Drop Dead HealthyOne Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection

Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs’s three books in which he subjects himself to various conceptual rigors are shticky, yes, but they’re also united by a genuine “what-if?” quality. After reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica from beginning to end for The Know-It-All in 2004 and doing exactly what it says on the package for 2008′s The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs decided to tone up his body, mind, palate and spirit for Drop Dead Healthy. “It’s an intimidatingly long list — 53 pages long,” he writes (and says — Jacobs reads his own audiobook, pleasantly) of the tasks he sets himself for two years. And that’s not counting the many texts Jacobs reads to apprise himself of the many, many ways and opinions there are about getting and staying healthy.

Early on, Drop Dead Healthy comes off as gimmicky. But as Jacobs burrows further into his task, the jokey tone falls away, even as his methods get fairly silly. He steps on a glass splinter while exercising inCentral Park with followers of the “Paleo movement”: “The idea is simple. Our bodies evolved for millions of years to eat and exercise a certain way…For total health, the proponents argue, we need to go back to the old ways — exercising in nature and eating like cavemen.” (An old woman asks what they’re doing: “Oh, I thought you were robbing someone.”) He slathers on a shot glass’s worth of sunscreen: “I had enough sunscreen to coat my body four times.” (“I think I got it in my mouth,” his wife complains after trying the same thing.)

And he fixes his “low-hanging fruit” — a shortage of testosterone — with supplements, only to find his anger flaring up more easily as a result: “So maybe I should be taking estrogen supplements instead. In fact, I recently read a study that women’s language skills are at a peak when they are ovulating and the estrogen levels are highest.” Jacobs does indeed get healthier — he charts his progress month by month — but once a wonk, always a wonk.