Recommended Reading: Healthy as F*ck
Healthy as F*ck by Oonagh Duncan; Penguin Canada, 2019 (269 pages)
“Join the movement. Ditch the diet.”
Oonagh Duncan is a multiple award-winning fitness expert, authors, and speaker specializing in helping women get lean, strong, and healthy through a habits-based approach. (taken from: Healthy as F*uck)
When I first read the title of this book, I was like “my people”! Friends will attest how I do love a well-delivered f-bomb and this book doesn’t disappoint. Oonagh’s (pronounced ‘Una’) written words feel like a convo with one of your well-informed besties, having a come-to-Jesus talk with you on your health, infused with a healthy dose of compassion and practicality. If you are looking for a book that focuses on developing long-term life habits that create the body and healthier lifestyle you want, then this is a good read for you.
If you’re looking for a quick-fix diet, or the next new health craze fit, this book isn’t it. This book is what comes after you’ve tried everything and still haven’t met your wellness goals because, spoiler alert, diets aren’t sustainable. Crazes don’t last. Oonagh explains how you need to approach real change with different habits that will create long-term changes in your life. No new habits, no long-lasting change.
I wanted to pick this book up because I wanted some inspiration for making permanent changes in my own life in terms of lifestyle and health. It’s my primary goal this year, and I’m not looking for diets. I want REAL, SUSTAINABLE, and EASY ways to make REAL changes that will DELIVER. And not for the next 3 or 6 months; for the rest of my freaking life. I’ve gotten off this diet roller-coaster ride because it sucks ass and isn’t sustainable. And yeah, also, I’ve tried every fucking diet, eating plan, illimitation diet, and lifestyle there is and still haven’t found the magic combination, until I implemented some strategies from this book …and changed several habits (more on this in another post of mine).
What I like about this book is that Oonagh has walked her talk and transformed her own life—and creating a health and wellness business based on her mastery and success with her own life and the lives of her clients. She’s living it, not just talking about it.
This book is about ‘fucking the diet’ and learning to look and reflect at your life habits. What behaviours are sabotaging your health goals? What behaviours are helping your health goals? And Oonagh delivers some very practical and usable advice to make small consistent changes to your life that can put you on the path to give yourself the healthy lifestyle you want. But you have to do the work. Not just physically, but emotionally. Oonagh easily expands on some basic psychology components to explain ‘the why’ of our failures with food and exercise. She gives helpful and practical advice to help instituting new patterns in your life with a charming and irreverent writing style, with honesty, enthusiasm (fun?), and humour.
“IF you want things to change, YOU have to change. If you change, everything will change for you.”
A great book to have in your arsenal of health and wellness if you are serious in making real change in your life.
And bonus! Through her website, she also offers free materials available for you online as well! Have a look if you like, links are posted below. There are free meal plans, resources, and workouts that she offers to compliment the book’s core material, so there are more kickstarting opportunities for learning with and outside the book, which is a wicked opportunity.
And lastly, I haven’t listened to the audiobook version of Healthy as F*ck, but knowing her personality, I will bet dollars to donuts it’s quite badass and entertaining. Definitely worth a listen if audio booking is more your jam.
*Update: Recently, I did listen to her audiobook, and it delivers hard! Entertaining and memorable.
https://www.fitfeelsgood.com/book/
