Drop Dead Healthy

Drop Dead Healthy by AJ Jacobs is my cup of tea. My cup of antioxidant rich, bioflavanoid-filled, decaf green tea, that is.

Subtitled One Man's Quest for Bodily Perfection, this book is laugh-out-loud hilarious while also imparting tons of fascinating facts about taking the best possible care of your body. As far as I'm concerned, this combination is pretty hard to beat!

AJ Jacobs delved into religion when he wrote The Year of Living Biblically. For one full year, he followed every rule written in the bible. He tried to love his neighbors, but he also stopped shaving his beard. When his wife was menstruating, he refused to sit in any chair she had used. (She retaliated by sitting in all the chairs, so AJ was left standing.) In Drop Dead Healthy, he turns his attention to the physical realm.

Exploring the Paleo movement in Central Park, AJ crawls like a tiger, hefts a giant log onto his shoulders, and runs barefoot with his shirt off. Although he hasn't exercised since his teens, he joins a gym and gets a trainer. He begins to lose weight and gain muscle.

Diet is a subject that comes up repeatedly. AJ begins his quest for health by upping his consumption of the holy trinity: coffee, red wine, and chocolate. The reason: these are the only healthy foods that also taste good. He soon realizes that milk chocolate is much too sugary and milky to be healthy, and switches to raw cacao nibs. These are organic, unsweetened, and taste more like musty cardboard.

When AJ discovers the world of superfoods, he plays a game with himself. He tries to beat his own record for the number of superfoods he can include in a single meal. His superfood salads are laden with blueberries, fennel, mango, lentils, walnuts, and dark chocolate shavings. Sounds weird, right? But I'm definitely into this challenge. I am a HUGE fan of superfoods! And I have been known to put blueberries on top of a salad along with salmon.

Would I recommend this book? You bet! I rarely read an entire book of non-fiction. Usually I just find it too boring. But Drop Dead Healthy hits the sweet spot between funny and factual. And we all know laughter is the best medicine.