The Body Book

A while ago I read Cameron Diaz’s The Body Book, which is ‘the Law of Hunger, the Science of Strength, and Other Ways to Love Your Amazing Body’. It’s divided into three sections: Nutrition, Fitness and Mind.

I personally found the book incredibly inspiring and interesting (oo alliteration). Her voice throughout it is friendly and relatable and the way she describes the science behind what we eat, how we move and our mentality towards health and fitness makes it very easy to follow and genuinely fun to read. She really focuses on the importance of positive body image and self-acceptance, exclaiming in the first few pages 'YOU ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN YOU HAVE EVER IMAGINED'. She writes that The Body Book is 'a guide to accepting what you have and loving it with everything you’ve got, to appreciating how incredible this physical vehicle is. It’s a guide to maximizing your strength and endurance so that your body can take you everywhere you want to go in life: to all of your success, to the love of your life, to your passions and adventures.' To me this is a really important message in a world where women are constantly expected (and expect themselves) to look like the airbrushed, photoshopped, unrealistic pictures we are presented with on a daily basis.

What is great about the ‘Mind’ section is that the psychology behind bad health habits is addressed. I think by finding out why we do certain things and why it can be so hard to form new, healthier habits is firstly quite fascinating and secondly pretty fundamental if you want to change the way in which you eat, exercise and think.

The Body Book also provides loads of helpful but also really easy tips, which are all tried and tested by Cameron, they’re her personal habits for staying healthy. For example, her idea of filling up a big bottle of water at night and leaving it by the sink to drink as soon as she wakes up in the morning is a really great idea – and it’s so simple. That’s another thing I like about this book.. other than the scientific facts collected from extensive research, the information regarding tips and tricks for staying on track with health are all things that Cameron says have helped her personally – the book doesn’t say that one thing is right for every person, but encourages the reader to find what works for them, and in this way it doesn’t come across preachy and annoying like many health-related books and articles can do.

If you need some inspiration to get healthy, or just want an interesting read, I really recommend picking up a copy of The Body Book. I honestly couldn’t put it down.