52 Small Changes: One Year to a Happier, Healthier You [Paperback]

For over a decade, every New Year's Eve I make a pact with myself to change my eating and exercise habits in exchange for a trip to Paris in the fall. I usually break my pact by January 4th.

Three days is usually my limit and I am back to treating myself poorly - short sleeping hours, fast food instead of cooking healthy meals for myself, and no exercise except walking from my mail box to my front door.

With Brett Blumenthal's new book, I have got a good shot at Paris in 2012.

Brett's 52 week plan follows three basic rules:

1. One Big Change Takes Many Small Changes

2. Extreme's Don't Work

3. Small Changes Feed Our Need to Succeed

Each week is setup with tips and tricks to help you make one small change that balances your life.

Let's take a look at January:

Week 1 - Hydrate (provides tips and tricks for getting adequate H20 in your life)

Week 2 - Get 7-8 hours sleep (shows you how to create your own sleepy time nightly routine and setup a sleep inducing environment)

Week 3 - Keep off the couch (gently encourages you to create a routine of activities that get you moving)

Week 4- Keep a food journal (teaches you how to keep a food journal and identifies false hunger triggers, etc.)

If you are ready to make a commitment to living a balanced life this book can certainly help you take baby steps to get there.

I also recommend Brett's previous bestseller Get Real and Stop Dieting!

Yes, it's almost the end of the year, Christmas is over, the New Year is fast approaching and for many people, resolutions are being planned. We can make changes anytime in our lives, but for some reason, we see the new year as a clean page to start.

"Many of us yearn for instant gratification, and when something takes too long, we give up or move on. Unfortunately, the instant gratification we crave is the exact thing that hinders us from achieving success in our quest for change. The secret to making change that lasts is to acknowledge and accept that change takes time and that patience during the process is essential."

I agree with Blumenthal that 'small changes feed our need to succeed." To that end Brett Blumenthal's book 52 Small Changes actually spans the entire year. She has come up with one change per week that we can incorporate on our way to becoming a "happier, healthier you." The book has four target areas: Diet and Nutrition, Fitness and Prevention, Mental Well - Being and Green Living.

Week One's topic is water - drinking more of it. A basic tenet that we're all aware of and recognize the importance of, but really don't carry out. By just having the one goal for an entire week and following through, one could achieve a feeling of success and the desire to continue on with other small but beneficial changes.

Blumenthal targets a lot of other 'known' issues such as adequate sleep, food choices, additives, vitamins etc. Some of the suggestions such as breathing right, taking at least a half hour a day for yourself, cleaning products and identifying additives provided lots of food for thought. Each topic is explored and the benefits explained. If you're already following that week's suggestions there are ideas for taking it up a notch.

I think the idea of one small change a week is great. However I think some of the ideas would require greater introspection and thought, such as Participate in Your Life (mindful thinking), Find Your Own Spirituality and Living with Purpose. However, that being said, 52 Small Changes does introduce the ideas for consideration.

The book is cleanly laid out, easy to read and includes pictures, graphs and blurb boxes. I think a reader could pick and choose ideas from the book that are pertinent to the changes they would like to see in their lives. I don't think every idea would work for everyone. Do I think I could make 52 changes this year? No, but I will be making some and 52 Small Changes has given me some ideas.

This book has a lot of good suggestions for making changes to your life. Small changes, one per week, that can add up to some significant improvements in your health and quality of life. Each chapter discusses one thing you can do differentely. At the end of each chapter is a summary of all the provious topics, so you can keep track of how you're doing.

At the end of the book there are some useful charts that you can use to log your progress, and a listing of web sites and books if you want to do more research. Overall, this is an interesting approach to making some improvements in your life.

That being said, I found that a lot of the suggestions aren't very practical, at least for me. For example, in the chapter on keeping dust under control, it says that if you have window drapes you should wash them once a week in hot water. I could probably manage the washing, but not taking the drapes down and putting them back up once a week. But I might consider doing it every three months.

Also if you want to follow this book to the letter, prepare to be "greened". A lot of the chapters have to do with things like eliminating processed food, eating only organic food, reducing dairy and salt, etc. Okay, some of that may be good, if you accept all of the current theories about what you should and shouldn't eat. But like many other books, this one falls prey to the fallacy of "everyone is the same, so the same diet will work for everyone".

I'm sorry, but that flies in the face of biological fact. We are NOT all the same. We come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and have heritages from different parts of the world where people have lived on diffeent diets based on available resources, and adapted to them over thousands of years. A diet that one person may thrive on, might actually damage another person's health. I have a friend who tried to live on a vegetarian diet and became very ill until she started to eat meat again. Diet can not always be completely a moral or philosophical choice.

I'm 6' 4" tall and weigh 245 pounds. Although current government guidelines would probably classify me as "obese", I am in very good health (aside from some of the side effects of being over 60 years old). This book says that my portion of meat should be the size of a deck of cards, and a serving of vegetables is the size of half a baseball. I can have a slice of bread (whole wheat) and half a cup of grains or starch. I know from experience that I would not do well on a diet like that. But the book only talks about "appropriate portions", with no consideration that one size does not fit all.

So take some of the recommendations in this book with a grain of salt. (No, it won't kill you!) If the organic, whole food, low-fat diet works for you, great! If not, adapt it so that it does work for you while still improving your life.

I've harped on the diet issue a lot because I think it detracts from the rest of the book. Most of the chapters have good suggestions in other areas, such as reducing clutter, exercising, and improving relationships. I recommend this book. Just don't be disappointed if you can't master all 52 changes. If you can tackle even half of them, you should be able to feel a lot better about your life.