I don’t usually find diet books of particular interest. After all, there are only so many different ways to say lose weight by burning more calories than you take in. The problem is convincing yourself to eat less and exercise more.

The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size by Julia Cameron is a diet book that approaches emotional eating from the perspective of using writing to uncover subconscious motivations for what we do. If you can separate the ideas from the author’s negative attitude towards food, it may be what you need to get you thinking about weight loss in a different way.

The Writing Diet proposes a program that uses writing to uncover the reasons for overeating and/or underexercising. The book is separated into two parts. The first part proposes seven tools for weight loss, some mediated by writing and some not. The second section looks at various situations/issues that arise when trying to lose weight and addresses them specifically.

The thought of writing can be intimidating for some people. Fortunately, the writing proposed in this book doesn’t require a good command of grammar, spelling, or even proper sentence structure. The proposed writing habits are in the form of journalling and inksheds (a type of stream of consciousness writing). The goal is to use inksheds in the morning and journalling whenever you eat anything to raise your own consciousness about why you are overeating or underexercising. If that sounds like a lot of writing to do, it is; but if you can develop the habit it can lead to insights into your own behaviour.

I’ve done the equivalent of Morning Pages (stream-of-consciousness writing done upon waking) in writing workshops and I agree that they can have tremendous value in unearthing what is lurking in the subsconscious. The idea of writing every time I eat or any time I think of eating as proposed by Cameron is too onerous and time consuming for me to adopt on a regular basis. While some may find it useful, it feels like a time suck to me — the same reason I’ve never managed to keep track of calories for long (to be clear, Cameron doesn’t advocate calorie counting but I find it at the same level of time suck as writing every time I eat).

Cameron has some suggestions for sticking with weight loss that don’t involve writing directly. For example she recommends walking (starting with 5 minutes because who doesn’t have 5 minutes). Cameron also proposes planning a culinary date once a week to explore new cuisine or try a new restaurant. While the culinary date sounds interesting, I found some of her other suggestions less appealing.

Cameron borrows from 12-step programs by introducing the concept of a sponsor (called a Body Buddy) to help you stick to new eating habits (and show your food log to). In keeping with the 12-step ethos, Cameron suggests unhealthy eating is on par with alcoholism which explains why throughout the book unhealthy eating is treated as if it were a disease. It is unfortunate that the book is infused with a negativity towards food because it taints the many useful ideas presented for those struggling to lose weight.

In addition to discussing unhealthy eating as a disease, Cameron also talks about snack attacks, food being an enemy, fighting wars and battles with food, and eating legally. She talks about clean eating, downfalls when you don’t eat clean and other language that makes unhealthy eating sound not only like a disease but a sin. There is talk of spirituality, outside power, and religion at various points in the book as well which seems unnecessary and narrows the audience for the book. Long time readers of the blog will know that I do not like religion in my secular topics unless the book is clearly marked and marketed as such (which this book isn’t, although IF I had been aware of Julia Cameron’s other titles I might have expected the spirituality aspect of the book).

Though I found myself picking and choosing parts of the book to use, it has some interesting ideas in spite of the issues I’ve mentioned. If your view of food already coincides with Cameron’s then the negative language may not bother you. Likewise for the talk of spirituality and religion.

If you eat for emotional reasons and think you can develop a daily journalling habit (among other things), then this book might help you gain traction in developing a healthier lifestyle. For myself, I’ve never managed to keep a journal for longer than a week so I haven’t managed to apply this book for very long yet. If I ever do manage to get anywhere with this book, I’ll discuss it in my Read It, Live It, Blog It Reading Challenge posts.

You can find The Writing Diet and other Julia Cameron books at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.ukas well as other online and bricks and mortar booksellers.

Yoga for computer users: Healthy Necks, Shoulders, Wrists, and Hands in the Postmodern Age by Sandy Blaine focuses on using yoga to treat aches and pains that come from sitting in front of the computer before they turn into repetitive strain injuries. The book provides information on the individual poses, various routines for breaks, as well as some general advice on incorporating yoga into a daily routine and on preventing repetitive strain injuries.

Yoga for Computer Users gives instructions for a number of poses that can be done at the desk or in the office. Whether you’ll be able to do all of these at your desk depends on if you have an office or not. Space and co-worker tolerance are often at a premium in shared offices or open plan spaces. Enough stretches can be done in a minimum amount of space to make the book worthwhile even if all the space you have is your chair (I have been known to do stretches in stairwells so where there is a will there is a way–of course, I have also been known to ignore people who look at me funny).

The book provides sequences of yoga poses that you can use depending on whether you’re taking a coffee break or lunch break, relaxing after work or preparing to kick yourself into gear in the morning. While the idea of these sequences is good, they are presented as a list in the back of the book with only the pose name and the figure number, but no page numbers. This means flipping between the table of contents and the list of poses at the back of the book in order to find the instructions for each pose or flipping through the book trying to find the right figure number. Page numbers would have been a small but immensely useful addition to the list.

As for the poses themselves, each chapter is devoted to a different pose. The purpose of the pose, or the muscles that it stretches, are listed right under the chapter title making it easy to flip through and see what each pose is good for. Cautions and required props are also conveniently listed right at the beginning.

The instructions for the poses are given in prose, or paragraph, format. Since I find it incredibly hard to follow instructions and not lose my spot when I’m trying to arrange my body in various positions, I would have preferred an ordered list or bullet points as visual cues to remind me where I was in the text as I try to complete various poses. There are one to two pictures of each pose being performed, usually showing the end result. Some of the poses would have benefited from pictures of intermediate stages or arrows around the models to show the direction of movement especially for people like me who have difficulty visualizing from the text.

This utility and the challenge of exercise books lies in the ease of actually applying them to your life. Because of the way the poses were presented I found that I had to sit down and write my own numbered instructions in order to wrap my head around the mass of text presented for each pose (not everyone will find this as problematic as I did). Once I got past that (by making my own cue cards), I actually found the book quite useful and am intent on doing some of the stretches regularly.

Whether you use this book or something else, I highly recommend that you take breaks and stretch if you’re deskbound for much of the day. Take it from me that recovering from repetitive strain injuries can take years and is best avoided.

You can find this Rodmell Press Yoga Shorts book at amazon.com, amazon.ca, or amazon.co.uk.