This summer, sit down with a book that inspires you to keep things light — both in mind and body. These 7 summer reads inspire a healthier and happier lifestyle.
There is a collection of books relatively fresh on the market that are bound to change your relationship with food, inspire you in the kitchen and around the house, as well as keep you stimulated and excited for the best season of the year. Happy reading!
1. May Cause Miracles: A 40-Day Guidebook of Subtle Shifts for Radical Change and Unlimited Happiness – Gabrielle Bernstein
The summer is all about letting go and taking it easy. Gabrielle Bernstein’s May Cause Miracles embodies that sentiment to a tee. Author of Spirit Junkie and Add More –Ing to Your Life, Bernstein’s latest inspirational installment reveals simple steps to improving our daily lives, from our bodies and self-image to our relationships and finances.
2. VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health – Mark Bittman
Mark Bittman is a critically-acclaimed Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times and author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and Food Matters. In VB6, Bittman demonstrates how eating vegan all day and then whatever we like for dinner (in moderation) can improve our health and help us lose weight. With this so-called “flexitarian” approach, we can shed the strict mindset and enjoy what we like while our bodies reap incredible benefits.
3. Nice is Just a Place in France: How to Win at Basically Everything – The Betches
For those who like a no-shit, more stripped approach to self-motivation, Nice is Just a Place in France is a fitting read. The crude language is humorous and to the point, which may just be the tough love we need to conquer ourselves and the world.
4. The Honest Life: Living Naturally and True to You – Jessica Alba
Take it from Jessica Alba when it comes to living cleaner and more environmentally-friendly. A new mom, Alba realized the chemicals laden in many household products and toiletries geared towards babies. From this, The Honest Company was born, offering parents clean, fashionable and naturally safe products for both parents and babies. The Honest Life provides the research behind common mainstream products used by parents and babies and shows us how to get rid of the chemicals in our lives while embracing a truer diet and mindset.
5. The Headspace Diet: 10 Days to Finding Your Ideal Weight – Andy Puddicombe
Maybe it’s not what we’re doing that’s keeping those last five pounds attached to the hips, but rather our mindset concerning them. Approach dieting from an alternate route – one that depends more on the mind than self-discipline. The Headspace Diet helps to bring us to a place that reduces our emotionally-driven attachment to food and improves our mind-body relationship. Mindfulness-based meditation is outlined as a daily, 10-minute practice that can offer us powerful results and help us shed those pounds.
6. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal – Mary Roach
Gulp gives us a taste of quirky science, following food from its initial encounter with human senses, through the body, and down to the toilet. Roach touches upon cultural taboos as well as asks questions many are afraid, or often don’t think of, to ask. Find out why the stomach doesn’t digest itself or if it was constipation that killed Elvis, with this fun, anything-but-ordinary read.
7. Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell – Katherine Angel
Pair those hot summer nights with a sensual escape. Katherine Angel’s Unmastered explores sensuality and desire in a fresh way by recounting her own stories and reflecting on the relationship between the sexes and the intricate connection, characterized by both pleasure and pain, we have with sex. The book unhinges the door we place between ourselves and our inner, sometimes dark sensuality.
Photo Credit: Aafromaa