Title: Lean for Life
Author: Cynthia Stamper Graff
Date: 1997
Publisher: Lindora
ISBN: 1-882180-63-1
Length: 250 pages
Illustrations: several black-and-white graphics
Quote: “It’s a book about change: changing the way you eat, the way you look, the way you feel, and the way you think.”
It’s also a book about “a number of valuable resources, including...the audio tapes, video tapes, and print materials,” and also the snack bars, soups, shakes, and drinks Lindora markets.
I received this book from a well preserved woman who looks about half her real age and has never been obese. If she’s used it, it’s worked. It works for some people. But the usual diet book and diet plan caveats apply: Weight loss programs work, when they do, for people who choose to eat less fattening food and/or get more exercise and/or successfully treat rare medical conditions, like hypothyroidism, that may interfere with the effects of sensible diet and exercise. Diet programs can help distract your attention from the fact that you’re eating differently. Diet clinics can give you an opportunity to meet congenial people. How much money do you really need to spend to accomplish those two bonus goals?
More than many diet books (the ones that at least give readers a few good lower-calorie recipes), this one seems designed to help the author and her family collect a lot of money for distracting readers and introducing them to fellow dieters. Lean for Life contains no recipe section, no menu plan. It contains lots of charts you can fill in while tracking what you eat, several pages of psychological motivational blather with some psychological questionnaires, and a few of the standard lists of calorie counts and suchlike, but if you pay attention to the main text, with this diet book you’ll get a lot more guidance to buy things rather than do things or eat things.
So, if my metabolism were to change such that I wanted to use a book about losing weight, this is not the one I’d use. (Unless my metabolism changed very drastically, the one I’d use would be The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss. Yes, there is such a thing as a weight loss diet that works by encouraging you to cook a lot of delicious, fresh food, the "diet option" dishes the non-dieters want.)
Somewhere Out There, nevertheless, is a person who does find motivation in travelling and buying things and joining a social network. I don’t expect that person is a regular reader of this web site, since that person is obviously an extrovert and obviously not supporting this web site; but that person exists, and just might stumble into this web site. That is the person for whom the Lindora clinic was designed. If you are that person, then this book is for you.
To buy it here, send $5 per book plus $5 per package to P.O. Box 322, or that plus $1 per online payment to the Paypal address you get when you e-mail Salolianigodagewi, as shown at the very bottom of the screen. From this amount we'll send $1 to Cynthia Stamper Graff or a charity of her choice, because she is still a living writer, and fair is fair. Lean for Life is an odd-shaped book but at least one more book of similar size will fit into that $5 package beside it.
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