Most people think improving their health starts with finding the right workout or the perfect diet.
I think it starts somewhere else.
It starts with the way you think.
You can have the best training program, nutrition plan, gym membership, supplements, or fitness tracker in the world, but none of those things matter very much if you cannot consistently follow through.
That is why I believe educating yourself is one of the most underrated parts of becoming healthier.
You don’t need to become a nutritionist, doctor, or exercise scientist. But the more you understand about your body, habits, sleep, nutrition, movement, and mindset, the better decisions you can make.
This is something we see every day at Bodies By Design.
Our most successful clients aren’t necessarily the people who started in the best shape or who had the most motivation. They are the people who gradually learned how to make better choices, developed routines, became more consistent, and stopped looking at health as something they were going to do temporarily.
You can see many of those transformations in our Bodies By Design success stories.
The six books below approach health from different directions, but all of them can help you better understand how to create changes that last.
If I had to start this list with one book, this would be it.
The Slight Edge isn’t really a fitness book. It is a book about how seemingly insignificant decisions, repeated consistently, can create dramatically different outcomes over time.
The basic principle is simple:
The little things that are easy to do are also easy not to do.
One workout isn’t going to transform your body.
One healthy meal isn’t going to make you healthy.
One bad meal isn’t going to ruin your progress.
Missing one workout probably won’t change much either.
But repeat those decisions for six months, a year, five years, or ten years and they can completely change the direction of your health.
That is exactly how long-term fitness works.
At Bodies By Design, we have clients who have trained with us for years. Their transformations didn’t happen because of one incredible workout. They happened because they continued showing up, adjusting their nutrition, getting stronger, learning from setbacks, and repeating the process.
One of our clients describes Bodies By Design as a lifestyle rather than another fad or quick fix. Another committed to trying the program for three months and was still training more than five years later. That is The Slight Edge in action.
This book teaches you to stop obsessing over immediate results and start trusting the process.
Whether your goal is losing weight, gaining muscle, improving your health, building a business, or changing another area of your life, the principle is the same:
Small choices repeated long enough become big results.
Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson
People will spend hours worrying about workouts, supplements, calories, protein, and carbohydrates while completely ignoring sleep.
That is a mistake.
Sleep Smarter explains how sleep affects your body, recovery, energy, performance, productivity, and overall health.
It also gives readers practical strategies surrounding sleep routines, light exposure, exercise, stress, the sleep environment, and other lifestyle habits.
It helps you understand that recovery is part of training.
You don’t become healthier simply by doing more.
Sometimes improving your results means learning how to recover from what you’re already doing.
We have seen this with our own clients. One Bodies By Design client originally came to us wanting more energy and better sleep. Over time, her health improvements were significant enough that she reported coming off a long-used sleeping medication and later no longer needing her sleep apnea machine under her doctor’s care. Another client described sleeping better as one of the changes she experienced after becoming more consistent with training, nutrition, and her overall routine.
Sleep isn’t the exciting part of fitness people like posting on social media, but it can have a tremendous influence on how you feel and perform.
Eat Smarter by Shawn Stevenson
Nutrition has become unnecessarily complicated.
Low carb.
Low fat.
Keto.
Fasting.
Plant-based.
Carnivore.
Detoxes.
Supplements.
Everywhere you look, someone has another answer.
Eat Smarter helps readers think about nutrition from a broader perspective instead of looking at food only in terms of calories and weight loss.
The book explores the relationship between food, metabolism, energy, brain function, sleep, hormones, and overall health.
I want people to understand why their food choices matter.
Once you better understand nutrition, you can begin making decisions based on your goals instead of constantly jumping from one diet trend to another.
This is also why we don’t believe nutrition should be based entirely around massive restrictions at Bodies By Design. Nutrition has to work with someone’s actual lifestyle if we expect them to continue doing it long term.
Our clients have experienced this firsthand. There are people on our success-story page who changed their eating habits while consistently strength training and went on to lose substantial amounts of weight and body fat while improving how they felt. Others talk specifically about learning habits they were able to continue even after they were no longer training at Bodies By Design.
That’s the goal.
Not simply losing weight.
Learning how to live in a way that gives you a better chance of keeping the results.
Atomic Habits fits perfectly alongside The Slight Edge.
James Clear focuses on how small changes in your environment and behavior can make it easier to create positive habits and eliminate behaviors that continually work against you.
Think about how much of health really comes down to habits.
Going to the gym.
Preparing your food.
Drinking enough water.
Going to bed on time.
Walking.
Eating enough protein.
