Matt and I have been considering changing the subtitle of our book for nearly a year now. And, well, we have finally decided to do it, we just had another small run of books printed. The new subtitle is “A Complete How-To Manual for Quick & Permanent Fat Loss”. We think this describes the contents of the book well.

It was obvious to most people that our former subtitle was hyperbolic, as it is not likely the ONLY weight loss book worth reading. There are some other weight loss books out there that give excellent and well-supported information and recommendations for weight loss. However, to be honest, we really do think that our book it is probably the only weight loss book that has presented the Bio-Psycho-Social model of weight management and has combined the wide range of topics related to weight-management, in an evidenced-based manner. But, the main reason for our outlandish subtitle was due to marketing. We are new authors and were looking for some way to stand out in a sea of weight loss books, many of them not very good. We thought that an over-the-top subtitle might help to do that. Now that some time has passed we don’t think it has actually helped with sales, and maybe, because people took it literally, it may have reduced sales a bit. We are speculating and have no way of knowing if it has had a positive or negative effect. Additionally, even though our subtitle was clearly hyperbolic, we were very careful NOT to present hyperbolic information in the book. We think there is big difference between these two aspects of the book. Anyway, that leads us to today and our decision to change the subtitle of our book. We hope this clarifies our initial intentions and the reasons for the change.

Are you moving closer to the things you want?  If you are struggling to achieve your goals or at least move much closer to them, then you will want to consider how you have set up your goals. The reason you want to consider spending your precious time on this endeavor is the fact that setting goals in a certain way can greatly increase your odds of actually achieving your goals (Reeve). This is particularly important when it comes to your ability to modify your bodyweight and health as this entails making lifestyle changes, such as eating and exercise habits (Shilts et al).

The first thing to consider: Why set formal goals at all? Why spend the time to figure out what you really want and writing out your goals in a very specific manner? The reason; goals are great at energizing and directing behavior (Reeve).  Because of these effects, people who set goals in a certain way (see below for specifics), tend to achieve more than people who don’t. Additionally, people who set challenging but realistic goals tend to be happier and experience higher levels of well being (Koestner et al; Kraus). Therefore, if you want to increase your drive, persistence, and likely your well-being then it is a good idea to get in the habit of setting goals for yourself.

When setting goals, there are a number of specific strategies that will make your goals much more likely to be fruitful.  Here are what I think are the top 10 things to do. I will explain each of them briefly after the list.

1. Written
2. Inspirational/congruent
3. Challenging
4. Specific
5. Approach oriented
6. Measureable
7. Proximal/Distal
8. Feedback
9. Rewards (internal & external)
10. Identify potential obstacles

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If this is the first time you’re reading Jaylene’s Weight Loss Journey, here are the earlier posts:

#1, #2, #3

Jaylene:

I did walk two times this week… early in the week. Okay coach, what I might need is a reward/consequence system asap.

I KNOW that I will have a tough time with calorie counting. I just can’t add another thing on my plate right now. For me, I am still “stress” eating.

Which do you think is most important to work on first? Exercising or calorie counting/menu planning, if you had to choose?

I will commit to one change this week. Which one do you want me to commit to??

Matt:

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If this is the first time you’re reading Jaylene’s Weight Loss Journey, here are the earlier posts:

#1, #2

I weighed myself this morning and I am only down 1 lb. I can sneeze and lose a pound. So I looked at what had happened this week.

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This is a good book. It is a great combination of quality nutrition information that is Paleo based, coupled with a “how to cook” section, and ends with many recipes (actually about half the book), based on some good nutrition principles, that most anyone can follow. So, overall I would rate this as a solid 4 out of 5 stars, with the potential of an additional star. Why did I not give it a 5 star rating right out of the gates? This is because of a few things regarding some of the nutrition information in the early chapters of the book. Before I explain my few reservations, I want to point out that the book was originally written in 2004.  During the seven years since the publication it is certainly possible for an author to have changed their mind on a topic or two, which there is nothing wrong with. In fact, this is what has happened here. Through some personal communication with Don, it is clear that a new edition would bring with it a change in some of the nutrition content and recommendations. These changes would relate to meal frequency, eating breakfast, nutritional fiber, ketosis, pesticide residues and carbohydrates. To get the current position on most of these topics I would strongly recommend you spend some time on Don’s blog, donmatesz.blogspot.com. Anyway, when it comes to these topics I would disagree to varying degrees with what was said in the book (For those of you who would like some specifics on these topics feel free to e-mail and I will be glad to give you some details). Therefore, due to these aspects I did not give it 5 stars.

