A witty look at getting healthy
Author passes up cupcakes on sons’ birthdays for 25 months
You know those before-andafter pictures in weight loss ads? They’re actually after-and-before pictures: the ad company finds the most fit guy in the gym, takes his picture, pays him a five-figure salary to get fat, and then takes his picture again a month later.
That’s one of many fascinating tidbits A.J. Jacobs reveals in his entertainingly informative new book, Drop Dead
Healthy, in which he details the two years he spent becoming healthier. (For authenticity, he offers a series of photos, not just before-and-afters.)
Jacobs, an editor for Esquire, wasn’t all that unhealthy when he decided to improve his body “one step at a time.” What inspired his quest was landing in a hospital with pneumonia during a family holiday to the Dominican Republic, coupled the realization that he’d turned 41 and still didn’t know what was healthy to eat and drink, and how best to exercise.
“It’s like owning a house for forty-one years and being unaware of the most basic information, such as how to work the kitchen sink,” he muses in a typically clever analogy. “Or where to find the kitchen sink. Or what this so-called kitchen sink is all about.”
The author of The Year of Living Biblically, The Know-itAll, and My Life as an Experiment, Jacobs is no stranger to chronicling his self-improvement schemes, but it would be a mistake to dismiss his latest book because it sounds gimmicky. Not only is he witty, he’s a skilled researcher, following through on his promise to examine every part of himself, from head to foot, with forays into the brain, gut, legs, hands and skin.
Because he’s read so much and has interviewed countless experts, he’s collected a massive amount of advice, which he dispenses both anecdotally and in easy-to-access appendices at the end of the book.
The appendices on eating and exercising include two tip lists, one “for Regular People,” the other “for The Obsessed.” Exercise advice for the former group includes parking in the furthest corner of a parking lot and taking stairs instead of escalators and elevators. The latter group is advised to run errands, literally; squat while eating lunch; and wear a weight vest all day (“be prepared for suicide-bomber jokes,” he warns).
Jacobs understands that not all readers will want or have the funds for such big-ticket items as a fancy juicer or fullbody genetics scan. Nor, he says, should they feel guilty about taking a pass on a lot of the theories he explores. After all, he’s sacrificed himself so they won’t have to.
For instance, Jacobs doesn’t recommend the raw-food vegan diet. It’s not just that mainstream scientific evidence doesn’t strongly support it, it’s that his brief experiment resulted in “the most flatulent two weeks of my life.”
Nor does he fully endorse the hyper-efficient workout. Although he’s all for shortcuts, Jacobs has a hard time embracing a program developed by a former medical equipment salesman and longtime trainer whose theory, that “lifting heavy weights super slowly for about two minutes at a time once a week” is the solution to getting into shape and losing weight.
By the time Jacobs tries the workout, he’s already been spending hours a week exercising. Cutting down to 20 minutes “feels like cheating, like taking a funicular up Mount Everest.” Also, he says, the science behind slow fitness isn’t solid enough for him.
Nor does he take the advice of the head of the Home Safety Council and Safe Kids U.S.A., to buy flameless, electric candles. However he comes to that conclusion while he’s browsing for an electric candle on the Internet.
“I decide against the one with the fake molten wax dripping down the side,” he writes. “It’s trying too hard.”
There are those who will argue that Jacobs tried too hard, obsessing about himself for 25 months, passing up cupcakes on his sons’ birthdays, embarrassing even his fiveyear-old by doing pull-ups from the “Don’t Walk” sign on the corner, missing family events to train for a triathlon.
Still, it’s hard to argue with his results. Not only did he lose 16 pounds and half his body fat, he produced what should be a welcome addition to the health-and-fitness section of libraries everywhere.