Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. A.J.… (utgåvan 2012)

This guy is funny, thorough and freakishly dedicated to his obsessions. In this book he never makes you feel bad for eating Doritos while gobbling up his amusing chapters. Best takeaway, noise cancelling headphones. ( )

A.J. Jacobs spent a little over two years on a project to become as healthy as possible, concentrating on different health regimes and different parts of the body at different times, and he reports the results of both his research and his personal experiences here. He tries out a number of different health and fitness philosophies, from the well-established to the decidedly fringe, but he generally does a reasonable job of trying to maintain a healthy skepticism (um, so to speak), and to make it clear whether the scientific support for a particular health recommendation is solid, iffy, or non-existent. (Most of it, honestly, seems to come somewhere in the "iffy" category.)

It's a quick, easy, breezy read, and some of the odd corners of fitness and medicine he explores are fairly interesting, but I have to say, I don't feel all that much more enlightened on health issues for having read it. Some of that is no doubt due to the fact that each chapter is pretty short, so no one topic is explored in great depth, but I think it's probably mostly because all the best, most well-established health advice is still common-sense stuff you already know, but, if you're like me, find ridiculously difficult to actually live by: eat less junk food and more vegetables, get some exercise or at least try to be less sedentary, get enough sleep, don't smoke, don't stress, have friends. All of which is worth being reminded of, but not necessarily all that exciting to read about.

And with some exceptions (mostly involving visits to his elderly grandfather, who seemed like an interesting person), I also found Jacobs' personal experiences and insights in this one less compelling than I did in his The Year of Living Biblically. Which is odd, considering that I don't have a religion but do have a body. But there it is. Ultimately, I found this one perfectly readable, but also pretty forgettable. ( )

This was an enjoyable listen during my commute to work and to the gym. I did pick up a few tips, but it's mostly stuff I've heard before. Still, I like Jacobs' style. I'm glad I finally got to finish this one, after returning it to the library last year when I didn't have time to finish by the due date. ( )

In this book of "immersion journalism", author A.J. Jacobs works on a two-year program for getting himself healthy. He does this by focusing on one body part at a time in order to increase his personal health. I loved his "check-in" pages. Those were pages in which he gave his weight and other interesting statistics. I was checking to see if he and I were losing weight at the same rate or not (well, it varied!).

One thing I especially liked about this book was that the author was not a "health nut" which meant that he could look at many ideas of "getting healthy" with curiosity as well as skepticism. During this time, his wife was a patient partner, but sometimes merely an onlooker. What touched me most about this book, though, were the descriptions of the relationships he had with his grandfather and his eccentric aunt. What do they have to do with health? Read the book, and you will find out.

Drop Dead Healthy was such a fun read that I was sorry it ended. I had no idea that this book was going to be so funny. The only chapter that was not funny, oddly enough, was one about a laughing club. However, I thoroughly enjoyed all of the other laughs provided by this author and hope to pick up at least one more of his books soon. ( )

This was fun, light, humorous and engaging. Now I want a treadmill desk, though. I liked the authorial voice enough that I will likely pick up his other books. ( )