Diet Science

Dr. Mark Cucuzzella explains the simple mechanics of how our bodies have evolved and adapted to run. Despite our natural ability and our human need to run, each year more than half of all runners suffer injuries. Pain and discouragement inevitably follow. Cucuzzella's book outlines the proven, practical techniques to avoid injury and reach the goal of personal fitness and overall health.

Weight loss is about more than just the number on the scale—it’s about building a sustainable, healthy lifestyle that works for your body and your goals. In Beyond the Scale: Science, Strategy, and Success, you’ll discover a comprehensive, science-backed approach to achieving and maintaining weight loss with strategies tailored to your unique needs.

Why, despite the many advances in science and technology over the past few decades, does our health only seem to be getting worse? Why, despite so much time and energy spent studying the foods we eat, are we more confused than ever about nutrition - what good nutrition looks like, and what it can do for our health? The Future of Nutrition offers a fascinating deep-dive behind the curtain of the field of nutrition - with implications both for our health and for the practice of science itself.

One in ten American adults tried intermittent fasting last year, and they may be on to something. The latest research shows that fasting repairs cellular damage, improves the outcomes for chemotherapy patients, and helps with keeping a healthy weight, leading to a resurgence in recent years. Journalist Steve Hendricks’s The Oldest Cure in the World tells the history of fasting—from the ancient world (Jesus treated an epileptic with fasting) to its rediscovery centuries later.

Finally, the solution to the number-one reason we don't exercise: time. Everyone has one minute. A decade ago, Martin Gibala was a young researcher in the field of exercise physiology - with little time to exercise. That critical point in his career launched a passion for high-intensity interval training (HIIT), allowing him to stay in shape with just a few minutes of hard effort. It also prompted Gibala to conduct experiments that helped launch the exploding science of ultralow-volume exercise

You are just 10% human. For every one of the cells that make up the vessel that you call your body, there are nine impostor cells hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and blood, muscle and bone, brain and skin, but also bacteria and fungi. Over your lifetime, you will carry the equivalent weight of five African elephants in microbes. You are not an individual but a colony. Until recently, we had thought our microbes hardly mattered, but science is revealing a different story, one in which microbes run our bodies and becoming a healthy human is impossible without them.

The Nobel laureate Otto Warburg was widely regarded in his day as one of the most important biochemists of the 20th century, a man whose research was integral to humanity’s understanding of cancer. He was also among the most despised figures in Nazi Germany. As a Jewish homosexual living openly with his male partner, Warburg represented all that the Third Reich abhorred. Yet Hitler and his top advisors dreaded cancer, and protected Warburg in the hope that he could cure it.

Deep Fitness introduces a proven, new approach to building strength and whole-body health: Mindful Strength Training to Failure (MSTF). This science-based method reverses muscle loss and improves overall strength in just one or two 30-minute sessions a week. MSTF exercises are simple and effective, and can be done at home with resistance bands and bodyweight, or with the machines at your local gym. Using slow reps, MSTF marries mindful body awareness with proven strength-training techniques to help you become stronger at any age.

Veteran science journalist Caroline Williams explores the cutting-edge research behind brain health and physical activity, interviewing scientists from around the world to completely reframe our relationship to movement. Along the way she reveals easy tricks that we could all use to improve our memory, maximize our creativity, strengthen our emotional literacy and more. A welcome counterpoint to the current mindfulness craze, Move offers a more stimulating and productive way of freeing our caged minds to live our best life.

For many women, body goals are all about loss. In Give Yourself More, leading health experts Georgie Fear and K. Aleisha Fetters draw on psychology, cultural studies, and the science of behavioral change to reveal how the pursuit of less gets women very little. They teach you how to flip the script on losing mind-sets, so you can change your body and life for the positive.

This is an unusual–and unusually interesting–exploration of diet, weight and health that has a memoir aspect and a practical aspect. It’s a cut-to-the-chase audiobook that makes you realize not that everything you know about dieting and weight loss isn’t true (even though it probably isn’t), but that way too much of your brain, your time and your pocketbook has been taken up with the endless (and futile) quest.

Motivation scientist and behavior expert Michelle Segar translates years of research on exercise and motivation into a simple four-point program that will empower you to break the cycle of exercise failure once and for all. You'll discover why you should forget about willpower and stop gritting your teeth through workouts you hate. Instead, you'll become motivated from the inside out and start to crave physical activity.

Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of “fat,” which is not synonymous with “unhealthy,” “inactive,” or “lazy.” Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America’s focus on solving the “childhood obesity epidemic” has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our society’s internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop “preventing obesity” and start supporting kids in the bodies they have.

Over the last fifty years, women have made extraordinary advances in athletics. More women than ever are playing sports and staying active longer. Whether they’re elite athletes looking for an edge or enthusiastic amateurs, women deserve a culture of sports that helps them thrive: training programs and equipment designed to work with their bodies, as well as guidelines for nutrition and injury prevention that are based in science and tailored to their lived experience. Yet too often the guidance women receive is based on research that fails to consider their experiences or their bodies.

Scholars have learned a lot more about the history of yoga in recent years, but their research can be hard to track down. Although their work is insightful, it is aimed more at specialists than at a general audience. The Truth of Yoga draws on many of their findings, presented in a format designed for practitioners. The aim is to highlight ideas on which listeners can draw to keep traditions alive in the 21st century.

Your practical guide to better health, stronger relationships, and a happier life - by reconnecting with nature. There is something simply soul-soothing about being in nature. In fact, research shows that spending time outside can improve the immune system, combat stress hormones, lower blood pressure, and boost self-esteem.

In Fast Asleep, Dr. Michael Mosley brings together the latest, groundbreaking science to explain exactly why it is so important that we regularly get enough sleep. Prone to insomnia, he has taken part in numerous sleep experiments and tested every sleep remedy. Combining personal insight and in-depth research, he explains why so many of us struggle with sleep, what works and what doesn’t, and shares his own myth-busting program to help you achieve a good night’s rest.

In The China Study, T. Colin Campbell revolutionized the way we think about our food with the evidence that a whole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat. Now, in Whole, he explains the science behind that evidence, the ways our current scientific paradigm ignores the fascinating complexity of the human body, and why, if we have such overwhelming evidence that everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong, our eating habits haven’t changed.

Fat is an obsession, a dirty word, a subject of national handwringing - and, according to biochemist Sylvia Tara, the least understood part of our body. You may not love your fat, but your body certainly does. In fact your body is actually endowed with many self-defense measures to hold on to fat. For example, fat can use stem cells to regenerate; increase our appetite if it feels threatened; and use bacteria, genetics, and viruses to expand itself. The secret to losing 20 pounds? You have to work with your fat, not against it.

Sensuality is about more than just pleasure. Sensuality is an innate power that can help you to tune in to your body, mind, and spirit. To be sensual is to know yourself so intimately that you can move through life with confidence and clarity, deeply connected to the fire within. In this book, Henika Patel invites you on a journey of expansion to find your unapologetic, unashamed, fully expressed sensual spirit.