PastaQueen reads a book. And finishes it! And tells you about it!

I requested and received a complimentary copy of this book to review.

I don’t do as many book reviews as I’d like to because, well, they require you to read the book. I wish I left a trail of half-eaten meals in my wake instead of the trail of half-read books that’s there instead. However, I actually did read this book because I became interested in it after my trip to the Nutrilite Center for Optimal Health several weeks ago. During one of the sessions, Diane Paetz, a fitness consultant for Nutrilite, led us through a 10-minute workout from Sean Foy’s book, The 10-Minute Total Body Breakthrough. Diane mentioned the book during her presentation, but she didn’t beat us over the head with it, proving that the soft sell is much more effective than the hard sell. However, the thing that made me decide to request and review a copy of this book was:

The flip cards! The back of the book has four groups of cards that you can flip forward and backward to create customized workout routines. This reminded me of a beloved children’s book I used to have. It allowed you to flip three rows of cards that had animal heads, torsos, and legs printed on them to create hilarious combinations.

However, that was not the only reason I wanted to read the book. My enthusiasm for exercise has taken a nosedive ever since I got a chronic headache two years ago. And since I moved to a new apartment six months ago, I don’t have anywhere fun to run like I did when I lived near the nature trail. Running on the treadmill day after day is boooooring. So, lack of motivation and lack of opportunity have led me to be in the worst physical shape I’ve been in for awhile. I’ve also been fighting bouts of depression intermittently, so the idea of exercising for 30 minutes a day can often seem like an insurmountable task, even though I know it would have a beneficial effect on my mood.

So, the idea of a 10-minute workout was very appealing to me. It’s easy to talk myself out of running for half an hour, but I’d have to be a real slack-ass to say I can’t pull myself together for a 10-minute workout. There are more than 10 minutes of commercials in an hour long drama. Surely I can spare 10 minutes. As the books says, “What is the one thing people can do to destroy their health? The answer: Nothing.” Ten minutes beats nothing.

As with all diet/fitness/change-your-life books, it starts out by telling you how this book will change your life, including success stories from people who’ve done the plan. (Diane from Nutrilite is one of them.) Next there’s an overview of the plan which includes three levels of difficulty that you can work up through as you become more fit. The ten minutes of the workout are broken into four minutes of HEAT (High-energy aerobic training), three minutes of resistance exercise, two minutes of core strengthening exercises, and one minute of stretching and deep breathing. This is also referred to as 4321 Fitness.

There are also chapters on the science behind the 4321 strategy and recommendations for what foods to eat and why. Foy recommends the red light, yellow light, green light plan for eating, which divides foods into those three groups depending on how much caution to observe with each. Green light foods can be eaten in abundance, yellow lights should make you stop and think, and red lights should be eaten with extreme caution. Foy doesn’t believe in banning foods because that just makes them all the more appealing.

Psychological factors are also addressed. There is a chapter listing many good motivations for becoming fit. There is also a list of common excuses to avoid working out paired with a list of rebuttals to these excuses. Foy also reviews the six stages of change and the importance of things like setting goals, tracking your progress and getting support.

Overall, I really liked the attitude of the book. Foy shares many of the same health philosophies as I do, like the idea that you don’t have to be thin to be fit and that the diet mentality can sabotage even the best-laid plans. He stresses moderation over denial, and encourages people to eat real food instead of processed foods with artificial ingredients.

The workout aims to give you the most benefit in the shortest amount of time. The first four minutes take advantage of EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption). It’s been proven that interspersing periods of intense exercise with moderate exercise causes your body to need oxygen at a higher rate that is did before you started, causing an “afterburn.” The strength-training and core-strengthening components add muscle tissue which burns more calories and helps your body composition.

The bulk of the book is filled with pictures and instructions for the various exercises you can mix and match to make your workout. The book is spiral bound, making it easy to set it down on a table to refer to while you exercise. And as I said before, it’s got flip cards!

The book seems to be targeted at people who are just starting out and at people like me who want to ease back into a routine. If you’re already rather fit, you might not be as interested in this plan, but you can use it by choosing to do the more difficult routines and combining several 10-minute workouts into longer routines. I also don’t expect to get extremely buff doing only ten minutes a day. However, Foy’s plan aims to make you fitter, not necessarily a bodybuilder or extremely thin.

Really, the only problem I had with this book was it’s use of “10-minute” in the title, which really should be spelled out like “ten-minute” instead. I’m not usually a member of the grammar police, but this was an issue I had to look up recently for something else, so my brain can’t let it go unnoticed. I supposed they use the number instead of the word for marketing reasons.

