Mini Habits for Weight Loss

"Fat loss is a side effect of living healthier." ~ pg. 153 I have a diet saboteur in my house! Often this person will bring home six donuts or bags of candy and leave them on the counter. I myself have been known to buy candy on occasion and hide it from this person because they will eat it all up and I think of sugar as a treat for good behavior. I also sometimes get in the mood to make 24 cupcakes but I give 99% of them away. Usually I have one or two and that is about it. I just really love baking! So between me and this person we are causing ourselves ill health because of ingesting some of the wrong foods. What to do? I figured reading a book on developing good habits couldn't hurt! I was right. This book has a lot of helpful tips and tricks to make healthy living much more easy and not as challenging. One of the best sentences in the book is this: "The home eating war is won and lost in the grocery store." I figured this out years ago actually. I knew if I bought it, I'd eat it so I stopped buying sugary chocolates on impulse and started ordering stevia sweetened chocolate from amazon. That alone cut down a lot of sugar cravings because I wasn't feeding the addiction. Some of the things I'm going to do more after reading this book is freezing bananas because they really do taste like ice cream. After considering further I do remember I lost some weight drinking green tea so maybe I should go back to that habit! What kind of questions does this author answer? Well a lot of good ones! Why is dieting only going to make you gain more weight? Why does your brain need to change before your body will follow? What can you control and what should you let slide? What is the best exercise to lose weight? What foods are best to eat on a regular basis? (Do more research on brown rice before you go for it!) Is fruit bad for weight loss or just the opposite? What is the real reason people gain weight in the abdominal area? What I noticed about this book is the author's sense of humor. He made me lol several times and be amused quite a bit. Just thinking of him doing his mini habits was funny. One thing the author didn't say was that when you go to a restaurant you should put half the food they bring you in a to-go box right away. This helps with the decision to eat all your food on your plate. If there is only half the food there, bingo! This book made me hungry for cucumber slices dipped in hummus, spaghetti squash with pesto and fruit-infused water. Basically it made me want to eat healthier because it all sounded so delicious. This book is inspiring me to buy more fruits and vegetables. In the section on exercise and fitness the author does mention guided meditation but that is a whole other thing and if you don't want to get caught up in changing your religion, look for non religious meditation and yoga. Sometimes I love just watching DVDs of ocean waves breaking on the shore. That can make me quite sleepy and ready for bed. However, since I've been using a slow cooker a lot lately I'd say preparation times are more like 20-30 minutes not one minute! Unless you have all the vegetables cut up for your lentil soup it is going to take 30 minutes to put it all in the slow cooker. But hey, once that is done you are free for five hours to exercise and read a book. The author may not have come across kosher hot dogs either. I buy those. He seems to think all hot dogs are the worst. I agree I only eat the special kosher ones. So this book is mostly about easy does it. Make changes slowly and make them into habits that you will do automatically and eventually your body will just start changing on its own and you will have less to think about. So on my next shopping trip I'm going to remember the lettuce because I really like making salads and I've gotten out of practice in the past few weeks. Habits can come and go and when you have one that is working write it down so you don't forget to do it. I will go write "lettuce" down on my shopping list. Having a running list is essential for success. It is good to know that this book has advice that I can accept 99% of the time. I think however if I'm putting on my gym shoes I'm going to do more than one minute on the treadmill. Or better yet just jump on my trampoline for ten minutes without shoes on. I have no problem doing exercise once I start doing it and I think that is the point of the book and methods. Usually my problem is that I have a thought: "should I exercise right now" and I put it off thinking "I'll have more energy later." Then comes ten at night and I'm sleepy. So this is a convincing and inspirational pep talk about getting healthier with small changes in your eating and exercising habits. Reading this book seriously with a highlighter in hand will clue you into all the most important stuff for your lifestyle. Then it is a matter of writing a shopping list and putting a post it note where you can see it to do your mini habits. That is about it...easy peasy! To your success, ~The Rebecca Review

Stephen Guise does it again! Having been a long time reader of his weekly emails, I was pretty familiar with his style and some of his ideas, so by the time I received the printed copy of this book, I had already been trying to incorporate some of his approaches in both my personal development and weight loss efforts (with success, mind you!)... but I was surprised by how the information in this book was new (to me at least!) and altogether wise, compelling, and informative! Guise has clearly done extensive research. In part one, he provides a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies in a friendly and approachable tone-- which is very idiosyncratic of his style-- and informs us on the latest on healthy lifestyle research. I have read diet books before and I have read research journals, but I have never particularly enjoyed or LAUGHED while reading either. Guise is a talented writer, so it's a fun and quick read! As he said, this isn't a diet book, it's a book about understanding the affects of food and the food industry on the personal and national level, how that can affect our health, and what we can do about it. In part two, Guise writes about his area of expertise: how to apply this new information into personal development with MINI HABITS. He describes strategies and approaches to apply to your everyday-- literally something you can DO everyday and feel good about-- to achieve your goal. This is the part that requires some effort on the reader's part to be introspective and realistic about themselves, which is something so REFRESHING. By generously acknowledging the humanity of his audience, Guise teaches readers how to deal with the psychology of weight loss, including the emotions of shame, deprivation, etc. involved, and gives them the tools to move forward! This is a wonderful book with very helpful and even life changing ideas-- I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to make a lasting change in their health and feel good while doing it! I commend the author on this work and I can't wait to see what he'll do next!

