Book Review: The Jane Austen Diet

Book: The Jane Austen Diet: Austen's Secrets to Food, Health, and Incandescent Happiness by Jane Austen and Bryan Kozlowski

Description:

What can Jane Austen teach us about health? Prepare to have your bonnet blown…

From the food secrets of Pride and Prejudice to the fitness strategies of Sense and Sensibility, there’s a modern health code hidden in the world’s most popular romances.

Join Bryan Kozlowski as he unlocks this “health and happiness” manifesto straight from Jane Austen’s pen, revealing why her prescriptions for achieving total body “bloom” still matter in the 21st century. Whether that’s learning how to eat like Lizzie Bennet, exercise like Emma Woodhouse, or think like Elinor Dashwood, explore how Austen’s timeless body beliefs are more relevant, refreshing, and scientifically sensible now than ever before. After all, it's still a truth universally acknowledged – Jane Austen’s heroines don’t get fat.



Rating: 5 stars

Review:

The Jane Austen Diet was a well-written, interesting, good read. Despite the title this is not a diet book, it's a literary look at a healthy lifestyle. Which means no strict meal plans, counting calories, depriving yourself or hard-core workouts. This is a lifestyle book where the author showcased the unexpected healthy lifestyle tips found within Jane Austen's books, her characters and Austen's own personal letters. Can Austen's characters inspire you to have a healthy life? Well, I feel like this question and many more were answered in this book. The Jane Austen Diet is a seven chapter book, where some of the areas the author focused on were: food, drinks, sleep, exercise, stress, nature and so much more.

The author has a fun and humorous tone that didn't distract from all the information. At the end of most of the chapters is a bonus chapter called Austen Eats which focused on different foods from sugar to vegetables. There are also a few recipes included in the book. I like that the author included quotes from the Austen's books and her letters but also included research to back up the various subjects and topics he was writing about.

I remember when I read Pride & Prejudice, I noticed that Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bennet was shown walking quite a bit. She just had this encouraging energy to head outdoors to enjoy a walk. I love how in the Jane Austen literary world, fitness is not some grueling exercise, but just a form of movement. From walking to dancing to having proper posture with all providing health benefits. I enjoyed reading this book and found it rather fascinating finding all these details that I may not have even noticed about the characters and stories when I had read Jane Austen's books. It's an interesting literary take on health and fitness that feels like an overview of the characters' lifestyle such as how stressed out quite a few of the characters were (Marianne Dashwood, Mrs. Bennet, Jane Fairfax and more) and how that was affecting their health. How before breakfast many of the characters are already up and out, some for a morning walk before enjoying the first meal of the day.

I loved reading this book and finding out about all the lifestyle information. In Jane Austen's fictional worlds, being healthy it seemed like the little things offered big health rewards such as getting a good night of sleep, being out in nature, dealing with stress, eating a plentiful meal or simply enjoying some quiet time. Which are all the things we continue to do in the modern world, it was just interesting to see that the things that Jane Austen wrote into her books and in her personal letters showed that some things didn't change too much in regards to being healthy.