All of these books and more are available to borrow for free with your library card.
Want more reading suggestions? Take a look at our recommendations.
Walk Yourself Well: Step into a Healthier, Happier You
Nina Barough
Make every step count!
From mastering your technique and setting your pace to walking in different climates and terrains, this practical guide has everything you need to transform your health and fitness. Get moving with step-by-step introductions to new ways to walk and do it right with science-backed training programmes for all levels.
Boost your mental health, lengthen your life, improve mobility & flexibility, and reduce your risk of disease. Begin your low-impact, high-reward regime today for a happier, healthier, and longer life.
The Walking Cure
Annabel Streets
In this inspirational book Annabel Streets explains the curative and therapeutic benefits of 20 easy-to-find landscapes, both rural and urban: from mountains to meadows, disused railway lines to rivers and coastal cliffs to city parks.
Streets reveals not only the huge physiological benefits of walking, but also how these are exponentially enhanced by the particular routes we choose to walk. Streets investigates how different landscapes have proven abilities to change how we see, feel and experience ourselves and the world.
With warmth and wisdom, and using a compelling blend of anecdotal and scientific evidence, she identifies the perfect place to walk for over two dozen common states-of-mind, whether it be a canal path to spark creativity, a bustling city to allay boredom or the the shoreline to heal grief and insomnia.
The Walking Cure celebrates the joy of walking and shares the extraordinary health benefits that landscape unlocks.
Five Weeks to Gut Health: Easy and Delicious Recipes to Reset, Restore and Replenish Your Microbiome
Christine Bailey
Gut health is crucial for both body and mind – to be healthy and happy, get your gut working!
Combining cutting-edge scientific research with mouth-watering recipes, award-winning nutritionist and chef Christine Bailey maps out five key stages to creating a healthier gut. Perfect for followers of gluten-free, low-FODMAP, low-sugar, Paleo or dairy-free diets who want tasty food packed with nutrients to achieve long-lasting health.
So Good: Food You Want to Eat, Designed By a Nutritionist
Emily English
When we think of nutrition and eating well, so many of us jump to the words ‘diet’, ‘unenjoyable’, and ‘sacrifice’. Sometimes we see healthy eating as something we should do, rather than something we want to do.
This is the book to help you kickstart healthy eating as an enjoyable lifelong habit rather than a fad for a week. A perfect collection of over 80 vibrant, tasty and easy recipes all steeped in nutritional science, So Good explains the principles of healthy eating in a fun and relatable way.
Food should be a celebration, a memory, a moment. It’s not about counting calories; it’s about making every meal count. Let every meal you make nourish your body and bring you joy with every bite.
The Easy Way to Enjoy Exercise: Get Fit Without Willpower
Allen Carr
We all know the feeling: you’ve put on a few pounds, you want to feel and look fitter, but the discipline you need to join that exercise class or go for that run always deserts you when you need it most. How can you overcome your aversion to exercise and achieve the health and physique you dream of?
By recognising that aversion and addiction are opposite sides of the same coin, Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Enjoy Exercise applies the acclaimed Easyway method to unravel the illusions and negative mindset that keep us stuck with our aversion to working out and eating well.
Diet Starts Monday: Ditch the Scales, Reclaim Your Body and Live Life to the Full
Laura Adlington
Diet Starts Monday is a no-BS guide to body acceptance in a looks-obsessed world.
Plus-size TV personality and body confidence advocate Laura Adlington has struggled with her weight (and the weight of other people’s opinions) her entire life. Here, in conversation with experts including doctors, psychologists and nutritionists, Laura reveals just how detrimental diet culture is to health, and explores where our true worth lies.
Packed with personal stories and practical advice, this book will help you find peace with your body – not be at constant war with it. By undoing negative ingrained beliefs about beauty and value, and focusing on building inner confidence, Diet Starts Monday will empower you to live a fun and full life – whatever your size.
Walk This Way: Your Guide to Fitness, Health and Happiness
Gill Stewart
We all know that walking is good for us. It strengthens our muscles and bones, improves our general health and relaxes the mind. But how do we keep the joy in walking and stop it becoming a chore?
Gill Stewart is a walking expert and fitness professional who has developed a unique holistic approach to help us reap the myriad benefits of walking – for our mind and our body.
Designed for all levels of walker, from beginners to more seasoned hikers, Walk This Way is packed with gentle and practical inspiration to ensure you gain something from every walk you take.
Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind
Dr Georgia Ede
Are you struggling with attention problems, mood swings, food obsession, or depression? Whatever the issue, you have far more control than you realize. In Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, Dr Georgia Ede reveals that the most powerful way to change brain chemistry is with food – because that’s where brain chemicals come from in the first place.
Drawing on a wide range of scientific disciplines, including biochemistry, neuroscience, and botany, Dr Ede will ignite your curiosity about the fascinating world of food and its role in nourishing, protecting, and energizing your brain.
Every Body Should Know This: The Science of Eating for a Lifetime of Health
Dr Federica Amati
Most of us have a basic understanding of what our bodies need: more vegetables, less refined sugar, and fewer ultra-processed foods.
However, knowing what foods will enhance our health now and as we age is difficult without good advice.
In Every Body Should Know This, medical scientist and Head Nutritionist at ZOE, Dr. Federica Amati, explains how to achieve good health at every stage of life – from conception to our golden years.
Her simple, targeted nutritional advice, backed by the latest scientific research, will help you and your loved ones discover which foods to avoid and which foods will nourish you.
The Cortisol Fix Recipe Book: Reduce Stress and Bring Your Body Back Into Balance
Angela Dowden
Cortisol is our “stress hormone” produced in the adrenal glands as a response to a perceived danger or threat. It helps our bodies reduce inflammation, regulate our sleep cycles, control our blood sugar and blood pressure levels and manage how we process carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
While cortisol plays a vital role for us, chronic or prolonged stress can cause cortisol levels to rise too high, leading to weight gain, high blood pressure, poor mental health and several other physical health conditions over time.
This cookbook will show you how simple, fresh and nourishing whole foods can help you balance your hormone levels. Nutritionist Angela Dowden provides weekly meal plans and expert nutritional and lifestyle advice related to diet, sleep and mental health to help you develop healthy habits.
Hack Yourself Healthy
Julia Bradbury
The human body is a marvel of biological engineering that constantly renews itself, and we always seem to be on the hunt for ways to improve it, physically and emotionally. But with so many new health trends on the rise, how do we know what really works?
Drawing from research, interviews with global thought leaders and personal experiments, Julia offers practical tips and accessible science-based strategies to optimise every aspect of your health and wellbeing.
You’ll also discover how to hack your nutrition and hormonal health, utilise sleep science and why the future of medicine is an integrative whole-person approach.
Eat Yourself Healthy: Jamie’s Ultimate Cookbook for Everyday Healthy Eating
Jamie Oliver
Kickstart your good life with Jamie’s first cookbook for better long-term health – Eat Yourself Healthy.
But Jamie’s health journey will be all about more not less: more taste, more joy, more energy, more sleep, more of the things that we all want…
Looking after yourself begins with food. In Eat Yourself Healthy, Jamie’s 120 easy, mouthwatering recipes will energise, satisfy, nourish and revitalise.
This is all about what you can have, not what you can’t. Jamie’s healthy eating is joyful, generous and so tasty you’ll keep coming back to it.