Good Book! Very educational! Definitely a ready for beginners.

OMG I love this book! I have been a yo-yo dieter for over 30 years, endlessly STRUGGLING to reach my weight loss goals. My dream is to reach my goal and then be able to maintain my weight EASILY and EFFORTLESSLY. I have finally found the answer to end my struggling dilemma once and for all! I learned so much from Guise's book about habits and how they are formed not only in the brain, but also in the body! It makes so much sense that the brain and body do not like change, period. Throw a BIG change at it, like going on a specific diet with a bunch of new rules, and both the brain and body resist, BIG TIME. Hence, the struggle! It takes a lot of WILLPOWER to fight my own RESISTANCE from my brain and body. However, if I make changes SLOWLY in my behavior, my brain and body will hardly notice and yet the incremental changes help to move me forward and keep me motivated! It's all very fascinating, exciting and has me feeling hopeful to really be able to create the habits that will help me reach my weight loss goals once and for all. And since it will be habits that got me there, it will be habits that keep me without needing a ton of willpower. Hallelujah! I especially love Guise's writing style and sense of humor. There were many times I literally laughed out loud while reading this book. Guise totally gets the struggling issue and, in such a supportive way tells you how to end the struggle for good. Even on the worst day of your life, you can reach your mini habit goals and feel good about making progress. I highly recommend this book! I just finished reading this book tonight and I immediately loaned it to a friend. I'm going to read Guise's first book on mini habits next. I already purchased it!

Phenomenal book that kept our attention from the beginning. I am reading it out loud, as my better half is blind and we wanted to read this book together. We are not finished with the book yet, however it has already helped us so much and helped us set up some mini habits that we are already accomplishing on a daily basis. I love using my VARIDESK and laughed when I was reading the book, because I too like to turn on music in the office and dance while standing at my desk. I stopped using the desk to stand and work a while back, but after reading the book realized it was time to use it again.. my mini habit is to stand at my desk at least an hour a day and turning on the music... i found that I am enjoying work more because of this mini habit... wild.. this book is very interesting and a great read..

I am listening to the audio of this book. It's got great advice, but I feel like it could be covered much quicker. It drags on and repeats the same message over and over again.

Have you ever eaten a decadent slice of cheesecake, only to finish and think, "Man, I could really go for some vegetables right about now"? If not, let me introduce you to Stephen Guise and the concept of mini habits. The idea, as conceptualized in this book, is not to take an approach of deprivation and radical change, but to make small, incremental, consistent changes that ultimately result in a permanent, healthy lifestyle. Stephen (can I call him Stephen?) is upfront from the beginning: this is not a journey of quick fixes, rapid weight loss, and cleanse diets. This is about working with the brain's natural resistance to change by fooling it into thinking you're not asking much from it. And really, you're not. If your goal is to do one push-up a day, you will find yourself down on the ground much faster than if your goal is to do 20. And once you are down there, you will do some more. It's human nature. The hard part, the decision to do a thing, is over at that point. And even on your worst day, even if you really only can do one, you've still made some forward momentum and reinforced that daily habit. I only finished this book a couple of weeks ago, but I have already seen the changes happen. The most brilliant stroke was in never making a food craving off limits, no matter how ridiculously unhealthy. Instead, he encourages a movement toward healthy food, a letting go of the binary way we think about eating (''I'm going to eat healthy'' vs ''I'm going to eat badly.'') As he says in his book, you know what's better than three slices of pizza? Three slices of a pizza and a salad. It's pithy and funny, but there is much wisdom here. When we're at a party, we don't have to decide between carrots and cookies. We can have both. And that realization is the spark of something rather profound. The more whole foods you eat, the more you incorporate them into your daily life, the more you want them for their own sake, not because you should eat better, or because you are desperate to lose weight, but because they are tasty and make you feel good. My nutrition mini habit, one recommended by Stephen, is to make one healthy food upgrade a day. That means a banana with breakfast, or a vegetable with lunch, or water instead of soda for a meal... just one healthy change from the norm. What I've found, as Stephen predicted, is most days I do far more than that. Some days I find myself concocting entire meals from scratch, just because I would rather eat that. But even on my worst days, I can make that one change and feel like I have forward momentum. Thus I have found myself eating fresh vegetables alongside leftover pizza, and a red bell pepper after I finished my cheesecake. What's remarkably different from previous attempts to shift to a healthy lifestyle is that for the first time ever, it feels like a choice. Not some hard-nosed restriction I'm trying to impose on myself for my own good, but just making choices amidst the ebb and flow of everyday life (the fact that my other mini habit is sitting down on my meditation cushion before bed doesn't hurt... I am much more mindful of my eating habits based on increased meditation alone.) Even my fast food addiction is waning, not because I've forbidden it, but because I've noted that fast food generally makes me feel like crap. I'm saving my sweet tooth for higher quality desserts, stuff I really love. I'm no longer eating with an attitude of scarcity - I shouldn't be having this, I must eat it now because I can't have it later. When there is no famine, there is never any need for feast. I ate out at three restaurants this weekend, and not once did I overeat or feel guilty about my choices. It's the difference between "What's one small thing I can do to make this healthier?" and "Screw it, I'm going to eat all the things." When you're working within a more reasonable framework, when you stop with all or nothing thinking, you make more healthy choices than you would imagine, and you don't have to fight your lazy brain to do it.

