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| Reading List |
| • Losing Weight the Rational Way In Body Intelligence: Lose Weight, Keep It Off, and Feel Great About Your Body Without Dieting!, Edward Abramson, Ph.D. 1971, coins a new term. Body intelligence, he explains, is a way to reconceptualize weight-control. It “integrates research on the psychology of eating and appetite, body image, and exercise to provide a more complete view of weight regulation.” A professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Abramson urges readers to understand the cues that trigger overeating (loneliness, boredom, anger), avoid eating in response to them and make time for both exercise and activity (taking the stairs instead of the elevator). All this is easier said than done, of course, but Men’s Health magazine didn’t proclaim Abramson the “go-to authority on the ‘why’ of weight gain” for nothing. The CUA alumnus says he can help people lose weight and keep it off — not with dieting but with something better. “The basic principle, eat less and exercise more, is well known,” he writes. “What is less well known are the reasons why it is so difficult to do. Once you understand the different reasons for eating, and become more aware of how you use food, you will find that some of these needs can be met without eating.” To help readers do that, Abramson urges them to improve their body image by isolating — and then avoiding — the people, places and situations that make them feel bad about their bodies. “Weight loss by itself is no guarantee of improved body image so you might as well work on body image now, whatever your weight is,” he says. Diet Simple: 192 Mental Tricks, Substitutions, Habits & Inspirations by Katherine Tallmadge, M.A. 1982, also eschews the quick fix of the latest fad diet and instead describes the slimming potential of such activities as walking the dog (a loss of 46 to 89 pounds a year) or forgoing “I sometimes advise people to think of TV as the equivalent of having a 19-inch brownie in the house. If you give it up, you’re going to give up calories at the same time — probably about 300 a night,” Tallmadge writes. “Follow these and other tips in this book and you’ll be more successful at losing weight than you ever imagined you could be.” – A.C. • 10 for 10 His recent books are composed of his own homilies. Taken together, nine of the books provide sample homilies for every day of the year, the subject of the homilies being keyed to the lectionary’s Bible readings for each day:
Good idea-generators for priests who need to come up with homilies, the books could also serve as daily devotionals. A 10th volume includes homilies or talks that could be delivered for occasions such as a wedding, graduation, priest’s ordination, Valentine’s Day, first Communion, Mother’s Day, etc. “The books are probably unique in that they cover every possible homiletic situation in which a priest could find himself,” says Rev. Edmund Lane, who edited the books. The books have been selling well too, Father Lane says. “Several bishops have called to say they use the books [as an aid to creating sermons] and approve them,” says Father Buetow, who also wrote several scholarly books before his retirement from CUA’s Department of Education, where he was a professor. The purpose of homilies “is salvation — the salvation of the homilist and of the listener,” says the author. Though their purpose is serious, these printed homilies include some funny jokes and heartwarming anecdotes designed to get a congregation’s attention. When he first delivered one of the homilies in a church, a particular joke “brought the house down,” he remembers. “It took 30 seconds to get the congregation to stop laughing and calm down.” Father Buetow recommends that priests use his homilies to come up with ideas for their own sermons, expanding upon his ideas using their own experience and knowledge, not delivering the printed sermons verbatim. – R.W. |
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