Healthy Deviant

What kind of society makes being healthy and happy so difficult that only a single-digit percentage of the population can hope to pull it off? The answer: A sick society. And within a sick society—one where illness, anxiety, and depression are the prevailing norms—what does it mean to be one of the few people to beat those unhealthy odds? It means bucking a lot of your society’s norms and rejecting a lot of its conventional health prescriptions. It also means acknowledging a disturbing truth: If you aren’t breaking the rules, you’re probably breaking yourself. That’s the simple, provocative philosophy behind The Healthy Deviant, one seasoned health journalist’s quest to reframe healthy choices as a positive form of social rebellion. Combining hand-drawn infographics and statistics with insights from sociology, psychology, evolutionary biology, functional medicine, and the school of hard knocks, this category-defying book rejects the idea that diet and exercise alone can save us—or are even the best places to start. Part manifesto, part whispered wake-up call, The Healthy Deviant is a modern-day survival guide for being a healthy person in an unhealthy world. Starting now.