Comments (0)

By jamie, October 14, 2011 1:00 pm

Full disclosure – I am a fan of Jillian Michaels. One of the first books I read for this blog was her Master Your Metabolism, and my review is still one of my “greatest hits” over a year later.

If you are looking for weight loss tips, try her other book instead. This one is about changing bad habits in general in order to become more successful in life in general. Fears? Insecurities? Getting in your own way? Some of her advice might have been written before, but it’s worth reading in her “voice.” That said, she shares quite a bit of information about body and muscle development and uses it as a way to explain overall personal improvement. She also uses weight loss in some of her explanations about how to shift self-destructive thinking. One of my favorite examples is her trick to overcoming negative emotional attachments by substituting them with positive ones: rather than thinking of the treadmill as a torture device (or referring to is as a “dread-mill,” like so many of us do!), think about it as a means to “looking awesome in skinny jeans, more energy, better sex life” or some such. If fast food feels like comfort and convenience to you, concentrate on thinking about it as a ticket to “muffin tops, lethargy, self-loathing, muumuus” to help you break the habit.

Some of the advice comes straight from The Secret, and is all about keeping our thoughts positive and enlisting help from the universe to reach our goals. I am actually pretty happy that she includes this – people who have no plans to read the more popular text will be able to benefit from this strategy for eliminating negativity because they are fans of Jillian Michaels. It is no secret how she has helped numerous contestants deal with years of poor self esteem and feelings of failure – this is our chance to share some of that experience without going on television to get it (well, she has moved on to greener pastures anyway).

This book majorly emphasizes psychotherapy. She suggests finding a good therapist to help you overcome various mental obstacles, and hints that many of our problems are caused by being mistreated by someone in the past. I am all for getting help from experts, but I don’t think all of our challenges are caused by other people at the root.

Some of this is boiler-plate self-help book, snarked up by Jillian Michaels to sound less “fluffy” and more like a tough but caring friend is sharing life experience to help pull you out of your rut. She also spends a great deal of time describing her own pathway to success, and suggests that we should find a mentor and, in the absence of a “real life” guru, to read all we can about successful people we admire and copy their career trajectory. This advice lends itself well to work success, but can certainly be applied to home life, hobbies and, yes, even weight loss.

A lot of the anecdotes she gives come from the Biggest Loser show, where she was always a straight-shooter who practically bullied her team into overcoming their mental obstacles and achieving victory. (I miss her on the Biggest Loser and, no offense to Anna K., I think she would have been much tougher on the older group and they would not have lost three people the first four weeks.)

The book mentions accompanying exercises on her website. I have not looked at those. There are little icons in the margins of some of the pages that direct you to interactive content. This might be helpful to some, but I was focused more on what I could learn from the book by itself. Overall I think it’s a useful read for those who want to be better at anything they try and who need a bit of a push in the right direction.

Scroll down for other posts about Unlimited:

Review
Part 1: Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life, by Jillian Michaels
Part 2: Anxiety and Fear
Part 3: Target Practice
Part 4: You Didn’t Mean Not To

Comments (0)

By jamie, September 5, 2011 6:18 am

One of the things my mom has always said (and it generally makes me grumpy when she says it to me) is “you didn’t mean not to.” This is pretty much her standard reply when someone, making an excuse for some oversight or result of poor planning, says – “Sorry! I didn’t mean to do that!” Accidents happen, of course, but most of them are avoidable if we think before we act or speak.

I finished the book, and Jillian Michaels pretty much quotes my mom in the section on conscious decision making. She describes a Biggest Loser contestant who lost his chance at victory due to “unexpected” dental problems – some may see this as bad luck, but she believes it was actually the result of poor planning – had he taken better care of his teeth, he would have been better equipped to maximize the opportunity of being on the show. I’m not sure her example was the best one (some people have better teeth than others, or have had incredibly bad dentists) – I think gaining the weight in the first place is a much better example. We can’t really say “I didn’t mean to let my weight get out of control” – it’s much more accurate to say “I didn’t mean not to gain all this weight.” Let’s face it – a lot of poor decisions can eventually add up to a very serious weight/health issue (or other problem).