This was a fast and enjoyable read. I agree with the majority of what Stephen said about nutrition, but I felt that for this type of book he gave too much nutrition advice given he is not a nutrition expert. I especially disliked that he said that eating a vegan or vegetarian diet is not sustainable and then said that if you already are vegan or vegetarian you could "do much worse". Eating a Whole Foods plant-based diet is one of the ways I actually maintain vibrant health and a healthy weight, and although it may not be desirable for everyone it is an evidence-based healthful way of eating. I think the mini habits idea is a great one that could help a lot of people accomplish all sorts of goals. Overall I would recommend this book for the practical advice about habits, but would caution about the nutrition advice.

This book is not a diet book as such but very inspiring to make simple changes to our attitudes and choices in what we eat. No convenience foods, soft drinks etc but the emphasis is on eating fresh food, lots of fruit and veg, exercise. Well most of us know that but Stephen has a very persuasive way of encouraging little steps to achieve this. It's quite a long book and I've only just finished reading it so can't say if it's worked to lose weight but it has made me think that I can take these little steps easily without having to follow strict rules.

This is not just a dieting book, this is the ultimate book to finally get on track towards a healthy happy nutrition. Do not expect quick weight loss but a shift in behaviour through a fun easy method full of practical personalised strategies. Based on scientific studies, it unravels many commonly spread false myths about dieting and foods.

There are weight loss concepts here that are fresh and simple - although they may take some time to master. I particularly love the connection to a sense of autonomy or shame around food. I appreciate the simple deconstruction of these concepts as they relate to food. I also had a 'duh' moment when the author mentioned how the body does not like the shock of sudden dietary restriction (ie going on a diet)... brilliant! So obvious but I never made that 'shock/threat' connection, knowing full well about famine response etc.. Simply and succinctly put. There is a lot here to process, but it quality not quantity, and it is worth the investment .

Great book with a strategy that really works. I had already read his first book but it was worth getting this one also as it helped consolidate the concept of minihabits in my head. Personally, I have found success with my first mini habit (putting my washing up gloves on after dinner & certainly before bed). My minihabit took 3 months to establish but now I always have a clean kitchen because putting on my gloves is the spark to clearing my kitchen. The point - this strategy works. My current mini habit - to do one star jump a day. I did find that I got a bit inpatient about getting to some actual examples of minihabits for weight loss/fitness. Up until that point I genuinely couldn't think of any. But when I got there, it was worth the wait. I however disagree with the author about 'partial completion is failure in mini habits'. For me, the only reason why the minihabits approach works is because I combine it with another strategy to help me 'fix' failure so it never feels like failure. If it had, I wouldn't have been able to continue for long enough to establish any consistency. My first minihabit (putting on my washing up gloves) doesn't get any more mini than that, yet in my first two months I hardly managed to tick three days in a row. But I continued because I give myself the opportunity to 'fix' any missed days. Every day I do complete my task, not only am I building consistency, but I'm also fixing some of the damage (neurologically speaking), so I tick 1/3rd of a missed day. That means that after three days, I can completely tick off a previously missed day. Since the book is about building neural pathways, I think my strategy is accurate with that model. Now, 3 months after my first minihabit, I'm so consistent that any previous missed days are being patched up and becoming negligible. Thought I'd share this extra strategy for anyone that, like me, struggles with self-discipline even to complete one single (truly mini) minihabit.

The book is a very light reading and the Mini habits methods are really interesting. I've finished the book within a couple of days and already started implementing new mini habits in to my daily life. I've only read this book and I didn't felt the need to read his first book, the mini habits applied to a better health are explained in this book.