Again, this book is a good one to have in the bookcase, or better yet, keep it in the kitchen so you can easily refer to it. The book is a great combination of some solid nutritional principles and recommendations (minus the few alluded to earlier) and how to apply that information, i.e., buying, storing and preparing foods and relatively simple recipes to make. This information can have a positive effect on your overall well-being and is likely to have weight management benefits. To get your copy go to www.thegardenofeatingdiet.com.

Okay I need some help figuring out how to work on my physical goals when everything and everybody has a claim on my time.

Today I did get up and go for a walk for 30 minutes, but it took everything I had to do that. The tipping point was I when I finally decided that one moment of discipline at the first of my day would set a pattern for the whole day. I got up and immediately put on workout clothes, took a big drink of water and hit the door.

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You’ve made some New Year’s Resolutions about your health. You’re not alone; thousands of others have them too. We’ve all heard the stories about how many actually stick to their guns, and they ain’t pretty. There’s a reason for this…

I want you to ask yourself the following questions:

- Has your life changed dramatically since December 1st of last year?

For example; lost your job, retired, kids moved out… things that would allow you to spend more time on health-related behaviors

- Have your reasons for wanting to be healthy changed since December 1st of last year?

For example; doctor told you that you’re pre-diabetic, you were given your first grandchild… things that would motivate you to get healthy in a hurry!

If you answered ‘no’ to these questions, it’s likely you should have started your trend toward fitness on December 1st or even earlier.

Here’s where I’m going with this.

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I am not trying to beat a dead horse, but this was just so pertinent to the recent discussions related to “Slow Burn” that I felt that I had to bring it up. Also, I don’t believe that this is a petty point either.

Fred Hahn recently had some critical things to say about WebMD on his blog. He called WebMD “Web Mindless Drivel”. Wow, the level of hypocrisy is astounding. Continue reading if it is not obvious already. Apparently Matt and I, by using the word “crap” to describe his book were being “mean spirited”. Others even thought that it was unprofessional. Really, as Matt and I mentioned in our most recent post on the Slow Burn book, one of the words to define crap is drivel, so these two words are really synonomous. So from this logic we can concluded that what was said about WebMD as being “mindless drivel” is just fine but using the word crap is not. Here is a bit of what Fred stated in his post;

“How can WebMD leave carbohydrate off the list? Again, diabetes is a condition of carbohydrate, not fat intolerance. How can the doctors that supposedly wrote this info confidently state that a high fat diet is a risk factor for T2D when there is no physiological or scientific basis for such a claim? If you want to hypothesize that it’s true, fine. Get some funding do some studies and see. But the current research show us pretty clearly that, high fat, adequate protein, low carb diets result in lower blood glucose levels and improvements in insulin sensitivity.” (underlining added)

What’s funny is that I generally agree with Fred’s assessment of the situation and think the language used was fine (meaning that I don’t think it is inappropriate) and quite clever. But what’s even funnier is his contention that the statements made by the authors should be backed up with research and have a solid scientific basis. Although, based on what Fred has stated before, they could just say they are right because the content is approved by MD’s. Anyway, what I mean by “funnier” is the obvious hypocrisy of his statement. This guy writes a book with a plethora of misleading, incorrect, and unsubstantiated claims and has the balls (yes I said it, it’s a blog) to condemn WebMD. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black and looking foolish. Again, Wow!

What is also interesting is Fred’s general frustration with the American Diabetes Association. Apparently he has been trying to get them to acknowledge that what they are saying is probably “wrong and misleading” and that there is plenty of quality evidence to show that the low-carb approach to blood sugar regulation is very useful and should be included in the information that they present. At the same time Fred seems to be avoiding the avalanche of evidence (the in-depth review of his book by Matt and I) that much of what he said in his book is misleading, incorrect, and unsubstantiated. Fred has yet to give any quality evidence to refute what we said in it. I would assume that this would be quick and easy for him seeing he wrote the book about 7 years ago. So when he made the statements that he did in the book it would seem that he had the evidence right in front of him to back it up. But, maybe he has better things to do than to give some quality evidence for the information (book) he is selling to people.