It takes constant conscious decision making to pull ourselves out of our most serious mess-ups, whether they involve weight, relationships, money, or something else. We have to mean to fix it, and every decision we make has to point us in the right direction. She talks about being “in the moment” as much as possible. I think this is excellent advice.

Quite a bit of this section is devoted to the importance of networking and communication. For someone who is so fixated on interdependence over independence, I admit that this is a challenging area for me. I’m not so great at self promotion or asking for help. I have probably let some really great mentors pass me by because I was too shy to put myself out there. I haven’t attended office hours when I should have, have kept quiet when I really shouldn’t have, actively avoid networking situations (too scary!) – it’s a problem. And I guess it’s particularly odd because I do really well in front of a classroom – I don’t feel shy at all when I’m teaching. I forced myself to read this section slowly and promised myself that I will do better. We’ll see.

Scroll down for other posts about Unlimited:

Review
Part 1: Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life, by Jillian Michaels
Part 2: Anxiety and Fear
Part 3: Target Practice
Part 4: You Didn’t Mean Not To

Comments (0)

By jamie, July 22, 2011 3:08 pm

I used to teach a spinning class at the gym, and I loved it. Because I was the teacher, I could get off of the bike during the sprints or just ride a little slower so I could keep enough breath to encourage and instruct the students. I hate sprints – and for years I have believed that my genetics made it impossible for me to love them. When I took my fitness instructor training, we were taught about fast twitch and slow twitch muscles, and that we all vary in our composition of fast (better for sprinting) and slow twitch (better for strength and endurance) muscle tissue. I came to the conclusion that I am all slow twitch and none of the fast, and there’s nothing I can do about it – I could “climb hills” on the bike all day long, but please don’t subject me to a sprint.

I read Chapters 9-11 (the first three chapters of Section 3). This is the “money” section, where she breaks down exactly how to change your life. She talks a great deal about psychology and how we can grow our brains (which we have heard elsewhere, of course). I’m not going to quote (or play fact checker on) her brain/psych. discussion (she highly recommends therapy, and her mom is a therapist, but none of these things makes her an expert in this area), but I am inclined to take her at her word when she talks about exercise science. So, she says that we can change our muscle compostion, including adding fast twitch muscle fibers if you don’t have any to speak of – I had understood that you are stuck with what you are born with, so this was a surprise to me. She also mentions that slow twitch muscles are perfect for running marathons – this flies in the face of my longstanding belief that my body is not made for running. (Great – there goes THAT excuse…)

So how do you build specific muscle fibers? Training. Drills, drills, and more drills. Instead of just climbing fun hills all day long, do those sprints. Then do more sprints… Of course she applies this to every espect of life – you can build certain skills though specific practice (she calls it “target practice”). Some totally random examples: Lousy housekeeper? Practice cleaning! Shy wallflower? Practice assertiveness! Procrastinator? Practice getting things done right now! Then practice some more!

There was quite a lot of valuable advice in these chapters. I will share a little bit with you, including my favorite part.

1. Mentors are extremely important. When choosing your future mentor, aim high but be realistic. No worries if you don’t have access to the actual person – in her case, she studied and learned everything she could about Martha Stewart’s career. Some of what she says here is not new, but I enjoyed reading her real-life examples. She talks about how she turned down an offer to start her own magazine because she thought she should follow Martha Stewart’s example of working at a magazine first (and chose a smaller position at Self magazine instead). Then, with regard to being flexible, she is now focusing on building content for her website – paper magazines aren’t what they used to be, you know (although, with apologies to Mother Earth, I still love them). Reading this gave me some insight into her recent career decision – if she is using Martha Stewart as a guide (and also possibly Oprah), it makes sense that she would want to move from a reality show to a daily daytime spot on her road to having her own daily show (or maybe even her own channel?!?) someday. I get it now.

