I – Making the Choice
1: Lightness
2: Thirst
3: Day and Night
4: Dig the Ride
II – Making It Happen
5: Help Your Brain Help You
6: Strength Outside In
7: Dodging the Yo-Yo
8: The Tortoise Totally Wins
9: Do Something
III – Making It Last
10: Mindfulness and Mindlessness
11: Starting Where You Are
12: Wide Open
Afterword – Don’t Go It Alone
Sarah Hays Coomer is a self-proclaimed “diet abolitionist.” She is a Certified Personal Trainer with the National Strength and Conditioning Association; a member of the American College of Sports Medicine; and a certified Nutrition and Wellness Consultant and Pre/Postnatal Fitness Specialist with the American Fitness Professionals Association. She is a contributor to the Nashville Scene and writes a column for The East Nashvillian called “Simple Pleasures.” She kind of likes to exercise, kind of not. You can find her at www.strengthoutsidein.com, on Twitter @strengthoutside, or Instagram @strengthoutsidein.
Coomer, a personal trainer and health coach, takes a novel approach
to weight loss that rejects calorie counting, dieting, and
strenuous workouts. In this inspiring and compassionate book, she
shares her own struggles with weight and body image, as well as her
realization that deprivation and treating the body as the enemy
rarely work. Coomer asserts that the more effective approach is to
replace poor eating habits with small, positive changes. Instead of
restricting foods, she argues, one should supplement them with
healthy choices; rather than working out in a gym, find a pastime
that you love, and then stick to it relentlessly. Coomer shares
illustrative stories from her clients, noting that those who
emphasized enjoyment of life fared better than those who followed
restrictive diet or exercise plans, which often were eventually
abandoned. Slow, constant weight loss, she contends, is the more
effective route; in a chapter called 'The Tortoise Totally Wins,'
she demonstrates how 'slow and steady' wins the weight-loss race.
Readers seeking quick fixes and recipes won’t find them here.
Though Coomer does include some familiar, practical tips (e.g.,
pack a lunch rather than eating out; reduce portion sizes), she
mostly digs deeper, focusing on transformation and long-term
well-being.
*Publishers Weekly*
Coomer, a certified personal trainer and nutrition and wellness
consultant, uses both traditional and non-traditional methods for
rethinking weight management while nourishing a healthy mind and
spirit. The author incorporates personal accounts and an almost
‘best friend’ approach to consider weight management and behavior
change, using gentle mindfulness and self-compassion. The
productive ways that are offered to break the cycle of
self-destructive thought and behavior give an insightful
perspective to the long-standing and familiar battle between
constructive reason and desired gratification. At the end of each
chapter, a helpful ‘toolbox’ is presented; this offers useful
suggestions and step-by-step ways to focus on a change of mind
rather than efforts to change the body. This book reads like a
friend’s life journey, offering relatable challenges with great
advice. As opposed to the endless clinical self-help books on the
market, the reviewer found this book an absolute pleasure to read.
Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates; general
readers.
*CHOICE*
With the just-released book, Lightness of Body and Mind: A Radical
Approach to Weight and Wellness, personal trainer, nutrition
consultant, and author Sarah Hays Coomer has leapt into the center
lane and declared: Enough is enough! People are listening — perhaps
because she’s not shouting. Instead, she’s inviting anyone who will
listen into a new conversation, which she’ll initiate by seizing
any opportunity to illustrate how pleasure and health merge in real
yet profound ways. With Lightness, Coomer has crafted — from years
of personal experience and clients’ stories, and with a refreshing
cocktail of common sense, humor, and irreverent cool — a radical
resource for personal wellness.... Coomer’s storytelling is
imbued with empathy and compassion, no doubt due to her own
self-described history of depression and food addiction. She
combines a fearless memoir with unpredictable stories of real
clients. In many ways, the book is a love song to those men and
women and an expression of gratitude for all they’ve taught
her.
