"This isn’t a diet manual – it’s about how to get back a healthy relationship with food and exercise, concentrating on how we feel rather than how we look."
Pretty Unhealthy is written in a personal and chatty style to educate, inform and entertain. When heart surgeon Dr Nikki Stamp was diagnosed with high blood pressure, she began to look more closely at not just her own lifestyle but what being healthy really means. In modern society, health and beauty have become intertwined, with people’s looks and size being (falsely) seen as an indication of their overall physical and mental health.
This book wades through the barrage of health information reaching us on a daily basis via books, websites, blogs, social media posts and magazines/newspapers. How do we know what to believe? How much of this often-conflicting information is based on actual science and written by qualified experts, rather than the popular so-called ‘wellness experts’? And is it really making us healthier – or just more miserable?
Dr Stamp covers various contemporary topics, including diet fads, exercise trends, body positivity & body image and weight bias. This isn’t a diet manual – it’s about how to get back a healthy relationship with food and exercise, concentrating on how we feel rather than how we look. This book won’t tell you what to eat and drink – that has to be your decision – but it will tell you how to be in control of your own choices, rather than be influenced by the pseudoscience, false hope and ‘magic bullets’ around you.
I ended the book thinking about my lifestyle and what I enjoy and how, above all, it’s important to be kind to myself. Can’t get better messages than that.
| Primary Genre | Women’s health |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
One book that everyone should read. You will question social media and its association with the health and beauty industries.
This is one fantastic book written by a surgeon which goes underneath all the hype of the multi-billion pound health and beauty industries.
The author describes how social media is being used by both industries promoting diets, fitness regimes, sportswear, clothing and so forth aimed mostly at women to achieve the perfect look and the medical and psychological effects this can have on people. She also questions the accuracy of the various bloggers on social media as research has shown that very little is evidenced-based. This book also questions the qualifications of people posting on social media.
This is a brilliant book and written so that anyone can read it.... Read Full Review
Very informative yet still easy enough to read without feeling overwhelmed with facts or difficult language.
Great book. Very informative yet still easy enough to read without feeling overwhelmed with facts or difficult language. It is great to see SOMEONE trying to shout out about this dangerous topic. There is far too many eating disorder and mental health sufferers out there to keep ignoring how dangerous our beliefs currently are around weight, food and the perfect body. Life is for living and food is to be enjoyed.... Read Full Review
I loved this! I have been looking for a book that understands me and this is it. I look forward to what Nikki does in the future.
Nikki’s book is like a breath of fresh air, she can combine such knowledge and passion in her writing. Fantastic book, easy to read, accessible and engaging. It’s not a book to race through but to be enjoyed thoroughly.... Read Full Review
Why are we obsessed with wellness, but our health is getting worse?
How have we messed up our relationship with food and exercise so badly? We are more obese, less active and more stressed than ever before and it's killing us.
Today, we're more likely to die from a lifestyle disease than any other cause, and many of these would be preventable if we took better care of our health. Enter a vast wellness industry that has emerged in recent years, making big money promoting 'healthy' lifestyles. Except the aim isn't to make your body work better: it's to make your body look better.
Equipped with Instagram accounts or wellness blogs, each health advocate leads an army of people towards what is labelled 'health' but might actually be far from it. We are obsessed with body transformation and fitspiration, but the wrong advice is making us poor, tired and pretty unhealthy instead.
Pretty Unhealthy is a call to reclaim the definition of true health: to aim for bodies that are resilient to disease and can do everything we need them to do; and for us to feel emotionally happy in those bodies.
Pretty Unhealthy features in the following genres: Women’s health, Books with reviews by our Reader Review Panel, Gift Books, Mind, body, spirit, Popular medicine and health, Family and health, Health & Fitness, Recommendations, Stationery and miscellaneous items, Lifestyle, Hobbies and Leisure, Non-Fiction Books of the Month
Pretty Unhealthy is available in Paperback
Pretty Unhealthy was written by Nikki Stamp and published by Murdoch Books
Pretty Unhealthy has 288 pages
