Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0312199597, Paperback)

The most remarkable facts about the "fitness boom" are that most people still don't exercise, and among those who do, few get the results they envisioned. For every couch yam who turns his health around and successfully runs a marathon, there must be hundreds or thousands who can't maintain even the least-ambitious fitness program and end up worse off than they were before: heavier, less healthy, and more despondent over their failure to improve the way they look and feel.

Michael Gerrish is uniquely qualified to examine the phenomenon of exercise nonadherence, being both a certified and experienced trainer and a psychotherapist. He suggests that many of the problems people have with their fitness programs start long before they ever step into a gym. Long-term, low-grade depression can make it impossible to follow through on an exercise plan. Relentless perfectionism can be another stumbling block (which he calls UFOs, or "unidentified fitness obstacles"). Or you could have attention deficit disorder, causing you to tune out important bits of instruction or "forget" crucial components of a workout schedule.

For each potential fitness UFO that Gerrish identifies, he offers a checklist you can go through to see if any of it applies to you, a list of ways to overcome the problem, and resources to turn to for help, if you decide you need it. --Lou Schuler