Total Wellbeing Blog

Book Review - Take Time For Your Life by Cheryl Richardson

‘Take Time For Your Life’ is a great book that helps you to evaluate your life and take action to make those long overdue changes.

An excellent resource for those feeling stressed, over-worked and out of control of their time, this book helps you take practical steps to overcome the obstacles, challenges and energy drainers and put yourself first.

Cheryl Richardson is truly a great coach and this book comes from many of her personal experiences. This is a thought provoking practical and motivating book with insights and exercises that you can apply regardless of your circumstances. This is not just a time management book - it helps you identify your priorities, consider the quality of your relationships and help you discover new healthy ways to boost your energy.

If you are looking for a resource to help develop some intense self-care without the guilt, then this reading this book could be just what you need.

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Total Wellbeing Books (UK)

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Book Review - Be Your Own Life Coach, Fiona Harrold

I was lucky enough to come across this book on offer in a magazine and the read up was so interesting I sent off for it there and then! It has been one of the best self development books I have ever read and has helped me make many changes to my levels of self-belief and evaluating what I want from life.

This book is a great companion for lasting change. It helps you understand your limiting beliefs and the way they hold you back, gives you tools to uncover what you really want in life and wholeheartedly supports you in your ambitions and goals for the future!

I went to reach for the book today to write this review and realised that I had lent it to a friend - it is the 2nd copy I have bought and I have lent it out several times. If people are having trouble setting themselves goals, have low self esteem or self belief and need to make some serious changes in their life than this is a book I always recommend. I have read it so many times now that I can even write a book review without having it in front of me and still recall the impression it has made on my life!

In this book, it really feels like you are receiving personal coaching from Fiona Harrold - her writing style is motivating and uplifting - at the start focussing on what is not right with your life and swiftly moving on to what you can do and take responsibility for to change your life for the better. Responsibility is the key word here - empowering you to take charge of your future and stop blaming everything and everyone else around you for the things that are not right in your life.

This book can be applied to all areas - career, relationships, self esteem, attitude - this list is endless! Whatever you hold dear to your heart or whatever is important to you, this is a great vehicle for positive change.

However many times I lend it to someone, if I don't get it back, I will always get hold of another copy as it's a book that I know I can refer to time and time again to help with the changes in my life and to give me a focus to reach my goals!

Read more reviews at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Book Review - Geneen Roth, Breaking Free from Emotional Eating

I love this book. It’s great for anyone who has issues with emotional eating and Geneen writes in a way it feels like she is describing your relationship with food and weight! It feels like that because there are so many people out there now with the same emotional eating issues. The problem is becoming more and more common - in my opinion because of the diet culture that we have and the pressure on woman to feel and look perfect. Geneen herself has gone through a lot of issues with overeating and weight gain so she is writing from experience rather than from theory.

The book helps you to think about the way you currently view food and your body and also gives a lot of practical exercises to help you make changes. The theories are similar to some other books about emotional eating but to me that also reinforces that these theories work!

This book focuses on recognising when you are truly hungry, eating consciously, stopping when you are full and managing eating around social situations. It’s also a great book to help you make friends with your body again, stop the guilt and start loving yourself more.

What this book is not, is a quick fix to weight loss or another fad diet. The exercises in it take work and perseverance to make real changes in your life but if you are looking for a long term solution and are prepared to do what is takes to change your habits then this will work well for you.

I love this book and it is one that I go back to often for inspiration if I am having a difficult time with my eating.

Read more reviews at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Book Review - Eating Less by Gillian Riley

I have read several books on dieting and weight loss over the years and this book has a very different approach to losing weight. It works on the principle that we need to raise our self-esteem, set our own limits on food and take responsibility for ourselves and our actions.

The message of this book is simple and fad free focusing on healthy eating through raising our self-esteem and empowering us to make more choices around food. Although it’s message is simple and in some ways obvious, it really looks at the cause of overeating rather than the symptoms. It asks us to focus on our addiction to eating rather than the weight that we have put on. Just focusing on weight rather than the cause is something most people who are overweight have been guilty of and many of us are left wondering why on earth we can’t be disciplined enough to keep the weight off! This in itself can be very damaging to our self esteem and without a good sense of self-worth the extra weight becomes impossible to shift.

Like anything else, applying the techniques and advice takes work and perseverance but if you are looking for an alternative from the endless array of fad diets promising you the world or are fed up feeling like a failure because you can’t stick to a ‘diet’, then this book may well set you on the road to a happier healthier future.

Read more reviews at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com