One more thing before concluding; I recently posted a review of Slow Burn on Amazon and while I was there I checked out some of the other reviews of the book. Come to find out, Fred makes a number of mean spirited and ad hominen comments to people who have given poor reviews of the book. One case in particular was actually from a 4 star review. Here are a couple of things Fred said regarding the reviewers comments; Read more »

Introduction by Matt

You might notice this post is written by a new author here at speedweightlossbook.com, Jaylene. She was a personal training client of mine in the past and is now participating in our SPEED Weight Management Coaching. She has agreed to blog her experience here for everyone to see and we ask for your feedback and support for her.

Jaylene:

I have put on at least 40 pounds over the last 2 years.  I call it “feeding my hungry heart”.  During a 2 year span, I lost over 3.5 million in real estate and found my $200,000 savings nest egg flushed down the toilet  to save my credit which was all for not…

I sought comfort in food, decided it was too stressful to worry about what I ate and then did the triple whammy of not working out.

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To Fred and others,

First, we thank you for taking the time to send us your thoughts about our first post on this subject. We always appreciate feedback. However, we feel that there are many problems with Fred’s rebuttal and with much of the information present in his book. The number of non-sequiturs, hasty generalizations, and straw-man types of faulty reasoning found throughout the book is astonishing.

This will be a long; no, very long rebuttal (to make it much easier to read you may want to download the PDF version). The length is necessary in order to give clear and well supported responses to the many problems we feel are presented in the book and in the follow-up replies by Fred Hahn and others. However, I guess, for brevity and apparently a valid method for stating a position (see comment below), we could have just said “Our friend Dr. X said that everything we say is correct” therefore we are right and you are wrong. Well that would certainly be a very bad response and we would want someone to tell us that we were idiots for using that type of justification for our arguments.

We will cover a few things mentioned in some of the comments from our first post on this subject first and then will go through the book, chapter by chapter, highlighting the many bold statements and then demonstrating that there are many problems with them. Before proceeding there is one more thing to clear up.

Apparently the word “crap” was not well received. This was said to be mean-spirited and unprofessional. We don’t really agree with this assessment, due to the format for which it was presented, a blog. Also, the word crap is a common slang word generally used to describe something that is not very good. In fact, according to Wikipedia crap can mean “used to describe something substandard”. Dictionary.com states the following for the slang use of the word crap; “a. nonsense; drivel; b. falsehood, exaggeration, propaganda, or the like”. But, we will concede this point and have changed the wording in our original post so that the word crap is removed. Instead we have changed it to; “We feel that this book is filled with misleading, incorrect and unsubstantiated claims regarding the benefits of a type of exercise referred to as Slow Burn. Therefore, it is not worth reading.”

Please feel free to send us your comments, debate and intelligent discussions are great learning opportunities. However, we ask for two things; the comments must be logical and have some quality evidence to support them.

Fred stated;

“ ‘The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity with which others are trying to prove him wrong.’ That about sums up this review in a nutshell.”

Matt & Jeff’s response;

Really Fred, this quote sums up our review? There are so many instances that this is wrong. For example, should the creationist think they are right because virtually every scientist feels that the evidence for evolution is strong and creationists are wrong? There is “intense” opposition to the creationist view; does that make them right? There are typically many people, yes often one side has more opposition than another, who disagree with a particular viewpoint, i.e., Lipid Hypothesis, eating fat makes you fat, and doing cardio is the best type of exercise and so on. However, there is usually one view that has the preponderance of evidence to support it. The view that has greater validity may or may not be the side that has more “intensity” against it. Come on, this is a poor argument and in no way sums up our review in a “nutshell”. Talk about a red herring argument!

Fred stated;

“First, the editor of our book chose NOT to put a bibliography in the book. She also did not want too many technical references. She also felt that since two physicians were writing the book, this was authority enough.”

