The Happy Body: The Simple Science of Nutrition, Exercise, and Relaxation (Black&White)

9/2/16 I first reviewed it last winter sometime. Now I have been on the program a year. I still believe in it, do it five times a week and keep getting more flexible and stronger with better balance. The daily ritual of the same exercise every day is actually relaxing. Not a lot of thinking involved. Close to meditation actually. So, a year later ( I will be 58 in a couple of weeks) I do not find myself getting bored, in fact, it is sort of fun to try to get better at it all the time. I do need to do another video training with them to see what I need to do next to improve my form, go up in weight etc. Still not eating the way they recommend but hope to improve that discipline this fall Good program.Headline: It actually works the way they say it is going to work, if you follow the program. Main benefits for me: (Can't say what it might do for you.) Much less tension and stiffness and pain in my back, shoulders and neck. It is all gone essentially. Much better overall balance and leg strength. Better posture all around.I am 57 years old and have always been active. Kayaking, skiing, bike riding, gym five days per week etc. I also like to eat a lot and really like red wine..a lot. In my 50's it seemed to all be catching up with me. I have begun feeling stiff, tight, tired and doing work arounds in regards to stiff hips, neck and back. I spend too much time on the computer, sitting in meetings and on airplanes. The track I was on was not good. I have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on chiropractors and massage. Don't think I need it much any more. Most frustrating was that all the work on the stair climber, elliptical, stationary bike and treadmill seem to be wearing me out where it used to make me feel good in decades past. Seemed so unfair!I had a painful and scary back injury last year that required a complete discectomy. Pretty serious operation. A few months later, with the blessing of my surgeon, I started this program for the first time, very gingerly and with really light weights; like five pound dumbbells. My friend who is 73 and in much better shape than me recommended it. He has been doing it for ten years. Within a month I was feeling like I did in my late 40's as far as flexibility. Now after three plus months of five or six days per week I feel like I am getting younger body-fitness and lightness-wise. it is kind of weird actually. The exercise sessions go by really quickly. It is more like tai chi or some other martial art. Everyday is interesting because you try to get just a tiny bit better at each of the movements---just a little smother, a little more finesse, a little deeper squat, a little deeper stretch of the hamstrings...I am talking about a 16th of an inch of progress, maybe, per day. But each week it is a little better. If you get excited about long term, satisfying incremental improvements (not everybody does) this is a cool program. Each day you get to do it again and see if you can be just a tiny bit better than the day before. I am a beginner but I can see where it is going and I like it. I am very slowly moving up in the weights. The eating program is seeming less weird and more normal. Weight is dropping very, very slowly but steadily. (I track it with the True Weight app™--highly recommended.)On getting going: Read the book cover to cover. Takes one Saturday afternoon. That is a good grounding so you know where you are going. It is a good mix of how-to and the philosophy. My wife mounted the poster on cardboard so it is always in front of us while exercising. Flipping pages in the book to see what exercises are next is a pain. The poster tells you what to do next, like following the bouncing ball. It is worth getting. Finally, the book, the poster and the tapes don't match up exactly which is fine. (Tiny differences in foot position etc. Nothing big but a bit confusing if you are focused on the details.) The tapes are the key so you can watch the movements very slowly, repeatedly, and note the really, really important subtleties that do not come across in the book or the poster. Lastly, if you can afford it---and not everyone can---hire the authors to do skype distance trainings to straighten you out every couple of months. (They are in California and I live in Montana.) Mistakes are easy to make. One hour with them by computer is helpful. Think of learning a martial art from a book, poster or tapes with no live trainer in a dojo...tricky. So, if you are dedicated, a few live video sessions with them can work really well and are worth the money if you decide to really commit to this thing.My recommendation before you think too hard about it is just buy the book (very cheap) and the poster, do all the movements six days a week for a month while you push the pause button on absolutely everything else exercise-wise so you can do a good quality controlled experiment and see what you think. My guess is you will be pretty surprised and will then elect to go for the tapes and maybe even spring for the live sessions. Good luck.The most astounding thing to me is that you can pretty much drop everything else, meaning all the running, yoga and aerobics. Shocking I know. I did not buy the premise for awhile but I do now.

This is a long review; the shortened version is this - the Happy Body program lives up to its claims. I'm 64 and have exercised all my life, first with competitive weightlifting in high school, then years of jogging, elliptical machines, and a brief exposure to yoga. I have more than a passing interest in the science of exercise but I am not an expert. Like Jerzy, one of the authors, I'm a believer in quantifying and tracking results to give you an idea as to where you've been and how you're doing.Concept: the program is based on the understanding that it must become part of one's life, that it must be integrated into one's life just as other daily activities are part of one's life. In order to do this well a 'connection' must be made to the program such that it becomes a way of life. As a professional pianist I recognize the need for practice as I can connect the benefits of practice to maintaining desired skill and performance levels; one hour of practice a day for 5 straight days yields far superior results than 5 hours on Friday. The authors are working on a DVD to help bolster this concept.Results: in 6 weeks my rate of fat loss is slightly exceeding the program's predictions. However the rate of muscle gain has far exceeded what I expected or what the program predicted. This is not a bad thing. I always thought that muscle needed time to rebuild, but following the program - exercising every day - has resulted in building muscle in spite of no rest days in between.Measuring body fat: one of the best aspects of the book is tracking both body fat and muscle. The program takes simple measurements using a ruler and the pinch test. While these may be reliable for younger people I do not believe them to be reliable for older people. I tried several 'pinch tests' as well as the US Navy method and they all significantly underestimated my real body fat content which I had precisely measured by undergoing a DEXA scan, the gold standard for measuring body fat. As long as you consistently use the same method of tracking your body fat content that is good enough; I found SlimGuide calipers to be the best of the low-priced calipers for measuring skin folds.Setting body fat (leanness) goals: I spent some time thinking about this. While increasing degrees of leanness are good - to a point - it's a mistake in my opinion to adopt absolute numbers as defining thresholds that are definitively 'good' or 'bad'. After doing some research I've adopted a goal of 15% body fat and a body mass index (BMI) of < 25. That would put me at my high school weight of 45 years ago. For me that's probably good enough. If I reach that and like it I can always treat it as an interim goal. I suggest followers of the program consider setting interim goals rather than 'all or nothing' goals and then evaluate how they look and feel as they reach them. The important thing to keep in mind is that progress is defined as moving towards your goals, whatever they may be.Sequences and levels: when I first started the program I mistakenly thought that one needed to get to level 5 of each exercise before advancing to the next sequence. Wrong. You move on to the next sequence after spending one week on each one, so in three weeks you have tried all the exercises in all three sequences. In my case I was (and am) all over the place relative to levels as the pure strength exercises are easy for me while the ones that require considerable flexibility are much more challenging. The point is not to get discouraged over the exercises that may be particularly challenging for you.Pace: trying to do three sets each of 18 individual exercises is initially challenging, perhaps more so for someone of my age. It may take awhile to build up the stamina to work up to this, so don't get discouraged before you have a chance to adapt to the demands of the program.Other considerations: the program is presented as totally inclusive; it improves peoples' youthfulness and is therefore beneficial when doing many other kinds of physical activities including other sports. Since my current flexibility is somewhere between poor and fair, I occasionally add two mild stretching exercises to aid in my ability to do the extended bend over and overhead squat press exercises in the program. I also do some HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) no more than three days a week. I find both of these useful in getting to my overall goals.Two final comments: I've communicated via email with Jerzy a few times and he has always been prompt answering my questions. That's unusual and much appreciated. Also, I've mentioned his name a few times in this review; that is not to be construed as my minimizing Aniela's contribution to the book.