2. Get feedback and identify specific weaknesses. Obvious advice, maybe, but I think it bears repeating. How useful is it to practice doing something wrong over and over again? This is a tricky one for me because I am shy to ask for feedback, and I don’t like to be embarrassed about doing something the wrong way. I think this holds me back, though. I joined the swim team in high school (because I wanted to learn how to swim). I was miserably slow, and one time a friend teased me about how clumsy I was in the water. Instead of taking the criticism as a sign that I should ask for extra help with my form, I lost interest in swimming instead. To this day I am a lousy swimmer – I think I can probably keep myself alive in an emergency, but I’d sure hate to be tested on this (according to my husband, who is part dolphin, I don’t even dog paddle correctly).

3. Change your emotional attachments. This is my favorite bit of advice. We build emotional attachments to things all the time, and some are pretty destructive. We should identify these instances and change them into healthier ones. Here are a couple of her examples of new emotional attachments:

“Treadmill = looking awesome in skinny jeans, more energy, better sex life”
“Burger and fries = muffin tops, lethargy, self-loathing, muumuus”

Great trick, no? Okay, my turn. Here is the feeling I get when I have to pack or unpack a suitcase – “no fair that I have to spend all day in an airplane to see my family when my husband just has to call them or drop by (he can even walk to their house if he wants to!”

Here’s a better emotional attachment: Packing/unpacking = joy at my good fortune that I can travel back and forth this way.

Scroll down for other posts about Unlimited:

Review
Part 1: Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life, by Jillian Michaels
Part 2: Anxiety and Fear
Part 3: Target Practice
Part 4: You Didn’t Mean Not To

Comments (0)

By jamie, July 16, 2011 9:45 pm

I read Section 2. It’s all about believing in yourself, and your power to be successful. Some of it was iffy for me, but part of it made me think.

I have written about karma before, and about how most of us don’t really understand the philosophy behind it. It’s a hard thing, watching known “bad guys” run around all happy and successful while there are really good people struggling and suffering. Jillian Michaels says that bad people who succeed are probably unhappy, then she emphasizes this by adding, “”don’t we all know that bullies are the most scared and insecure people?” Uh oh – red flag. Some of this book smacks of typical self help boilerplate (snarked up Jillian Michael’s style – yikes, I might be too grumpy to be blogging right now – oh well), and now we get this.

Her assertion that bullies have low self esteem has largely been refuted, even in the relatively mainstream press. I almost expect to hear next that we only use a small percentage of our brains (also untrue – yeah, I’m pretty grumpy alright). It seems to me, and this is untested, that “bad people who succeed” are pretty happy – some of them clearly use their success as evidence that they are above the rules the rest of us are supposed to follow (insert reference to any powerful lying, cheating politician here).

She spends a great deal of time focusing on helping us face past demons that might be keeping us from maximizing our success. Who wronged us? Who made us feel low enough that we don’t think we deserve success? The implication is that everyone who is not currently maximizing their potential must have some past hurt that needs to be healed. I don’t really buy this (although of course it applies to some).

Okay, so some of us DO need an attitude adjustment (maybe even me sometimes), and I appreciate some of her tips on getting past anxiety and fear. Here is a quote: “Maybe you’re the kind of person who, when anxious, obsesses and reacts impulsively in ways that only add fuel to the fire. If so, then think of something you can do in response to anxiety so you don’t make matters worse.”

For anxiety: One of her tips is to stay “rooted in the present” instead of wasting our time imagining the horrible things that have not happened. She also advises to use our energy to stand back and find a solution instead of “freaking out.” Have you ever been up all night worrying about a problem? All of that adrenaline wasted on worry, instead of using it to find a solution.

For fear: I like the part where she suggests we run through best and worst case scenarios in our heads in order to push past the fear. It kind of reminds me of something I read when I was pregnant and studying pain management techniques to prepare for natural childbirth – a couple of books said to be curious about the pain, to focus all of our concentration on the discomfort, and that doing this will somehow diminish what we are feeling. For the best case visualization, she gives an example of a friend who was afraid to ask out a woman – Michaels advised him to imagine the best that could happen – he imagined himself falling in love with and marrying the woman – then, armed with new confidence, he asked for a date. Today they are engaged.

