REALITY CHECK

REALITY CHECK: The No BS Guide to Weight Control, Eating Clean, & Staying Fit After 50 is a nonfiction, motivational, self-help book aimed at adults over fifty. The essential message can be summed up in the book's oft-repeated mantra: EAT CLEAN & EXERCISE DAILY.

Simpson hammers this point home over and over. He starts by reminding us that we possess little or no control over most aspects of our lives, but we most assuredly have control over two very important activities. 1) Eating 2) Exercising.

Control. If you have any chance of success at all in your goal to eat clean, lose weight, and get fit you absolutely must take control of these two essential daily enterprises: EATING & EXERCISING. There's just no way around it. No other options. No pills, fads, diets, or surgical procedures. To succeed we must take personal responsibility. We must control what we shove in your mouths just as we must control the numbers of hours we spend each day sitting around not moving anymore than house plants.

What does it take to eat right and get some exercise? Willpower for crying out loud. Grit. Desire. Desperation.

We all know many of the foods we eat and beverages we drink are absolutely no good for us, much of it downright bad for us. Poisons, Simpson calls them. But we eat and drink this stuff anyway. Every day.

We also know it's an excellent idea to get up off the couch and go for a walk, join a gym, do a little weight training. All the evidence points to longer, healthier, happier lives if we just start moving around, using our bodies. And yet the mass of us lead such sedentary lives.

The first step to success is to make the commitment: EAT CLEAN & EXERCISE DAILY. Once you make this vital commitment, once you take control, you're empowered. You're on your way.

Simpson is a long-time author and personal trainer. He brings both humor and empathy to this short morality tale. Using self-deprecating humor he talks of his own trials and tribulations to eat clean and stay fit. He tells us how he finally succeeded and how he helps his clients succeed. Overwhelmingly success comes through clean, simple foods found in most grocery stores in combination with some walking, stretching, and weight training. Nothing crazy. Nothing weird. Nothing anyone in reasonably decent health can't handle.

Simpson insists you have to put yourself first. You have to take care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally to have any hope at all of successfully taking care of others.

Big Pharma takes it on the chin. So does Big Food and Big Beverage. Big Food and Big Beverage make us fat, lazy, and sick, and then Big Pharma steps in to pep us up and make us "well." Simpson's not buying it. It's a crooked, profit-motivated system and the best way to fight back is written in giant letters over your kitchen door: EAT CLEAN & EXERCISE DAILY.

REALITY CHECK is an informative and irreverent look at how so many of us go about our lives written by a zealot who wants us to try his way on for size. An excellent and entertaining read.