Matt & Jeff’s response;

We are not asking for a bibliography we are looking for in-text citations to material that supports your claims. Apparently the editor allowed 10 footnotes with 3 of them referring to peer-reviewed research to support your statements. Those were great, but how come they were so few and far between? Why have any at all? Why were there no footnotes/references for the many bold statements you made? Here are a couple of examples. We will be highlighting many more shortly.

“Slow Burn is a form of exercise that has been shown to provide all the benefits you seek from an exercise regime in only thirty minutes per week, with negligible risk of injury” (p.10) (no references)

“Performing a Slow Burn workout will set in motion biochemical forces make you less hungry and get rid of the aches and pains that may have seemed to be inescapable part of getting older” (pp.14-15) (no references)

“Although it’s true that conventional strength training – if it’s done properly done – can bring about gains in muscle, strength and fitness, it can be tedious and dangerous” (p.22) (no references)

“Instead of spending hours in the gym, grunting, sweating and straining, you’ll learn how to do a controlled Slow Burn that will improve your strength, rebuild your bones and muscles and restore your vitality and post-pone the aging process more safely and effectively than any other single form of exercise, in just thirty minutes a week” (p.23) WOW! (All underlining was added for emphasis)

As long a medical doctor is writing a book there is no need to support statements, particularly statements that are debunking the typical paradigm, with quality evidence? Really? Do you believe this? No offense to M.D.’s, but just because a person has any type of education, here a medical degree, does not allow them to go spouting anything they want and not give evidence for it. So for fallacious reasoning, here is one, “appeal to authority”. It would have been better, but still not excusable, if one of the co-authors was an exercise physiologist/physical therapist, i.e., someone who specializes in human movement. Anyway, we are so sick of the excuses such as the “editor/publisher said” or “people don’t care about references” or some other lame excuse for not properly supporting arguments. The excuses are bollocks and have no place in quality writing. There are rules for non-fiction writing. We agree with the following overview of what non-fiction writing should entail.

Definition of Nonfiction Writing

By Robert Vaux, eHow Contributor

Nonfiction writing is essentially factual writing, intended primarily to provide information rather than entertainment or speculative truths. Though the details and conclusions may include a certain amount of opinion, they must be backed up by concrete date and stem from a belief that the details are factual.

Types

Nonfiction includes newspaper articles, magazine articles, autobiographies, travel essays, political essays and product reviews.

Thesis and Support

Many forms of nonfiction start by positing a thesis, then citing pieces of evidence in support of it.

Citation

Because nonfiction can be colored by conjecture and opinion, proper citation of sources is very important. A piece of nonfiction backed up by hard data becomes much more persuasive.

Objective Nonfiction

Objective nonfiction means nonfiction that presents only concrete, verifiable facts. A list of historical dates is an example of this kind of nonfiction. (underlining added for emphasis)

Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/facts_5506969_definition-nonfiction-writing.html

Yes, there still can be problems. People can misinterpret the information and/or the study/paper itself may be flawed. That is all the more reason to do proper citations. People can actually check to see if what you are saying is really true, not that many people will do this. But that does not matter. This can help to weed out bad information and allows the scientific method to work. We do our best to put forth quality information, but we can certainly mess-up. Being transparent and citing the evidence we use will hopefully lead to good discussions and a greater validity of what we have said or potentially to a change a recommendation if new evidence, sometimes offered by others, supports such a change.

Additionally, using the “Dr said” or some other authority said so often leads to many problems and tends to perpetuate recommendations that actually have no quality evidence to support them. This appeal to authority can often end up producing recommendations that have, for support, nothing more than a repeated reference to a statement made by an authority/expert that never had any good support to start with. I am sure you understand this aspect when it comes to low-carb eating and the “aerobics is the best type of exercise” view. There are experts, both with a lot of formal education and those without, and we can and often should listen to them, but nobody is above the requirement to support their views with good evidence. Finally, why have any footnotes/references at all? On pages 9, 38 and 57 you have footnotes referencing a few studies. So the editor allowed you a few references. Why bother with these? When making strong statements it is your responsibility to support them properly.

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