The Heat Is On...So What Are You Reading?

I've heard it said that a healthy life is like a table with 4 legs. A table needs the 4 legs in order to balance correctly...and a healthy woman needs to attend to 4 areas in her life to stay balanced...her physical needs, her spiritual needs, her emotional needs and her mental needs.

I usually am more aware of my physical health in the summer as I try to exercise more and eat lighter. My emotional and spiritual needs are a daily exercise of discipline and focus...but my mental needs tend to slip abit in the summer as I am quick to head out and do something outdoors rather than hunker down and learn something.

So I make reading a top priority during the summer to keep my mental state in good repair!

I just finished reading The Great Starvation Experiment by Todd Tucker. It is a true story about men who volunteered for an experiment to see what the affects of starvation has on a body. All the men were Conscientious Objectors during World War II. Dr. Ancel Keys headed up this experiment for the government to find out how to rebuild countries that had suffered so much through starvation during the war. It is a fascinating book and a fairly easy read.

What did I take away from it? What a remarkable body I have! What extreme conditions a body can live through...and recover. The volunteers were at their optimum weight going into the experiment and all of them lost about 25% of this weight during the experiment. Yet they survived and went on to become very driven and successful men in the years that followed.

This book was recommended to me by my son who is getting his Master's in nutrition. I hesitated abit when he first suggested it...but it proved to be a very informational and intriguing book to read.

What books are you reading? Are you keeping your life in balance by stretching your mental capacities this summer? Share your list with us....and read a book that you normally wouldn't reach for and feed your mind.