I also really like the part about failure helping us learn how to succeed. Instead of just slinking away when we fail, it’s better to analyze what happened, even to the point of asking the people involved. (Why wasn’t I hired? etc.) This effort might not affect our current situation, but it can help us do things differently the next time opportunity presents itself.

Scroll down for other posts about Unlimited:

Review
Part 1: Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life, by Jillian Michaels
Part 2: Anxiety and Fear
Part 3: Target Practice
Part 4: You Didn’t Mean Not To

Comments (0)

By jamie, June 30, 2011 8:32 pm

I am not a fan of Dr. Phil. I bought this book before I knew that Jillian Michaels was going to leave The Biggest Loser and work on his show instead. I do not doubt that she sincerely wants to help people, and I think that The Biggest Loser is often objectionably exploitative, but I think this career move is undoubtedly a step down for her. It was in this context that I read the first section (of three) in this book.

The first couple of chapters are all about deciding what you want to achieve in life and helping you focus on happiness over “the grind” of life. It’s pretty typical advice, but certainly worthwhile, and told in Jillian Michaels’ “edgy” voice. The third chapter is a less new agey, heavily abridged version ofThe Secret, a book I have some experience testing (the day I called dolphins to the boat we were riding in).

Here are some bits I found particularly useful:

Apart from forming realistic goals, it is not enough to just visualize our goals, we should also clearly picture ourselves doing the work. You know that song, “I Believe I Can Fly” I have always disliked that song because I think it gives the wrong idea about positive thinking “I think about it every night and day; Spread my wings and fly away; I believe I can soar; I see me running through that open door…” I’m sure it’s supposed to be a metaphor for reaching your goals, but every time I hear that song I think that, unless the person singing it is diligently studying and practicing at flight school while regularly visualizing a successful plane flight, they are headed for a crash. Anyway, I can dream all day long about performing like those people on So You Think You Can Dance, but in real life this is one dream that I would have to live vicariously through my daughter because I haven’t done the work to accomplish it.

Here is a new term: psychoneuroimmunology , or PNI, defined by Michaels as “the study of how your thoughts affect the chemicals in your brain and the hormones that fight disease.” Here’s another topic for me to look into, given my love for brain science.

This one comes straight from The Secret: if we want to attract something positive, we cannot think of things in negative terms – if we tell a kid “don’t climb the tree because you are going to fall!” we are sending the probability of falling out into the universe. Since I first read read this, I have worked very hard to think about (and speak about) things in a positive light, and I have evidence that this has enhanced my life. One day I went to pick up a vase (it belonged to my mother-in-law) from the closet floor when the thought entered my head that I was going to drop the vase. My hands were not wet, and I picked it up carefully with both hands, but down it went – it fell from about 15 inches above the ground, which was enough to make it shatter – I still owe GB’s mom a vase, and I blame it on negative thinking.

I’m not going to say that The Secret is my guide for living, but I will say that this particular concept resonated with me to the point where I almost take it too far. I wince when people write “FML” when bad things happen, and I immediately think that they are asking for trouble with their words. Sometimes I think positive thoughts on their behalf to try to help soften the cosmic blow. (You’re welcome.) Also, I rephrase things all the time just in case: for example, instead of “last week,” I say “a week ago,” just in case the universe sees fit to emphasize the “last.” This is not to discount prayer, which Jillian Michaels also speaks about in a very positive light – I see it as an application of faith – we pray, and then we trust God to listen and guide our steps.

Here’s a quote: “Transformation isn’t a future event, it’s a present activity, and the closest you can come to predicting what your future holds is to start creating it now.” I love that.

Scroll down for other posts about Unlimited:

Review
Part 1: Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life, by Jillian Michaels
Part 2: Anxiety and Fear
Part 3: Target Practice
Part 4: You Didn’t Mean Not To