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Find out moreLooking to change your life? Whether it’s physical, emotional or spiritual change you seek, these books may have some answers. If you’re seeking to enlighten, enlarge or explore your mind, check out our Mind & Body section for a more comprehensive range of books.
Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards 2017, Costa Biography Award Heart surgery is by its very nature a high-risk business and as Professor Stephen Westaby says ‘the grim reaper sits on your shoulder’, but when it is successful it is transformative, to say the least. With his 11,000 heart operations behind him Professor Stephen Westaby has been at the forefront of the advances in heart surgery for the last 35 years. Through his boundary-pushing, ethics-bending sometimes maverick approach he has helped make highly radical techniques, with a pretty poor chance of success, mainstream treatments for once fatal conditions.Fragile Lives is a candid and affecting biography, taking the reader to the heart of the operating theatre and into the lives of the patients whose courage help forge a path to safer and more effective heart surgery for us all. The Costa Judges say: ‘A powerful, engaging and passionate memoir from a surgical pioneer.’
The Little Book of Happiness shows you how to live in the moment, flourish as an individual and improve your wellbeing. Through over 150 uplifting and practical tips, inspirational quotes and straight forward exercises, learn how to let go, find true bliss and reclaim your smile to help you to live a happier life.
Whether you long to live with less stress, reduce anxiety, find the confidence to follow your dreams or simply find more happiness and meaning in your everyday life, Thrive Through Yoga will take you on a journey towards health, strength and freedom. Thrive Through Yoga unites ancient wisdom with modern psychology to create a revolutionary route to freedom from the anxieties and worries of 21st-century living.
Whether you're training for a marathon, a half-marathon, an ultra-distance event or just looking to improve your parkrun time, what you eat makes all the difference. This is the ultimate nutrition guide and cookbook for runners, packed with easy, delicious recipes and practical eating advice on how to prepare for 5k, 10k, half-marathons, marathons and ultra-races.
Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge has been developing top recipes for nearly three decades and knows how to make things taste good. He also understands how much willpower it takes to shift unhealthy excess weight, because he has lost over 11 stone in the last four years by following a low-carb diet. Now Tom is turning his attention to helping food-lovers who have chosen a lower-calorie diet as their own route to weight-loss. This is a lower-calorie diet with a difference - it's based on hunger-satisfying portions of delicious, lower-calorie dishes that taste amazing. The focus is on the food that we can and should be eating to lose weight, which is easy to make and won't make you feel as though you are missing out.
In The Four Pillar Plan, Dr Rangan Chatterjee presents an easily accessible plan for taking control of your health and your life. Everyday health revolves around Dr Chatterjee's four pillars: relaxation, food, sleep and movement. By making small, achievable changes in each of these key areas you can create and maintain good health - and avoid illness.
This book is the bravely honest story of a year in Clare's life. A year that started with her quitting booze and then being given the devastating diagnosis of breast cancer. By the end of the year she is booze-free and cancer-free, she no longer has a wine belly, is two stone lighter and with a life that is so much richer, healthier and more rewarding than ever before. She has a happier family and a more positive outlook. Sober Diaries is an upbeat, funny and positive look at how to live life to the full. Interwoven within Clare's own very personal and brilliantly comic story is research and advice as she discovers the answers to questions like: How do I know if I'm drinking too much? How will I cope at parties? What do I say to friends and family? How do I cope with cravings? If I stop drinking will I lose weight? What if my partner still drinks? And many more.
What a lovely, warm, kind and friendly book this is, Fearne Cotton writes about the state of calm, and how to find it in our modern, hectic lives. This isn’t just to read, it’s an interactive book too, encouraging you to make notes, to revisit thoughts and feelings. Fearne looks at everyday life, she also visits anxiety, trauma, and PTSD, she highlights breathing, living in the moment, and also introduces us to various friends and experts who have the ability to reach or teach a sense of calm. The book itself feels calm, the colours, font, and layout all help to soothe, to give you a hug as you read. While this could be read in order from beginning to end, I also feel you can dip in and out, take your time, visit when you have a moment. Calm is reassuring and revitalising, it’s the perfect helping hand for you to make some time for yourself, to reflect, and look for peace. ~ Liz Robinson
Are you fed up with restrictive dieting? Do you feel you've tried everything before and failed? Then this plan is for you. This is different. This will work.Joe Wicks is back with another instalment of 100 brand-new delicious recipes and five speedy, effective HIIT workouts. The Fat-Loss Plan can motivate everyone on their way to achieving a fit, lean and healthy body. Inside the book is a combination of reduced-carb, post-workout and snacks and sweet treat recipes - all incredibly tasty and easy to make in 15 minutes flat. Every recipe is filling and fuels you with energy for your day and your workout - including Steak Taco with Lime Salsa, Lamb Kofte Tagine and Veggie Super Bowl. Thanks to sample weekly plans, Joe makes it simple for you to prep like a boss and eat well every day of the week. Joe has more than 4 million followers on social media where fans share their personal journeys towards a leaner, fitter lifestyle. The Lean in 15 titles won platinum and gold awards at the Specsavers Nielsen book awards. Joe's first book Lean in 15: The Shift Plan has become the bestselling diet book of all time and all his books have been non-fiction number one bestsellers.Start your journey to better health and fitness now with The Body Coach.
Brings together scientific research, expert analysis and elite athlete contributions to reveal how relating to your mind, body and surroundgins in a new way can help you run longer and faster, as well as offer a boost to your overall mental, emotional and physical health.
Judging from the recipes this is mostly modern comfort cooking. The modern comfort eater can check the contents list for something that answers their particular craving, for something sweet or sharp, something crunchy or soft – a jolly good idea allowing the distracted cook to zone in fast on what they want. Heaven knows, there is enough bad news around now to sink anyone but there is some relief to be found in a warm and inviting kitchen cooking up John Whaite’s food designed to soothe and comfort. ~ Sue Baker Like for Like Reading How to be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking by Nigella Lawson Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavours by Diana Henry
A short self-help book to encourage anyone living a solo life to live it to the full. Author Christine Ingall says that being single or solo doesn’t mean being a second-class citizen. This book is to “help anyone who struggles with their solo life to live it… without excuses, and without fear of being seen to be alone”. The number of people living alone in mid-life, and people describing themselves as lonely has increased. The author offers a number of exercises, uses her own life as an example, and gives encouragement. While an awful lot of the book is common-sense, the fact that it is all together in one place, and acts as a reminder, allows focus. So if you would like to live a more expanded and full life, this book holds your hand while you explore possibilities.
We all need a little direction sometimes and this section is crammed full of great ideas for ways of improving your outlook, in all aspects of your wellbeing. Help from the shelf. From tips for good nutrition and taking care of your body (Optimism: Reflections on a Life of Action by Bob Brown) to coping with all the emotional situations in life, relationships, bereavements, stress, depression (Mind Whispering: A New Map to Freedom from Self-defeating Emotional Habits by Tara Bennett-Goleman). Discover the potential you have for being the ‘you’ you’ve always wanted to be or the ‘you’ you had no idea was in there.
Take a look at our monthly recommendations to find exactly what you’re looking for. Bear in mind though (and even ‘body and spirit’ too …), that just ‘reading’ them may not be enough. There’ll be homework!