Make Shi(f)t Happen: Change How You Look by Changing How You Think

by Dean Dwyer

Being vegetarian for nineteen years and working out intensely four to five days per week was supposed to yield results. However, the "bagel" of fat that Dean Dwyer clutched with both hands told a very different tale.At the ripe old age of 45, unemployed and facing a very uncertain future, Dwyer found himself at a rather disturbing crossroads, asking a rather counterintuitive "What if eating healthy is making me fat?"And with that one simple question, a paradigm shift like no other was unleashed. Suddenly, nothing was sacred ground. Everything was open for debate. Is cardio important? Hell, is it even necessary? Is diet and exercise secondary to the battle with our personal demons? Is it possible that most of us are over-CARB-onating ourselves with the crappy food we eat? Would we be healthier with NO grains in our diet whatsoever? Could we lose fat by eating more fat?In an honest and at t

Genres: Self Help, Health, Nonfiction, Fitness

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[sara frances]

i can't make myself finish this.

[Yycdaisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

How one guy found a way of eating that worked for him. Might give some people a few good suggestions.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there were some nuggets of good information here at the end it was overly focused on low carb for me.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started eating Paleo and am reading different views on the lifestyle. Some start with a super strict 30 days as an elimination diet so you have a base to bring back foods one at a time to see for yourself how your body, mood or energy changes. It really is a lifestyle that encompasses healthy eating (paleo style) movement and especially sleep.

This book encourages the paleo way of eating, but it feels more like a book on empowerment. Only YOU know you. Paleo encourages you to eat without ever counting calories. Sure, I started seeing some changes the first 30 days, but I really wanted dress size change, too. This method was to write down what you're eating for about two weeks without changing anything. Then start tweaking to fit YOUR body. By writing down your food, you can be mindful and refer back to it. Also, tweaking your OWN menu to find your fat loss threshold was mind expanding. It was a real DUH moment. Then you can tweak it back to maintain.

I think I might have highlighted most of his book reading references because he made them sound so interesting. Dyson? Google? Tell me more. I love his take on starting your diet with the BETA model, then progressing to 2.0. Perfect analogy for the beginning of change that is a progression for YOU. I found myself giggling and reading passages out loud to my husband. I'm sure he had no idea I was reading a book about a diet. Very inspiring for me personally. It really resonated.

[Arminzerella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dean Dwyer will be the first to tell you that “Make Shift Happen” is the story of his personal journey to fitness. He outlines 20 different shifts that made this possible and goes into them in detail – 1 shift per chapter. But don’t feel like this is overwhelming – you can easily get through this book in just a few hours. Because this is *his* journey, Dean points out a number of times that *yours* may be different. People are different, bodies are different, and there is no one solution that will work for every person. What ended up working for him was deciding to change, paying attention to what he ate/how he felt (and keeping a record/track of how different foods were affecting his body), adopting a diet and exercise plan, and sticking with it – no matter what. He follows a pretty strict Paleo/caveman diet (also limits his carb intake) and engages in vigorous exercise for about 30 minutes a day (every day). For those looking for a specific plan to follow, sorry, you’re out of luck. This is more of a motivational kick for jumpstarting your own journey – you’ll have to do the hard work of discovering what sorts of foods and exercises you best respond to. But Dean is funny and inspirational, so by the time you’ve finished reading his book, you’ll be ready to do just that. Dive in, my friends.

[David Reber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty quickly in the book I saw that Dwyer was quoting from a lot of different books. Not only health and diet related books but business books. Fortunately, we have both read many of the same books and I could relate to what he was saying. Had I not read those books I would probably have been a little frustrated.

I liked the simplicity of this book and as he put it, "Small actions can create enormous change." Dywer is a realist and recognizes that the bigger and harder you make things, whether in health, diet, or life in general, the more likely you will give it up to ease back into comfort.

There is nothing mind-blowing in this book but it comes from a guy that has been there and done it and has made some simple changes that make his life easier. I'm going to take a few of them as my own.

This is a quick read and I highly recommend it.

My highlights and notes:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s4/sh/...

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dean Dwyer offers some practical steps towards transforming your health by creating an environment/system/state of mind conducive to this change. For instance- I can't stop making chocolate chip cookies and eating the whole pan a couple times a week. Personal problem? I thought so. But Dean offered maybe this type of thing would be more a systems problem: get rid of the sugar and other cookie-making supplies; fix the system! I know if baking products are in the house, I will have an awfully hard time resisting. That's just one tiny example, but there is plenty of useful info in this book. Much of it seems to be based on Dean's personal experience, and he doesn't cite much research- but intuitively, I sense what he offers is makes sense. He offers some creative and non-typical ideas in this book; it's worth a read.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a quick and easy read that is deceptive in its simplicity. Dwyer discusses the role of our perceptions and thought processes in making changes. He draws from several others, many of whom do not write about health or personal change, but organizational or societal changes. One of his points seems to be to be open to possibilities, and to lessons from various sources, even if they seem to be about another topic all together. And he also believes that no one is an expert on your health other than yourself. And it is up to each of us to figure out what works well, or poorly, for ourselves.

[Alison Golden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It is a quick read but there's lots to think about. Dean is a reader of some of the biggest business and self developments books and he takes the main messages from all these books and works out how they can be applied to his life and specifically weight-loss. By doing this he's been able to turn around decades of trying to lose weight to actually losing the weight, getting strong and turning his life around. I think this is a brilliant strategy and I admire him for working it out. Lateral thinking....

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book because Dwyer is more focused on how and why we change our thoughts and behaviors. Once we discover and understand how we work we can then begin to change our eating habits. This is not a one size fits all approach. This book provides tools to bring about change that our unique to each and every one of us.

[Mary-anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book, IMHO. Dean has a great sense of humour and a wonderful way of writing. The book is primarily about losing weight, but the information in it can be used to make ANY change in your life.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Might reread certain parts.

[Cate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good ideas and tough love

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool book, interesting

[Jessica Steffel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like the shifts. I like Dean's laidback attitude and tell it like it is manner. I needed this book on my journey!

[SunflowerGrrl · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's ok...some good ideas, not a lot of concrete advice.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and entertaining. Lots of excellent information.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an entertaining and informative book about the Paleolithic diet. I loved it.