Body Clutter book review
It's all Jean's fault. She mentioned reading Body Clutter and writing in the same sentence, and I figured if it helped with her writing, maybe it would help me! Jean, I'd love to know what they said that helped with your writing, if it's not too private, because I sure didn't see it.
Let me start with a disclaimer. I'm not overweight. Yet. I could be without much effort. My family's legacy includes cancer, obesity, high blood pressure, both types of arthritis, and diabetes. I'm also at risk for osteoporosis and melanoma. Denial doesn't prevent any of those conditions, and being in my 40's now doesn't help either.
Body Clutter really didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. I don't have 'comfort food' issues; my food issues are more hormonal--cravings and such. It did tell me what I already knew in a different way, from a different perspective. They emphasized FlyLady's Baby Steps and renamed exercise "Blessing Your Heart", which is hilarious when you consider that FlyLady lives in North Carolina. In the Carolinas, if you say, "Bless your heart" to someone it generally means, "Poor thing, you don't know how stupid you are." Maybe both can apply equally in some cases!
Even though I really didn't learn anything new, it was worth the effort of buying and reading. I kept thinking of people to recommend it to. They use such a logical approach--almost a "Well, Duh!" approach. I think what struck me the most is how they kept saying, "Don't let perfectionism get in your way." I never thought of myself as a perfectionist until I started seeing a psychologist for alternate ADD therapy. Apparently my perfectionism was so deeply rooted that I didn't know it was there, but it stalled me in several areas of my life. Making the shift from "If you can't do it right, don't do it at all" to "Good enough for government work" has improved the state of my health, home, and mental well-being. FlyLady and Leanne reinforced that and had a few suggestions to help, too.
Bottom line: You don't have to be unhappy with your body to benefit from this book. It's an easy read with a lot of common sense and concepts that can be applied, literally, to anything in your life.
Labels: Book reviews
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3Comments:
The benefit to my writing was a side benefit of one of the missions in the book -- forgiveness. It is too personal for details, and matter was (as far as I know) unrelated to why I have body clutter. I had, however, identified it as one of the reasons I was struggling with writing, and I used the mission to work through that one piece.
I apologize if my post misled you. It does sound like you found some value in the book despite the initial misdirection.
I don't think I would call it misdirection. I suspected it was something like that, like getting to the root of my perfectionism impacted several areas of my life. I was grasping at straws at that point, but you're right, I did get some good stuff out of it.
I'm still waiting to get my hands on it; interlibrary loan is for the patient, I assure you.
That's cool that the book helps with more than overweightness. It does seem logical that the same tendencies that play into our weight issues affect other areas of life.
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