183 of 185 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I was ready for it!, October 29, 2003
This review is from: 8 Minutes in the Morning for Real Shapes, Real Sizes: Specifically Designed for People Who Want to Lose 30 Pounds or More (Hardcover)
Over the past ... years (I'm 58), I've used various weight loss methods. I'd lose it, then find it...lose it, then find it. This book has the right combination: strengthening exercises (just 2 a day), food suggestions (no calorie counting; very little weighing), recruiting helpers, journalling, inspirational readings. After a couple of weeks, you're in the habit and liking it.
Sounds like a lot of time and energy. It is, in the beginning. Just like anything new. I'm in my fifth week. My energy level escalating within 2-3 days. My body showed obvious signs of firming up within a week. I've lost 9 pounds and like having minigoals.
Jorge Cruise doesn't push young, skinny bodies. He promotes health and well-being. If young, skinny bodes are the result, so be it. I feel great and am already getting comments about changes in my body. My favorite result is the increase in energy. Before Cruise, a walk was preceded by long debates with myself about whether or not I should do it. Now I find myself in the middle of a walk and wonder how I got there without all that self-debate.
I'll keep working with this book and when I've lost about 20 more pounds, I'm planning to switch to his other book--the one for losing 30# or less.
8 Minutes in the Morning for Real Shapes, Real Sizes: Specifically Designed for People Who Want to Lose 30 Pounds or More by Jorge Cruise is well worth the money. My health and fitness are worth much more than the cost of the book and the time it takes to do this great program.
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207 of 212 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Program Will Work For ANYONE!, July 23, 2003
This review is from: 8 Minutes in the Morning for Real Shapes, Real Sizes: Specifically Designed for People Who Want to Lose 30 Pounds or More (Hardcover)
Just a thought: I have to question the first reviewers comments because this book is for people with MORE than 30 pounds to lose. If she was trying to lose 10 pounds doing exercises created for people with more than 30 to lose, perhaps therein lay her complication. Another issue there is that anyone who reads and truly does the homework in these books gets a really positive attitude and deals with their emotional issues around food and other negative issues in their life as well... If I could write her I'd tell her to give away her 'Real Shapes and Sizes' book to someone she knows who has at least 30 pounds to lose and then get the first book (the yellow one), which is helping a lot of people with her situation right now and then see how she feels about it.
8 Minutes In the Morning for Real Shapes and Sizes is all about reality and simplicity. Jorge Cruise is a real personal fitness trainer and coach who's worked with all kinds of people after grasping truths for his own weight issues and has now put them out there for all of us into these books! You don't have to pay a membership fee or join a gym. Having a treadmill or a pilates machine is nice but not necessary, you don't even have to buy support workbooks, or special food! All you need to do these exercises is an open bit of floor, an open bit of wall or a doorway, two phonebooks (or the like), two equal cans of food or bottled water from your cupboard, a sturdy chair and a table with one end cleared off. (You use these things a few times over 28 days, how difficult is that! You can even do this on business trips, while visiting friends/family or on vacation!) This book is a about the whole person, about true FITNESS, not just FAT or weight loss and has helped myself and so many others on the support websites that I've become involved with since reading it! ...
First of all, it doesn't matter HOW MUCH weight you need to lose because this method is so practical as seen on the recent Dateline NBC Show (Here is a link to the transcript for it: ... as well as in this review of that show: ... that anyone can do it! Jorge Cruise has developed exercises for people that will work whether you haven't moved in a while much at all or whether you just need to tone up while you work through your emotional eating/exercise issues, either way, YOU CAN DO THEM! His method of eating is simple and easy to do anywhere too! This isn't the kind of weight loss program that you look at and get depressed and think, "Dang I'll have to change my whole lifestyle and I'll never see my favorite foods/snacks again!" This program isn't about guilt or lack, it's about being more educated to make good choices and to do things in the right timing!
What I hadn't realized until I read this book is that most people just have misinformed or ingrained habits that keep their metabolism so low or overwhelmed that anyone would gain weight, regardless of what they eat! That's what happened to me, I had developed a pattern of eating at all the worst times of the day and evening when my body really needed NOT to be eating and I wasn't drinking enough liquids for as many emotional reasons as when I was eating later than I should have. All of that meant I wound up feeling like my body was broken somehow and thought I would never lose the weight but on Jorge's easy-to-follow/never-go-hungry program, I've lost 25 pounds in just 5 weeks! I've also lost over 45 inches! And believe me, if I can lose that kind of weight I really believe anyone who wants to can too! I still have several weeks to go to get to the weight that I WANT to be, but NOW I have easy to reach goals and a light at the end of the tunnel. I had become convinced that I'd have to have surgery to lose this kind of weight and even signed up for it, but now that I have this book and see it working, there's no way I'd put myself through that! Thank goodness because I've met people who've had it and they still have the same issues with food as they did before the surgery and most of them are having a lot of complications!
Let me suggest something.. if you're tired of being overweight but not quite sure if you're altogether ready for yet another weight loss program, then, get this book. Look at the information he gives... Did you know that your body (yes YOURS) is more amazing than you ever realized? Did you know that it is JUST as hard to GAIN a pound as it is to lose one? Did you know that those pounds that you can't seem to get rid of can be gone in the near and forseeable future if you divide the number you WANT to lose by 2? Did you know it's more important to be FIT than it is to worry about how FAT you are or feel? Are you tired of looking around at all the 'skinny' people in their cute clothes so full of energy and wondering what's wrong with you? If you've always felt fat or trapped or never thought you could ever be fit, than stop looking, this program is for YOU!
Get this book and start dreaming about all the things you ever wanted to do, because I really believe, that like the rest of us at .... who are losing weight and keeping it off, that you'll be soon doing those things you'd all but given up hope for and that is so exciting - you'll have a new lease on life!
All the best! Joy =)
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77 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The perfect book for people in really bad shape, November 6, 2004
This review is from: 8 Minutes in the Morning for Real Shapes, Real Sizes: Specifically Designed for People Who Want to Lose 30 Pounds or More (Hardcover)
I read this book 14 months ago and I have lost 51 pounds since then. I am now normal weight, as thin as I was 20 years ago. I had tried other books about weight lifting and found the exercises much too difficult. I was able to start with the ones in this book and work up to the more difficult ones later.
I really like the diet because he teaches you how to figure out what and how much to eat by just looking at your plate. It is so much less trouble than other diets. Nothing is completely off-limits. This is the kind of diet that you can stick with for the rest of your life.
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