A review by bookishlifeofbrie
Younger Next Year for Women: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley, Henry S. Lodge

3.0

In a lot of ways, the main points in this book (workout hard 6 days a week, stop eating crap, connect with yourself and others) seems like common sense. Except here I am, about to turn 40 in a few months, and probably at my most unhealthiest I’ve ever been. So in that respect, this book was a bit of a wake up/aha read for me. It’s a slippery slope to not being the healthiest version of yourself and I’m on that slide. And the longer I wait to make changes, the harder it’s going to get.

I was fascinated by the concept of aging vs decaying. There’s a biological shift that occurs as you age and you have the choice to “grow or rot” as the authors put it. Aging is inevitable, but you don’t have to decay. And they argue that the recipe to grow and not decay is mainly achieved by exercise as it’s the sedentary lifestyles of today’s world that is slowly killing us.

Now, this book was written almost 20 years ago so I feel like some of the writing has not aged well. There’s probably too much reference to looks and sexist remarks about women’s body that would not be approved by an editor today. And I wholeheartedly disagree with the nutrition bit about avoiding potatoes and that potatoes make you fat as it’s not potatoes that are the problem, it’s the butters and oils in the potatoes that are generally the issue.

Anyway, I appreciated the overall message of this book and it’s really made me stop and reevaluate my life and how I want to FEEL and live as I enter the next decade of my life. There’s also a lot of repetition in the book, but I feel like that’s on par as far as “self help” books go, probably because us readers need the message to be beaten into us over and over to make a lasting impression