We’ve reviewed books before on quitting drinking; is this book about emotional eating so different?

There are overlaps, but important points of contrast, too. After all, alcohol and junk food are both often unhealthy coping mechanisms for other things, though:

• Alcohol has in principle the stronger grip (making it harder to give up)
• Junk food is so much easier to justify (making it harder to give up)

Author Allen Carr is of course most well-known for his debut book about quitting smoking, and he brings a lot of that expertise to bear on the slightly different beast that is emotional eating.

Focused on reframing quitting as being less about self-denial and more about self-liberation, he helps readers to understand that giving up a substance (in this case, junk food) does not mean giving up happiness—rather, it means finding happiness beyond it.

If this book has a downside, it’s that some parts can be a little repetitive, and it can sometimes seem like one of those “this book could have been an article” situations.

On the other hand, many people benefit from repeated messages to truly inculcate an idea, so this could be a positive for a lot of readers.

Bottom line: if you’ve tried to eat more healthily but find that you keep reaching for an unhealthy comfort food, then this book may make a difference that other methods didn’t.

Click here to check out The Easy Way To Quit Emotional Eating, and find your own freedom!

We hear a lot from doctors who work with dementia patients; sometimes we hear from carers too. In this case, the author spent 20 years working for the NHS, before being diagnosed with young-onset dementia, at the age of 58. Like many health industry workers who got a life-changing diagnosis, she quickly found it wasn’t fun being on the other side of things, and vowed to spend her time researching, and raising awareness about, dementia.

Many people assume that once a person has dementia, they’re basically “gone before they’re gone”, which can rapidly become a self-fulfilling prophecy as that person finds themself isolated and—though this word isn’t usually used—objectified. Talked over, viewed (and treated) more as a problem than a person. Cared for hopefully, but again, often more as a patient than a person. If doctors struggle to find the time for the human side of things with most patients most of the time, this is only accentuated when someone needs more time and patience than average.

Instead, Dr. Mitchell—an honorary doctorate, by the way, awarded for her research—writes about what it’s actually like to be a human with dementia. Everything from her senses, how she eats, the experience of eating in care homes, the process of boiling an egg… To relationships, how care changes them, to the challenges of living alone. And communication, confusion, criticism, the language used by professionals, or how things are misrepresented in popular media. She also talks about the shifting sense of self, and brings it all together with gritty optimism.

The style is deeply personal, yet lucid and clear. While dementia is most strongly associated with memory loss and communication problems, this hasn’t affected her ability to write well (7 years into her diagnosis, in case you were wondering).

Bottom line: if you’d like to read a first-person view of dementia, then this is an excellent opportunity to understand it from the view of, as the subtitle goes, someone who knows.

Click here to check out What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, and then know those things!