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Living SMART: Five Essential Skills to Change Your Health Habits Forever


by Joshua C. Klapow, Sheri D. Pruitt

List Price: $14.95
Price: $11.66
You Save: $3.29 (22%)
Available: Usually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank: 400065
Studio: DiaMedica
Binding: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: October 28, 2007
Publisher: DiaMedica


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
The myriad of books and programs that encourage people to stop smoking, get organized, spend less, or exercise more tend to focus on what or why to change, but rarely explain how to change. Living SMART provides this missing piece. Developed by two behavioral psychologists, the program offers a set of practical tools drawn from science, not faddish ideas, that help readers successfully change any unhealthy behavior. Composed of five essential behavioral initiatives — Set a goal, Monitor your progress, Arrange your world for success, Recruit a support team, Treat yourself — the program is built on the idea that successful change takes more than mere motivation. Containing helpful tips, checklists, exercises, and progress charts, this simple, step-by-step book enables readers to take control of their lives and make positive, permanent changes. A companion website provides additional information, tips, and downloadable forms.


CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 12 reviews)

Not Your Typical Smart Goals  
Overall, this book is as interesting and as motivating as a book can be about health behavior modification. In graduate school I took a required course in health behavior and health education, which I found to be dreadfully boring and for the most part, unhelpful. In the class I learned the traditional SMART acronym (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely) for setting goals. Hands down, I believe this SMART system (Set a goal, Monitor your progress, Arrange your world for success, Recruit a support team, and Treat yourself) will be more effective at motivating individuals to make changes in their health than traditional SMART goals. I only wish I had used this book in the course I took in graduate school - it would have made the class so much more interesting and useful in my everyday life!
February 22, 2008

Made Me Stop and Think  
I received this book in the fall and I started reading it right away. Since it is now late winter and I'm just reviewing it, obviously something went wrong along the way. One of the first things the book talks about is taking a look at whether you actually want to change your behavior. I found out that I didn't. This surprised me and actually made me realize why it was always so difficult to reach my goals even though I had the knowledge and knew what steps to take to change. This may sound like a really simple concept, but that is exactly what this book is full of. Simple concepts that most people think they know but don't fully put into practice.
The book includes a very simple and straightforward 5 step plan that you can use to change any health habit or actually any habit at all for that matter. It includes charts that you can download from the website for charting your progress. It also discusses drifting, which happens to everyone when you are trying to change a habit and is usually the cause of failure. There are many good ideas for how to get back on track. There is also a chapter directly addressing four major health areas people would like to change and specific ideas for them. The book ends with some helpful resources.
I've read a lot of self help books on behavioral change and this is one of the most simple books I've read. But don't mistake that for unhelpful fluff. I think this may actually be the book that gets me to my goals.
February 15, 2008

The end result is a life plan that is highly customized to suit one's individual needs.  

Written by Joshua C. Klapow, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Department of Health Care Organization and Policy, University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Sheri D. Pruitt, Ph.D. (Director of Behavioral Science Integration for The Permanente Medical Group), Living Smart: Five Essential Skills to Change Your Health Habits Forever is a how-to guide to changing one's unhealthy behavior. The five keystones of the SMART behavioral program are: Set a goal, Monitor your progress, Arrange your world for success, Recruit a support team, and Treat yourself. Step-by-step instructions for building "game plans" to structure one's life with healthier diet, exercise, and sleep patterns (and also remember to take any needed medications punctually) help set the reader on a path to lifelong wellness. Living Smart is a consumable book, offering blank lines for the reader to write out answers to questions and blank charts to get started keeping a schedule; the end result is a life plan that is highly customized to suit one's individual needs. Highly recommended.

February 07, 2008

Absolutely Basic  
My first impression of Living Smart is it is not a book for me. It appears to be written for very young or very naive people. The use of cartoons to illustrate points and icons to highlight key sections immediately puts me off. The information contained is of the most basic and I find it hard to believe there is anyone who does not know the rudiments of what constitutes good health these days: exercise, not smoking, keeping weight under control. I am willing to concede, however, that there may be those who need something this basic to get and keep them on track. If you are one of these people then this book could be for you. They give you the necessary tools to make goals and stick to them, including blank lists and charts for you to fill in as you go along. There are suggestions for grocery shopping, lining up supportive friends, dealing with holidays, etc. Ultimately a book can only take you so far and you must find the discipline within yourself to accomplish your goals. I happen to be someone who does not need this information as I have been aware of good health for forty years and, as such, I find my intelligence insulted by the cartoons and simplicity. That is just me and this may be exactly what you need to get started on a program for a healthier lifestyle. If you are really trying to improve the quality of your life and have not had luck then this could be the ticket.
January 08, 2008

A Good Introduction with Some Flaws  
Written by two clinical psychologists, "Living SMART" promises to give its readers "simple skills to successfully make positive health or lifestyle changes." And, for the most part, it does. Klapow and Pruitt have created a simple, intuitive system (encapsulated in the mnemonic SMART, which I won't explain here as other reviewers have already covered it below) to help readers achieve such difficult modern day goals as losing weight, eating right, and getting enough sleep. Yes, their system is mostly common sense, but the beauty of this book is in stressing, again and again, that just knowing something will not help one accomplish it. Only through systematic repetition, monitoring of one's progress, and the ability to recognize when one's motivation is slipping (and how to get it back), can one effect real, lasting change. I cannot stress how appreciative I am that the authors acknowledge that making any lasting change will take perseverance and work; there is no quick fix.

Unfortunately, there are a few flaws in the book which prevent it from attaining perfection. First, the authors assume that those around the reader will be uniformly supportive of the reader's goals. As anyone who's ever tried to quit smoking in a household where other family members don't want to give up the habit, or get to bed at a decent time when a husband or friend doesn't want to forego the traditional late night drinking or movie sessions, can attest, not everyone will automatically get on board when one tries to make a change for the better. In fact, they may actively try to undermine one's efforts. Yet Klapow and Pruitt offer no suggestions or strategies for dealing with such situations, making this book much less useful to any reader whose family and friends aren't behind them 100 percent.

The other flaw is the frequent word-for-word repetition of paragraphs throughout the text (check out pages 47 and 152-53 for an example). This means readers are getting less book than the page count alone would suggest. While it could be argued that this removes the need to to flip back and forth between chapters, the authors could have made more of an effort to reword the passages instead of cutting-and-pasting them wholesale.

It's unfortunate that these two flaws mar an otherwise excellent book. But with those caveats out of the way, I can say that "Living SMART" can give readers the tools they'll need to help making positive lifestyle changes.

December 10, 2007


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