{Review} Cameron Diaz’s The Body Book

“The more consistent you are with [your] choices, the closer you come to being the happy, healthy, beautiful, glowing woman that you want to be. Being healthy and well is a lifelong endeavor. It’s important to establish a relationship with your body, to understand what its needs are and how to fulfill those needs. To connect to how your choices affect you physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

I love a good book, but between work, blogging, and school, I find myself with not much time to read. Or when I do have time to give myself a few hours of relaxation at night, I just want to do something that requires little brainpower, like watch trashy TV. But at any given time, I’m in the middle of reading multiple interesting books. Sometime it takes me months upon months to finish them, but I usually get to the end at some point. Today I want to talk about a read that I recently finished: The Body Book by Cameron Diaz.

From the start, I was in love with this book. In a society where so many women are struggling with body image, loathing their hunger, and dreaming of looking like someone else, Cameron Diaz’s book comes from a place of self-love and empowering vibes — putting the focus on our own strengths, our own capabilities, our own beauty. She calls it “a guide to accepting what you have and loving it with everything you’ve got,” breaking down topics like nutrition, hunger, and movement into digestive, easy-to-read bits.  As she puts it, “It’s a guide to maximizing your strength and endurance so that your body can take you everywhere you want to go in life: to all of your success, to the love of your life, to your passions and adventures.”

“In the subtitle of this book are the words ‘Your Amazing Body.’ I believe just that: your body is amazing. Right now, whatever shape you are in, your body is an amazing machine that does so many cool things, from using the air in our environment to keep your brain alive to turning a bowl of cereal into an explosion of energy that allows you to run down the street to catch the bus. And knowing how to take care of that body is the most important information you can ever learn. Ever.”

As I read this book, I always had a highlighter on hand so I could easily reference great quotes and tidbits, and boy, there were a TON of them. I obviously have seen movies with Cameron Diaz and never really had an opinion of her one way or another, but reading this book made me change my opinion — as in, she’s awesome and I want to be friends with her. As a writer myself who ghostwrites for people sometimes, I’m fully aware that celebrity books are often not written by the celebrities at all, but in The Body Book, I felt like it was genuinely Cameron speaking to me, the reader. In it, she seems genuine and truly passionate about healthy living.

Unlike a lot of  books out there that tout quick fixes for health, Cameron is realistic about it. She outright says that there is no magic potion for health, and that to be your healthiest, happiest self, you need to habitually make the right choices in eating well and moving often. I can dig some honesty like that, because I know, and anyone out there who strives to live a healthy lifestyle knows, that is the truth. 

Being that The Body Book is a read about striving to be your healthiest self, there’s obviously a lot of talk about food and nutrition, with one of the chapters titles being “Food, Glorious Food!” The book breaks down macronutrients and vitamins, the roles that they play in our bodies, and what deficiencies look like. There’s an entire chapter on digestion, which she refers to as the epicenter of our health. She says that we can create any experience we want with the food we eat. Cameron calls fast-food not real food, but rather food-like substances, saying: “I’m talking about eating foods that grow in the earth or are sustained by the earth and that have not been tampered with by technology.”

Self admittedly, Cameron is naturally thin, but she shares her experience with realizing that what she eats and how she treats her body makes a huge difference in how she feels mentally, physically and emotionally. As she puts it, “Now that I understand that I create the experience of my entire life by what I eat, I have been transformed.” You can tell by her personal stories throughout the book, Cameron walks the walk. She’s a fitness freak, loves to cook, and has a morning ritual similar to mine where she gulps a glass of water first thing in the morning to wake her body up….and that kind of makes me love her.

I loved reading Cameron’s words about eating the right foods to feeds your cells and allow them to protect you, energize you and heal you. After all, we are what we eat: The nutrients in the food that we consume determines the way our cells develop, grow and thrive.

“The health of your bones, muscles, vision, brain function, immune system – all of these are dependent on the micronutrients, vitamins and minerals that you consume with every meal.”

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So many people have sabotaged their brains into thinking that feeling hungry is a bad thing, that food is the enemy. This type of attitude saddens me, because food is supposed to be nourishment — the stuff that gives us energy, and keeps us moving and living well. Food and hunger are our friends, and to honor them, we must feed ourselves with food that fuels us and helps us thrive, instead of bogging us down and making us feel heavy (figuratively and literally). Cameron acknowledges this a lot, saying, “No matter where you’re starting from, one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to love your hunger: to eat for nutrition and give your body and every little cell that it contains exactly what it needs to help you thrive.”

