Each year I try to do book reviews on key titles that cover health, wellness, and fitness. Here are my top recommended reads for 2019. If you’re too busy to read, take the audiobook approach while you drive to work or go on a run. Either way, these books can be helpful in supporting your health, wellness, and fitness efforts.
The Fitness Mindset By Brian Keane
If you’re just getting your head wrapped around changing your health and jump-starting your fitness, this book is a great read. Fitness Mindset is a short read and very easy to follow and understand. Many fitness books these days have a complicated process to understand and lose their readers pretty quickly.
This is very much the opposite and goes right to core aspects of how to reduce tiredness, manage your sleep and stress along with how nutrition can help with these areas. Brian does a great job of packing in a ton of information in such a short read.
The flow of the book is very orderly and for people new to setting up fitness regimens, it does a good job putting them in an orderly and concise way. Fitness Mindset drills into the nutritional aspect with a reasonably detailed look into supplements.
I very much liked the fact that Fitness Mindset stays agnostic by not supporting only one nutrition and fitness plan. This point is often missed by similar books that tend to stick the reader into one-size fits all mindset.
Wheat Belly Full Health By William Davis
I have recommended this book in the past and added it again this year since so many people are still suffering due to overconsumption of grains.
Wheat Belly Full Health is a follow-up book to William’s excellent book Wheat Belly. Both books, in my opinion, are must-reads for anyone looking for better health.
The original Wheat Belly book has a lot of answers to questions that I was not able to find in other similar books. Both books have a vast amount of information in them that connects our many health issues directly to our modern hybridized grains and the effects of grain consumption. In this newer book with more than 300 pages, Dr. Davis uncovers even more in-depth information that puts the spotlight on all grains and most carbohydrates that are impacting our health on a daily basis.
The book looks at aspects around hormone function and how we can correct the damage from long-term exposure to a high carbohydrate diet. Wheat Belly Full Health picks up where the first book left off, covering a wide range of answers to weight management, immune response, and nutritional issues. One of the more exciting points in the book looks at how grains and a high-carbohydrate diet affects our heart, gut, and mental state.
No Sweat By Michelle Segar
When I talk to people about the reason why they are having trouble getting their fitness goals met, the discussions always come around to motivation. A severe drop in motivation is the main reason we see 80 percent of New Years exercise resolutions fail by the end of February each year.
No Sweat is a book for those of you that need to wrap your mind around how to stay consistent with your long term health and fitness goals. No Sweat is a bit long and at times it rambles and can be hard to stay with. Michelle outlines a lot of research on motivation and exercise in the book giving the reader a good understanding of how to put it into practice within each person’s unique lifestyle.
I liked how the book takes the reader down a path that leaves them in control on what activity to do that will keep them motivated. No Sweat delivers the importance of finding movement that we love and if we love what we do, we will actually do it. Exercise does not have to about going to the gym or beating your body down with miles upon miles of running on pavement.
No Sweat outlines the fundamental idea that doing and moving during the day gives your body the opportunities to be healthy and fit. Many of her thoughts and opinions get backed up by years of experience working with her clients. By the time you finish this book, you may very well see being active and moving as a beautiful thing to look forward to and not a burden or chore that needs doing.
Body by Science By Doug McGuff and John Little
Body by Science has been around for many years, but it’s relevance may be better understood today than 11 years ago when it was first published. The health and fitness world changes almost faster than the technology world.
What we know now about the overall effects of nutrition, exercise and building muscle is light years from what most people knew in 2008. Body by Science walks you through the idea that you can build strength plus develop muscle growth in short well defined and structured workout sessions that defy the conventional notion that workouts need to be long and daily to be effective.
In today’s fitness culture, trying to convince fitness professionals and gym goers that they can be ripped with just 12 minutes a week is hard for most to comprehend. What makes the book current, relevant, exciting and informative is two-fold.
First, the short workout sessions are a high-intensity interval style. HIIT training is very much in practice within most fitness communities, so it fits current trends.
Second, it places a focus on proper form and smooth movements with precise follow through. This book will take you away from traditional exercise thinking and into ideas that if executed well can give you great results in a shorter amount of time and keep you from injury and burn-out.
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Judd Jones is a certified primal health coach and fitness consultant. He can be reached at jjones@cdapress.com www.jhanawellness.com.