*The East Nashvillian*
Lightness of Body and Mind: A Radical Approach to Weight and
Wellness comes from a personal trainer who maintains that real body
sculpting and weight management can only come through doing
activities that are loved, rather than through rigorous exercises
that are followed by deprivation and limitations. The real
path to lasting weight loss and wellness lies in identifying
personal activities and eating habits that tie into what is
desirable and enjoyable, and Coomer's blend of memoir and
discussion of this process offers important keys to better
lifestyle choices based not so much on a program as an attitude
towards life. Chapters go beyond discussions of theory,
providing specific tools readers can use to get a handle on their
own unique perceptions and inclinations. This approach crafts a
wide-ranging discussion with opportunities to reach all kinds of
audiences.
*Donovan's Bookshelf*
Reading Lightness of Body and Mind was revelatory for me. Sarah
Hays Coomer will heal many broken spirits and burdened bodies with
this book. The approach to healthy living and weight loss is
practical, holistic, and accessible to anyone. More like a guide to
a life well-lived rather than a diet book, Lightness of Body and
Mind inspired me to embrace forward motion and endless
possibility.
*Emily Saliers, Indigo Girls*
From the very first chapter, I started thinking about food
differently. As Sarah was splitting herself wide open to reveal raw
thoughts about her body and her ability to shape it, I was seeing
myself in every word. The concept that we will love ourselves if we
just lose 10 pounds, have better abs, or fit into our skinny jeans
is flawed. Sarah shows us that the true answer is to treat our
bodies with love and nourishment right now so that we can transform
into the strongest, healthiest versions of ourselves possible.
*Abigail S. Caudle, MD, MS, FACS, breast cancer surgeon*
Having very few issues with food and weight, I still found myself
copying passages from Lightness of Body and Mind into my notes. It
connects on a life level. Sarah’s insight is startling, and her
approach is gentle but effective. She turns the entire pursuit of
wellness upside down to make it not only manageable, but genuinely
enjoyable.
*Nikki Reed, actor/producer, Sleepy Hollow, Twilight, Thirteen;
Ambassador for Thrive Market*
An essential handbook on how to access your best life. Through keen
awareness, practical tools, and soul connection, Sarah lifts us all
to not only a healthier body but a truly uplifted heart as
well.
*Melanie Salvatore-August, author, Kitchen Yoga: Simple Home
Practices to Transform Mind Body and Life; creator, Fierce
Kindness*
Funny, engaging, and full of important insights and science,
Lightness of Body and Mind can help people who struggle with
body-related negativity learn how to be more kind, positive, and
proactive in their approach to well-being and weight.
*Michelle Segar, PhD, author of award-winning No Sweat: How the
Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of
Fitness*
One of the most powerful, insightful, relatable, and inspiring
books I've ever read. Lightness of Body and Mind is for anyone who
has ever struggled with impulsivity - whether manifest as food
addiction, workaholism, depression, perpetual bad relationships, or
chronic pain. With ferocious honesty about her own struggles and
triumphs and those of her clients, Sarah Hays Coomer teaches us how
to summon our own tour-de-force to initiate and maintain
change.
*Tracy Jackson, MD, FIPP, Vanderbilt University, Director of
Multidisciplinary Pain Medicine Fellowship, Director of Resident
Education in Chronic Pain*
Listening is one of my greatest challenges and passions. Coomer's
Lightness of Body and Mind prizes listening to my own body and
intuition, rather than unattainable cultural standards of beauty or
proscribed, rigid diets. Her method feels right on time, true to
myself, and a huge relief.
*Ann Imig, Founder of ListenToYourMotherShow.com, Editor LISTEN TO
YOUR MOTHER: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now*
Lightness of Body and Mind is a breeze. Shot through with anecdotes
and pop-culture references to keep the mood buoyant, it tackles
big, thorny issues like food addiction and body image and sheds
fresh, new light on how to manifest change.
*Andrew Leahey, journalist and musician*
Finally someone is speaking my language! Health and weight loss
shouldn't feel like punishment. Sarah helps us see how destructive
guilt is, and that if we want to lighten up physically we have to
do it mentally too
*Katie Cook, CMT Host*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
