The Spark: The 28-Day Breakthrough Plan for Losing Weight, Getting Fit, and Transforming Your Life

by Chris Downie

Book Overview

From the experts who created SparkPeople.com, America's #1 diet and fitness site, comes The Spark. This groundbreaking book outlines the best of what has worked for millions of members who have lost... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1401926452
• ISBN13: 9781401926458
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: Hay House
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.4" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful book !

I have bought my fair share of diet and nutrition books, always looking for that little something I didnt know about that was holding me back, or even better, something that could cause me to start losing weight with out any effort at all. Well, I'm sad to say, there is no such book on the market. You honestly have to make the effort to get the results. I have enjoyed reading the articles on [...] for a good while, and knew enough about the diet to know I would enjoy The Spark book. I bought it, deciding I would read it while I walked on the treadmill. I have to say I really was shocked at how different the book was than what I thought it was going to be like. I was expecting that it would be more technical, "do this many sit up's, eat this many calories". It REALLY is sooo much better than I imagined! The author breaks down exercise, diet and nutrition into very manageable solutions. I have many diet books, but this is now my favorite one! It made me want to actually do more than just read it, it made me want to actually DO the things that will bring about positive change in my life, and thats something impressive in itself! I totally recomend it!!

The last weight loss book you'll ever need to buy!

A chronic yo-yo dieter, I have owned every popular diet book ever published! Finally, I found SparkPeople and learned how to break that cycle of losing and gaining, losing and gaining once and for all! I've been at my goal weight, after a weight loss of 70 pounds, for four years now and attribute my success at maintaing my weight loss to the life changing strategies outlined in this book. The focus isn't on what we shouldn't do but rather positive steps we can take to conquer obstacles such as emotional eating, lack of motivation, and difficulty exercising. It covers goal setting, nutrition, physical activity, and motivation. The free website uses a social networking framework similar to My Space and Facebook to provide a community of "Sparkers" who inspire and motivate each other through teams based on personal interests, opportunities to blog and journal both publicly and privately, make friends literally all over the world, and challenges and rewards that make success fun! I would encourage you to read the book as well as joining the website. Personally, I went from an overweight 49 year old "couch potato" to a healthy 53 year old woman who now runs and completed a 5K race this year! If I can accomplish this using the Spark formula -- anyone can!!

This is NOT just another diet book!

The Spark is a great motivational tool for setting and achieving goals in all areas of your life! It's definitely slanted towards helping you set and achieve diet/fitness related goals, but it also sets you up to use those goals as a springboard to start achieving goals in other areas of your life that you never thought possible. I recommend this book for anyone who wants a dose of motivation and inspiration to take their life to a new level and start reaching their goals!

Great book, great website!

I've been a member of SparkPeople since it started in 2002. This book tied a lot of things I learned on the site together, plus taught me many more new things! My favorite part was the "Success Secrets" scattered throughout the book. Whether you are a SparkPeople member or not I would recommend this book. It can help you lose some weight, but more importantly help you get your priorities straight and make healthy changes to your life that will stay with you forever.

Much more than just another diet book!

True or false: People fail to lose weight and keep it off because they don't realize they need to eat healthy food and exercise. We know that isn't true-- everyone knows about healthy food and exercise. But isn't that the message of most "diet" books? Once you find the right magic foods and the right magic exercise, once you have that secret knowledge not found in any other diet book, then YOU will lose that weight! If we are willing to be honest, the real reason we are not losing weight is US--- we end up choosing to eat that dessert, to sleep in instead of pounding the pavement, to say to ourselves "this is never going to work." And that's where The Spark starts: with how we view and live our life and how we can make sustainable positive change. In fact, it doesn't even start talking about what foods to eat until page 84. Where it starts is with four "cornerstones" of positive living: focus, fitness, fire, and positive force. The author takes a chapter on each of these concepts and lays out how they apply to life in general and a life shift like weight loss in particular. So, does this work? Does the effort to really understand the principles of positive change make a difference? Well, this book is really just the distillation of a website & online community, [...], which has helped tens of thousands of people make meaningful change. In fact, the center of the book contains short bios and color photos of seventeen people, real people, real people who you can actually contact through the sparkpeople online community, who have used the principles to lose big weight (most of them 100+ pounds) and keep it off and really change their lives. Yes, the healthy diet and exercise tips are in there, just like in every diet book. But what makes this book different, and special, is that the focus isn't the food, but you: a practical plan to change your outlook and jump-start your motivation so that you can practice a healthy lifestyle and change your life. A very good way to start out the new year, or any time you decide to change for the better.