Book Review: Drop Dead Healthy

Health has been on my mind lately since I've been trying to eat better through a 24 day plan of cleansing and not eating or drinking any of the taste-tastic stuff I love to eat every week.  I'm down to water, fruit, veggies, and meat.  It's been long enough that now I feel guilty for even having thoughts of eating a baguette--like I'm contemplating having an affair on the side.  How quickly our brains turn on us!


I read Drop Dead Healthy this week on my quest to A) Feel better about my plan and B) read another book off my floor.  Yes, I do have stacks of books on my floor.  


I like A.J. Jacobs.  He's funny, and his two year quest to try out all of the ways we can become healthy beings was an entertaining read.   He really does tackle many issues.  Each chapter is about a body part or a body system.  He starts running and explores barefoot running (through Central Park--brave man!);  he gets a treadmill and sets up an "office" on it so he can walk while sending out emails and writing this book.  By the way, he walks over 1100 miles on his treadmill while typing out this book!  Amazing.  He signs up for a triathlon, explores acupuncture, works at his eating habits, and along the way learns a lot about our quest as a society to be healthy.


It's complicated.  So many different ways people work to be healthy, so many of them contradict each other, and so many of them just don't have much science to back them up.  A.J. Jacobs decides the best is the simplest:  get enough sleep, eat healthy, and do some form of exercise every day.  Sounds easy, right?  But then life gets in the way and before we know it, we've fallen into those slacker habits.


Drop Dead Healthy is an entertaining read chock full of all the many choices we have about our health.  It's kind of mind-boggling to have so much presented in one book, but it's done with humor and you become invested in the author's quest to be healthy.  After two years, he's lost 15 pounds and is physically stronger.  He's still working on his quest to get enough quality sleep.  But he does realize that working at being healthy must be balanced with family time.  It's very easy to have gym classes, runs, and workouts take up a lot of time that should be family time.  It's a balancing act that can be tough.


I would recommend this book if you like a humorous look at the many different ways we strive to be healthy.  A.J. Jacobs does all the work so we don't have to--but you can read this at the gym!