Recipes for a healthy diet rich in flavour, a simple exercise plan and a wellbeing guide. A new book from a world expert on longevity contains these three keys to living well.
The Manual of Healthy Longevity and Wellbeing by Luigi Fontana is an easy-to-follow practical guide to maximise your chance of living a long, happy life in good health.
Professor Fontana's plan shows you how to boost your metabolic and immune health, and how to eliminate empty calories and enhance nutritional value - something he says is simple and achievable.
He also provides the tools to improve your emotional wellbeing.
To help make things easier, there are more than 80 tasty Mediterranean-style recipes and a step-by-step exercise plan that includes aerobic, weight-bearing and stretch exercises. This is complemented by guidance on overcoming stress, getting quality sleep and simple meditation techniques.
The recipes are mouthwatering, to say the least, as well as being good for you.
They range from tasty breakfasts like oat and hazelnut porridge and smoothies, to scrumptious bruschetta toppings, soups (spicy red lentil soup sounds amazing), salads, pastas, plant-based dishes and sides, and even desserts, sides, snacks and dips.
Professor Fontana has taken the Mediterranean diet as the basis for his modern healthy longevity diet - "although with some modifications".
"If we were to eat the same amount of olive oil, bread and pasta as my grandparents, for example, we'd undoubtedly gain unhealthy amounts of weight," he writes.
When it comes to physical activity, the professor says you should do some strength training exercises no matter how old or fit you are.
He guides you to aerobic exercise and strength training, with handy pictures and descriptions to show you the right way to do them.
Then comes the looking after your wellbeing section, with advice on rest - ensuring your brain gets good quality downtime and that you are sleeping enough - as well as mindfulness and happiness.
While all this seems a lot to take in, Professor Fontana suggests we take one step at a time.
"Changing what you eat, adding exercise to our life, becoming more mindful, seeking out ways to make ourselves happier... it might even seem like such a huge investment that's it's enough to scare you off," he writes.
"... but making small, incremental contributions towards your ongoing health will lead to an almost immediate improvement to your wellbeing."
Professor Fontana was recently invited to join the University of Sydney as the Leonard Ullmann Chair of Translational Metabolic Health and director of the Healthy Longevity Research and Clinical Program at the Charles Perkins Centre.
Manual of Healthy Longevity & Wellbeing, by Liugi Fontana (Hardie Grant Books, RRP $36.99).
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