I’m going to start following Foy’s plan and I’ll let you know how it goes!

Disclosure: I was sent these products for free to review.

It is not immediately obvious what a tomato saver, green produce bags, a button extender and a wrist wallet have in common. It seems like a pattern-identification question one would be asked on a Mensa test. The answer is that all of these products are sold at the Home Trends store which their public relations rep and blog reader, Kyra, sent me because she thought you guys might like them. And then I wrote about them because they’re sort of offbeat. Of course, she sent them last January, and in further proof of my twit-i-ness, it has taken me three months to write about them. Someday I swear I’ll live my life in the present and not a quarter year in the past.

First up are a set of Debbie Meyer Green Bags, which use SCIENCE ! to make your fruits and veggies last longer. As I discovered two years ago, some produce release a gas called ethylene as they ripen. This causes other veggies near the ripening fruit to deteriorate quickly. These plastic bags aren’t just a stylish green color, they also absorb ethylene gas, so you’re more likely to eat your salad instead of eating some cash by throwing out a rotten head of lettuce.

Kyra also sent me the Tomato Saver, which is a red, tomato-shaped container to store your half-used tomatoes in. It functions as well as any similar Tupperware container does, but it’s a bit cuter to have the tomato sitting in your fridge. Hypothetically, you could store anything in here, like spare change. Or, if you’re feeling wicked this Easter, you could make your kids go on a tomato hunt instead of an Easter Egg hunt.

I shall warn you that the Button Extender is not something you should buy for your husband or spouse. Similar to a bra strap extender, this product hooks onto the button of your jeans, giving you an extra inch or so. At first, I thought this was just a silly gag gift, but I have to admit it wasn’t half-bad to wear. My figure is such that when jeans fit me in the waist, they are loose in the thighs. Typically I end up wearing pants that are a little tighter in the waist than I’d prefer because they fit everywhere else better. The button extender helped a bit in this department, but it’s not something I’d wear without a shirt to cover it up.

And finally, Kyra also sent me a Wrist Wallet, which as you can guess, is a wallet you wear on your wrist. It’s reversible, so you can wear it as red or black. It seems “handy” for storing your keys at the gym or if you’re at an amusement park. I might consider using one when I travel to Europe so I don’t end up pick-pocketed and stuck in a foreign country with no money.

Giveaway

If you would like the chance to win a Tomato Saver and a pack of 2 Button Extenders, comment on this entry by 11:59pm on Monday, April 6th with an idea for another product the Home Trends store should sell on their web site. A winner will be drawn randomly. Good luck!

Sometimes though, I get sent an offer to review a product that genuinely intrigues me. It could be for a product I’ve heard about or something I think my readers might enjoy. This has always caused an ethical pickle for me because I don’t want my blog to become one long infomercial, but sometimes I’m human and I want to accept the free stuff. In the past, I’ve done the occasional book review and given away products for free, but those situations have always been an ethical gray area for me that I’ve never known how best to deal with.

So, I’m going to try something new. I’ve created an official review policy and I’m going to start occasionally reviewing products. I suspect the majority of you will not care one way or the other about this. You’re already sick of reading this entry and wish I’d get my nose out of my navel and stop blogging about the blog already. A small group of you will be so pissed off that you are right now composing emails to me debating whether I am a five-dollar whore or a two-dollar whore before you storm off in a huff. And another group is probably looking forward to seeing what I’ll review.

Before I do anything though, I thought it best to set some ground rules which I’ve also posted on my advertising page.

PastaQueen’s Official Review Policy – Updated December 13, 2008

1. I will only review products which I might consider purchasing or that I believe my readers would find valuable.
2. I will at maximum do two reviews a month, but am not obligated to do any in that timeframe.
3. I will disclose any payments or exchanges that occurred, including whether I received the product for free. I will also disclose any other partnerships with a company whose product I am reviewing, such as past sponsorships or past exchanges.
4. The full text of the review will not appear on the front page. Only the title will appear with a link to read the entire entry. Uninterested readers will be able to easily ignore these entries. People who read via RSS will see the full review. The review will clearly be marked as a review.
5. I will give my honest and complete opinion. I will not leave out negative comments I have about a product.

Those are all the ground rules I could think of. If you can think of anything else that might be relevant, feel free to suggest it on the comments of this entry.