Taking medication when prescribed.
Planning meals.
Getting off the couch when you don’t feel like exercising.
Putting your phone down at night.
Most of these things aren’t difficult because we don’t know they’re important.
They’re difficult because doing something consistently is hard.
Motivation comes and goes.
Habits give you something to fall back on when motivation isn’t there.
One of our Bodies By Design clients said the biggest difference she found with us was accountability and consistency. She had previously tried online programs, classes, and home workouts. After developing a more consistent routine, she described improvements in her energy, sleep, eating habits, hiking ability, and mental and emotional health.
That doesn’t come from one workout.
It comes from changing what you repeatedly do.
Eventually, the goal is for healthy decisions to stop feeling like something you are constantly forcing yourself to do and instead become part of how you live.
Built to Move by Kelly and Juliet Starrett
Going to the gym three times a week does not automatically mean you move well.
Modern life involves a tremendous amount of sitting.
We sit at desks.
We sit in cars.
We sit on airplanes.
We sit on couches.
Then we wonder why our hips, backs, shoulders, and knees don’t feel the way they used to.
Built to Move focuses on maintaining your ability to move throughout your life and provides assessments and strategies involving mobility, range of motion, balance, and everyday movement.
One of the biggest goals of fitness should be maintaining your independence.
Can you get off the floor?
Can you reach overhead?
Can you balance?
Can you comfortably walk?
Can you carry groceries?
Can you travel?
Can you hike?
Can you play with your children or grandchildren?
Our clients often come to Bodies By Design thinking primarily about losing weight. But as they progress, many begin appreciating something else just as much: being stronger and more capable.
Our success stories include people who improved range of motion, rebuilt strength, returned to activities like hiking, gained muscle, and developed the confidence to do things they previously avoided.
Fitness shouldn’t only be about how your body looks.
It should also be about what your body allows you to do.
This is probably the deepest book on this list, but it may completely change how you think about getting older.
Instead of waiting until something goes wrong and then trying to fix it, Dr. Peter Attia argues for becoming much more proactive about health.
Outlive examines exercise, cardiovascular health, metabolic health, nutrition, sleep, emotional health, and many of the chronic conditions associated with aging.
One of the biggest ideas in the book is the difference between lifespan and healthspan.
Living longer is one thing.
Living longer while remaining strong, active, mobile, independent, and mentally sharp is something else.
Most people don’t seriously think about aging until they begin feeling older.
But your health later in life is being influenced by decisions you’re making today.
That is another lesson we see with Bodies By Design clients.
Some of our clients have been training consistently for many years. Others started later in life because they realized they wanted more energy, strength, mobility, and independence. Several of our success stories aren’t simply about a number on the scale. They are about being able to move better, feel better, reduce body fat, gain muscle, regain confidence, and continue doing the things they enjoy.
A great question to ask yourself is:
What can I do today that gives me a better chance of being strong, mobile, independent, and healthy 20 or 30 years from now?
That question matters whether you’re 30, 40, 50, 60, or beyond.
These books cover very different subjects, but there is one message running through all of them:
Your health is being built every day.
Not just during your workout.
It’s being built when you decide what to eat.
When you decide when to go to bed.
When you decide whether to move or sit.
When you decide whether to keep a commitment to yourself.
When you decide whether today’s setback is going to become an excuse to quit.
And when you decide whether you’re willing to keep learning.
This is the same approach we try to teach at Bodies By Design.
We can teach someone how to squat, lift, push, pull, move, and train safely. We can provide nutrition guidance, accountability, structure, and coaching.
But ultimately, the goal is bigger than completing another workout.
The goal is helping someone build a lifestyle they can maintain.
That’s why some of the client stories I’m proudest of aren’t necessarily the people who lost the most weight the fastest.
They’re the people who kept going.
People who lost weight and kept it off.
People who gained strength and muscle.
People who improved their eating habits.
People who learned to prioritize sleep.
People who developed routines.
People who went from being intimidated by exercise to making fitness part of their lives.
People who experienced difficult periods in life without completely abandoning their health.
That is what creates long-lasting results.
You can read more of their stories on our Bodies By Design Results page.
You don’t need to order six books and finish them next month.
Start with one.
Personally, I would start with The Slight Edge.
Read ten pages a day.
Highlight things.
Take notes.
Find one idea you can apply to your own life and actually use it.
Then move on to the next book.
Because reading another health book isn’t going to change your life by itself.
What you repeatedly do with what you learn can.
Committed to your overall health,
This article is intended for general educational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized medical or nutrition advice.