How to Eat to Change How You Drink – by Dr. Brooke Scheller
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Whether you want to stop drinking or just cut down, this book can help. But what makes it different from the other reduce/stop drinking books we’ve reviewed?
Mostly, it’s about nutrition. This book focuses on the way that alcohol changes our relationship to food, our gut, our blood sugars, and more. The author also explains how reducing/stopping drinking, without bearing these things in mind, can be unnecessarily extra hard.
The remedy? To bear them in mind, of course, but that requires knowing them. So what she does is explain the physiology of what’s going on in terms of each of the above things (and more), and how to adjust your diet to make up for what alcohol has been doing to you, so that you can reduce/quit without feeling constantly terrible.
The style is very pop-science, light in tone, readable. She makes reference to a lot of hard science, but doesn’t discuss it in more depth than is necessary to convey the useful information. So, this is a practical book, aimed at all people who want to reduce/quit drinking.
Bottom line: if you feel like it’s hard to drink less because it feels like something is missing, it’s probably because indeed something is missing, and this book can help you bridge that gap!
Click here to check out How To Eat To Change How You Drink, and do just that!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Be Your Future Self Now – by Dr. Benjamin Hardy
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Affirmations in the mirror are great and all, but they can only get you so far! And if you’re a regular reader of our newsletter, you probably know about the power of small daily habits adding up and compounding over time. So what does this book offer, that’s different?
“Be Your Future Self Now” beelines the route “from here to there”, with a sound psychological approach. On which note…
The book’s subtitle mentions “the science of intentional transformation”, and while Dr. Hardy is a psychologist, he’s an organizational psychologist (which doesn’t really pertain to this topic). It’s not a science-heavy book, but it is heavy on psychological rationality.
Where Dr. Hardy does bring psychology to bear, it’s in large part that! He teaches us how to overcome our biases that cause us to stumble blindly into the future… rather than intentfully creating our own future to step into. For example:
Most people (regardless of age!) acknowledge what a different person they were 10 years ago… but assume they’ll be basically the same person 10 years from now as they are today, just with changed circumstances.
Radical acceptance of the inevitability of change is the first step to taking control of that change.
That’s just one example, but there are many, and this is a book review not a book summary!
In short: if you’d like to take much more conscious control of the direction your life will take, this is a book for you.
Click here to get your copy of “Be Your Future Self Now” from Amazon!
Share This Post
-
The Menopause Manifesto – by Dr. Jen Gunter
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
From the subtitle, you may wonder: with facts and feminism? Is this book about biology or sociology?
And the answer is: both. It’s about biology, principally, but without ignoring the context. We do indeed “live in a society”, and that affects everything from our healthcare options to what is expected of us as women.
So, as a warning: if you dislike science and/or feminism, you won’t like this book.
Dr. Jen Gunter, herself a gynaecologist, is here to arm us with science-based facts, to demystify an important part of life that is commonly glossed over.
She talks first about the what/why/when/how of menopause, and then delivers practical advice. She also talks about the many things we can (and can’t!) usefully do about symptoms we might not want, and how to look after our health overall in the context of menopause. We learn what natural remedies do or don’t work and/or can be actively harmful, and we learn the ins and outs of different hormone therapy options too.
Bottom line: no matter whether you are pre-, peri-, or post-menopausal, this is the no-BS guide you’ve been looking for. Same goes if you’re none of the above but spend any amount of time close to someone who is.
Share This Post
-
Get Better Sleep: Beyond “Sleep Hygiene”
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Better Sleep, Better Life!
This is Arianna Huffington. Yes, that Huffington, of the Huffington Post. But! She’s also the CEO of Thrive Global, a behavior change tech company with the mission of changing the way we work and live—in particular, by challenging the idea that burnout is the required price of success.
The power of better sleep
Sleep is a very important, but most often neglected, part of good health. Here are some of Huffington’s top insights from her tech company Thrive, and as per her “Sleep Revolution” initiative.
Follow your circadian rhythm
Are you a night owl or a morning lark? Whichever it is, roll with it, and plan around that if your lifestyle allows for such. While it is possible to change from one to the other, we do have a predisposition towards one or the other, and will generally function best when not fighting it.