I contemplated creating a whole new blog just for reviews, but the amount of time it would take to design a template that I liked and set the whole thing up made my brain implode. It’s easier to post everything here. We’ll see how this goes. If the reviews don’t fit into the flow of the blog, I’ll stop doing them or post them somewhere else. However, I hope you’ll find them useful and also entertaining (This is me we’re talking about. I inserted Sailor Moon analogies into my freshman English papers.) I typically appreciate it when a blogger recommends a product they like or steers me away from something that is awful. I’m not going to be reviewing the Flowbee here. It will only be stuff you might possibly be interested in or will laugh your ass off hearing about. I promise to give you my full, honest opinion and hopefully not annoy you in the process. The first review is posted right before this entry. Enjoy (or not)!

We’re kicking it off today with the woman who helped get this whole book thing rolling, Kalyn Denny of Kalyn’s Kitchen. Here is a schedule of the rest of my stops, which I will update with direct links to the posts as they go live. It should be lots of fun, so I hope everyone will check it out!

Monday, May 5: Kalyn’s Kitchen

Tuesday, May 6: CalorieLab (interview)

Wednesday, May 7: Life of L

Thursday, May 8: Big Fat Deal

Friday, May 9: Cranky Fitness

Monday, May 12: DietGirl

Tuesday, May 13: Diet Blog (guest post)

Wednesday, May 14: Elastic Waist (interview)

Thursday, May 15: Livin’ La Vida Low Carb (podcast)

Friday, May 16: Back in Skinny Jeans (podcast)

Monday, May 19: Manic Mommy (book giveaway!)

Tuesday, May 20: CalorieLab (review)

Wednesday, May 21: Elastic Waist (guest on video show The Daily Special)

Thursday, May 22: The Skinny at the Florida Sun-Sentinel

Friday, May 23: Roni’s Weight Watchen Page

Monday, May 26: The Diet Naked Blog formerly “The Amazing Shrinking Mom” (book giveaway!)

I also wanted to thank the following blogs for posting reviews before I got my act together to schedule the blog tour.

April 10 – In My Heels

April 24 – Morgan Gets Thin

April 26 – Yet Another Weight Watcher’s Blog

And if you’ve posted a review, interview, revealing photos of me and want to be listed in this post, e-mail me and I’ll include a link. Except if you posted revealing photos, in which case I’ll send you a cease and desist letter.

I’ve finally set a date and location for my official book release party. Meet me in the garden room at The Milano Inn in Indianapolis at 3pm on Saturday, May 3rd. There will be a party, pasta, and prizes – assuming I survive the Mini-Marathon that morning. And if I do collapse at mile 12, I give you permission to have the party in memory of me. If I live, this will be one of the first places for you to get a copy of my book, personally autographed too! If I die, those autographed copies will suddenly be worth a lot more. Show up and maybe you’ll win the FiberGourmet gift basket.

If you plan on attending, please RSVP at halfofme@pastaqueen.com so I can attempt to get an accurate head count.

The Milano Inn (in the Garden Room)

231 South College Ave

Indianapolis, IN 46202

317.264.3585

http://milanoinn.com/index1.html

Other Events

If you can’t make the party, I’m also doing a couple events in May and June in the following cities: Indianapolis, IN, Louisville, KY, Lexington, KY, and South Bend, IN. Details are here on the official book site.

If you signed up for my mailing list, you already learned this information a couple days ago. I’m giving mailing list subscribers an early heads up on these sorts of things, so sign up!

Autographed books

I’ve ordered 100 books to autograph and sell off of the official book site. As soon as they are shipped to my apartment, I will weigh them, figure out proper shipping and handling costs, and post a link on the book site to purchase them. If you’re on the mailing list, I’ll send an alert as soon as the link is live. I only have 100 copies to sell, so don’t let yours slip away! If response is good, I will order more, but it will take time to ship them from the warehouse and who wants to wait?

Early reviews

There has been great early response to the book. I’m keeping a full list of reviews here. Kirkus Reviews said it’s “A winsome, charming memoir of personal discovery.” Fellow blog-to-book authors Erin from Lose the Buddha and Wendy from Poundy had nice things to say, as well as many other people. And the American Booksellers Association named Half-Assed a Book Sense Notable book for May 2008.

Some of you have also noticed that my picture has been haunting the lifestyles sections of newspapers across America. This is because my book was mentioned in an Associated Press article about weight loss memoirs. Various papers across the country have picked it up over the past couple days, choosing to print my photo with it, which is simultaneously cool and bizarre. Thanks for letting me know! If you see any other press mentions, feel free to email me about them.

Whew. Self-promotion is exhausting. Enough about me, already. Back to blogging as usual on Saturday when I run my first 15K. Oh. My. God. I better start eating carbs RIGHT NOW.