snack but I’m not that hungry, or when I’m looking for some motivation to take one more walk around the block.

I decided to pick the book up again to see if any other helpful tid-bits would implant themselves in my mind, and I came away with a reminder to always be aware of JUST HOW MUCH we are being Socially Engineered to eat crap-food… and way too much of it!

I didn’t find this book as interesting as I did when I first read it, but it’s not because the subject matter is boring – it’s just that I think in general we are all increasingly aware the of the Food Industry’s constant (and sometimes insidious) manipulations of our relationship to food as well as our own personal motivators and so there was not much new in here for me on this second go-round.

2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Interesting, enlightening, practical advice

I enjoyed every minute of this book, and am on my third "reading". I have started eliminating the mindless eating from my diet, incorporated 4 new tactics, and find I enjoy my food (and drink) more and am increasingly aware of my hunger/satiety. A great book for those looking for lasting change. (Yes, I'm losing weight effortlessly). Love the descriptions of social experiments, and narrator's voice is easy on the ears.

2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

do not buy this!!!unless it becomes abridged.

What disappointed you about Mindless Eating?

This guy is a world authority.I fully respect him and his devotion to proven facts.However there was very little information I could use on a daily practical level that wasn't obvious.
The advice contained is pretty obvious:understand portion size;reduce size of your plate and glass,eat slowly,order your dessert after you have eaten,eat the junk stuff if you have worked out that day.Understand calories and how easy it is to get the wrong.
This could easily be summarised in to a 1 hour book that would make interesting.It was tedious to get through;I can not recommend this to anyone except someone who is a food psychologist who is marketing food products.

4 personnes ont trouvé cela utile