Customer Reviews

Outsmarting Female Fatigue: Eight Energizing Strategies for Longlife Vitality

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This is a superb book that can be part of a program to greatly improve the quality of your life . . . as well as your energy level. Although I cannot speak as a woman who has used the program, it certainly fits in with things that I have found help me increase my energy.

"Why do I feel so tired?" That's the question this book is designed to answer and help you solve. Be aware that you are not alone. 67% of women say that they don't have the energy to get through the day. Part of that undoubtedly relates to the fact that most women work 85 hours a week between jobs and home chores. The author proposes, "You have to take charge to recharge your energy" in 8 essential areas.

These areas are:

1. Eat the right foods, in the right quantities, at the right times, while savoring the experience (avoid dieting!)

2. Drink enough water (8 8-ounce glasses a day let your body burn food and stored energy more efficiently)

3. Improve fitness to give you more stamina (lots of good ideas for getting more fitness while doing normal activities)

4. Enjoy the outdoors with all five senses as much as possible

5. Get enough sleep (with lots of suggestions)

6. Enjoy closeness with others by being loving

7. Experience joy by laughing, smiling and having fun as often as you possibly can!

8. Cut back on what you are trying to do and relax to get your stress level down to where it is energizing rather than enervating

Fatigue "is telling you that you need a new outlook on life." In addition to the problems above, the author also outlines a number of physical conditions that could be causing your fatigue that a physician should check you out for.

Each of the 8 areas has a quiz so you can check yourself on how you are doing. That will help you isolate the places where you need to make changes. The book also has many practical suggestions for how to get all of these things accomplished without further increasing your already-lengthy day.

I loved the list of energy zappers (things to avoid) because so many people have problems in these areas: dieting, dehydration, immobility, indoor imprisonment, sleep difficulties, isolation, body dissatisfaction, sadness, and too much stress. That list certain fits the picture I have of the most fatigued women I know.

The book's basic concept is that you have to put more energy into your body and life to get more energy out. That made sense to me.

The only section that I thought was weak was the one on food. Having read "Live Right for Your Type," "The Burn Rate Diet," and "Sugar Busters!" in recent times, I thought that most women would benefit more from becoming familiar with those three books instead of the food advice here (except for the idea of stopping dieting, which will help many people who have low metabolisms). You can read my reviews on each of those books' pages on Amazon.com.

I have also seen many women improve their energy with regular meditation, which helps with stress relief and can add to restfulness more effectively than sleep.

My suggestion is that you keep a diary of how you spend your time, and what you do in each of these 8 areas for awhile to get started. That will help you become more aware of the choices that you make that improve (or decrease) your energy.

May your life be filled with a bounty of energy, health, happiness, peace, and prosperity!

I loved Waterhouse's book "Outsmarting the Female Fat Cell" and I was hoping to learn a lot from this one too. Unfortunately, this book was offering 8 commonly known strategies, like: destress your life - that's good - without more specific HOW's. An example; if you have three kids, a demanding job and an unhelpful husband, she'd like you to change your attitude, not particularly your life. Hello! I've learned all of her strategies and a lot more from magazines, such as Prevention, including more up-to-date facts. For instance, Waterhouse recommends kava-kava for sleeping. However, lately kava-kava has come into disrepute due to German medical studies. Also, I would have rather seen more information explaining WHY these 8 stragies work, rather than just the "do-it's", for instance: how hormones affect us, etc... as her other book did.

This book is a fast read, high level overview of eight areas important for keeping up your energy levels. This is perfect since her target audience is stressed out, wiped out women with little time for reading in the first place.

I would say that everything in this book has been said before, there is nothing ground breaking or particularly new in this book. We all know we need to eat right, get some exercise, enjoy some laughter, and get enough sleep. But even though we all know that, we don't do it. And therein lies the problem.

The author approaches this problem in a couple of ways which I appreciated. First, she talks about energy from a woman's point of view. She discusses female hormones and their impact on energy, and about how women's brains are built differently and women stress about things differently then their husbands do. It helped me to have the viewpoint that I am hard-wired differently than my husband and there are logical explanations for why we approach the same situation differently and stress out about different things.

Secondly, she gives you permission to say "I am STRESSED, I am TIRED, and I need to TAKE CARE OF MYSELF." She discusses how most of us completely ignore our body's signals and take care of everyone else but ourselves. We don't eat when we're hungry or rest when we're tired, we just keep pushing to do all that is expected of us. This was probably the biggest thing for me. It all boils down to awareness is always the first and most important step. Once you are aware of what you are doing that is causing the problem, the solutions are often obvious. Once I stopped blaming my fatigue on my kids, my husband, the housework, my boss, etc. and started to see that I was making choices every day - big and small - that had a big impact on my energy level, then I started making changes.

As a mother of three young kids, I also appreciated how she pointed out that children have boundless energy, and they do what she suggests we do: my children eat several times a day, eating healthy snacks and not over-eating at meals. They take naps, and get a solid 11 hours of sleep each night. They laugh a lot and their exercise is play. They request lots of hugs and kisses and cuddle time. They live in the moment they are in. If I want to know how to increase my energy, for pointers I can observe my children.

There are two reasons this book doesn't get 5 stars from me. The first is that she leaves out spirituality as a source of energy and stress reduction. By spirituality, I don't necessarily mean religion, I mean getting in touch with God or a power or energy greater than yourself. She does mention meditation/prayer but it is just a brief mention.

The second reason is that the biggest problem contributing to fatigue and stress is that we are trying to do too much, and while she discusses this in one of the last chapters, she doesn't stress it as much as she should. We are trying to cram too much into our lives, schedules, and closets. I would bet that Amazon sells more books on organization than on slowing down life. We think if we can just get more organized, then we can get everything done and then we'll have less stress. This is a myth, and I wish she had done more to "bust" the myth. I picked up this book as part of my own life-slowing journey, and reducing the "stuff" - both in my schedule and my home - has been the most critical thing.

Otherwise, it's an excellent book, and a good quick read on your own energy and joy journey.