This came about, by the way, because we evolved to have half of us awake in the mornings and half in the evenings, to keep us all safe. Socially we’ve marched onwards from that point in evolutionary history, but our bodies are about a hundred generations behind the times, and that’s just what we have to work with!
Don’t be afraid (or ashamed!) to take naps
Naps, done right, can be very good for the health—especially if we had a bad night’s sleep the previous night.
Thrive found that workers are more productive when they have nap rooms, and (following on a little from the previous point) are allowed to sleep in or work from home.
See also: How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
Make sure you have personal space available in bed
The correlation between relationship satisfaction and sleeping close to one’s partner has been found to be so high that it’s even proportional: the further away a couple sleeps from each other, the less happy they are. But…
Partners who got good sleep the previous night, will be more likely to want intimacy on any given night—at a rate of an extra 14% per extra hour of sleep the previous night. So, there’s a trade-off, as having more room in bed tends to result in better sleep. Time to get a bigger bed?
What gets measured, gets done
This goes for sleep, too! Not only does dream-journaling in the morning cue your subconscious to prepare to dream well the following night, but also, sleep trackers and sleep monitoring apps go a very long way to improving sleep quality, even if no extra steps are consciously taken to “score better”.
We’ve previously reviewed some of the most popular sleep apps; you can check out for yourself how they measured up:
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
100 No-Equipment Workouts – by Neila Rey
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
For those of us who for whatever reason prefer to exercise at home rather than at the gym, we must make do with what exercise equipment we can reasonably install in our homes. This book deals with that from the ground upwards—literally!
If you have a few square meters of floorspace (and a ceiling that’s not too low, for exercises that involve any kind of jumping), then all 100 of these zero-equipment exercises are at-home options.
As to what kinds of exercises they are, they each marked as being one or both of “cardio” and “strength”.
They’re also marked as being of “difficulty level” 1, 2, or 3, so that someone who hasn’t exercised in a while (or hasn’t exercised like this at all), can know where best to start, and how best to progress.
The exercises come with clear explanations in the text, and clear line-drawing illustrations of how to do each exercise. Really, they could not be clearer; this is top quality pragmatism, and reads like a military manual.
Bottom line: whatever your strength and fitness goals, this book can see you well on your way to them (if not outright get you there already in many cases). It’s also an excellent “all-rounder” for full-body workouts.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Gut Health for Women – by Aurora Bloom
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
First things first: though the title says “For Women”, almost all of it applies to men too—and the things that don’t apply, don’t cause a problem. So if you’re cooking for your family that contains one or more men, this is still great.
Bloom gives us a good, simple, practical introduction to gut health. Her overview also covers gut-related ailments beyond the obvious “tummy hurts”. On which note:
A very valuable section of this book covers dealing with any stomach-upsets that do occur… without harming your trillions of tiny friends (friendly gut microbiota). This alone can make a big difference!
The book does of course also cover the things you’d most expect: things to eat or avoid. But it goes beyond that, looking at optimizing and maintaining your gut health. It’s not just dietary advice here, because the gut affects—and is affected by—other lifestyle factors too. Ranges from mindful eating, to a synchronous sleep schedule, to what kinds of exercise are best to keep your gut ticking over nicely.
There’s also a two-week meal plan, and an extensive appendix of resources, not to mention a lengthy bibliography for sourcing health claims (and suggesting further reading).
In short, a fine and well-written guide to optimizing your gut health and enjoying the benefits.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Mango vs Guava – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing mango to guava, we picked the guava.
Why?
Looking at macros first, these two fruits are about equal on carbs (nominally mango has more, but it’s by a truly tiny margin), while guava has more than 3x the protein and more than 3x the fiber. A clear win for guava.
In terms of vitamins, mango has more of vitamins A, E, and K, while guava has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B7, B9, and C. Another win for guava.
In the category of minerals, mango is not higher in any minerals, while guava is higher in calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc.
In short, enjoy both; both are healthy. But if you’re choosing one, there’s a clear winner here, and it’s guava.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