It’s interesting to think about the definition of health. I hadn’t ever really broken it down in my brain until reading Cameron’s definition in The Body Book, and I must say, she puts it perfectly:

“When I refer to health, I’m talking about having a body that is working at its optimum, a body that has the energy to go all day without crashing, a body that can fight off illness and keep you strong. I’m talking about feeling amazing in your skin, in a body that can wake up in the morning, get out of bed, make breakfast, and get moving. I’m talking about thawing a mind that can be clear and productive, thoughtful and happy.”

Who doesn’t want all of that, right?!

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In the book, Cameron shares her love of cooking and creating meals to share with loved ones, a passion that I obviously share. She refers to home cooking as one of the tricks to living a healthy life, saying:

“That’s the whole secret to feeding yourself well: taking the time to create food that you love to eat while also making sure that it provides you with the vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, essential fats, and protein that you need to be healthy.” 

Other sections of the book talk about the importance of movement. In the chapter titled “Hunter, Gatherer, Drive-Thru-Er” Cameron drives home the point about how in recent times, society has advanced in areas like transportation and technology, but that these very things have caused us to lead sedentary lives. The times have changed, but our bodies still need lots of exertion, movement, effort – which are all the things that most people usually try to avoid. She says things on the subject like:

“Convenience is not an acceptable foundational value for society. It’s a disease.”

 “Our generation is witnessing a profound shift in the way human beings live on this planet: for the first time in history, more people are dying of the issues that come along with an excess of food rather than a shortage of food.”

“Until the last decade or so, we weren’t fully aware of the dangers of an inactive way of life. We didn’t understand the long-term implications of all of that convenience. Now, we’re starting to catch on – and it’s taken a fighting rise in obesity and disease to open our eyes. Essentially, we are all part of a giant experiment, with planet Earth as a petri dish, and we’re just starting to realize that our choices may not be taking us in the best direction. We are using our own genius and creativity to become softer and sicker instead of stronger and better. Lazier, not leaner. And that is not OK.”

Cameron is also pretty witty throughout the book, saying things like, “Candy is basically fake fruit that wishes it was fruit and is doing its best to smell and taste like it.”

I found the book’s section on the problem with antibiotics really interesting. She talked about how antibiotics kill not only the bad bacteria that’s making you sick, but it also wipes out the good bacteria in your microbiome, disarming your gut of important colonizers, causing some unpleasant side effects in your body, like a yeast infection. They also elevate your risk for developing other illnesses, making it more challenging for your immune system to defend you.

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You can tell by reading The Body Book that Cameron loves to move.

“Every single one of us has the instinct in our body to move, to be active. Resting after exertion and getting enough sleep are crucial activities if we want our bodies to heal and repair, but we’re meant to rest eight hours a night, not twenty-four hours a day!”

[Side note: Can we talk about how they didn’t Photoshop her thighs to have a “thigh gap” in the above photo? She simply looks strong and healthy – love it!]

She calls movement magic, and says that we all need to claim our right to move our bodies. She makes a point of talking about how on her long days on movie sets, she still finds little ways to get movement in. I think that this was great to include, because it stresses that she gets chaotically busy like everyone else, but doesn’t let life’s busyness stop her from getting exercise in.

Another aspect of the book that I loved was how Cameron kept emphasizing the mind/body connection:

“Why do I train? Because muscles are strength and earning them teaches us that we can create our own strength.”

“Many people try so hard to ignore the way they feel, in their bodies and in their minds, that even when their bodies and minds are SCREAMING at them, in the form of illness or anxiety of weight gain or depression, they can’t hear. Connecting MIND and BODY means learning to listen, learning to understand the messages your body is sending you, and giving your body what it needs.”

Do you see why I’ve bombarded you with tons of quotes? There is just so much quotable text in the book, I can’t help myself!

As Cameron says, your body is the most precious thing you have. I would recommend The Body Book to anyone who wants to better understand how their body works, to every person who wants to be healthier, happier, fitter, and more comfortable with themselves. I found it to be a brilliant book, and was sad when I finally finished it!

“The responsibility to be healthy is in your hands – no one else is going to do it for you. So ask yourself: do you want to live in a body that allows you to do the things you want to do, a body that is full of health and capability, that you are proud to call your own? Because it’s your choice. And the amazing thing is that you don’t have to choose between health and good food. Because you can eat food that is good for you and also tastes great. You can have deliciousness and healthiness. Real food is everything. It’s pleasure. It’s fuel. It’s nutrition. It’s family. It’s life.”

Tell me… Have your read The Body Book? What’s the best health related book that you’ve read?