Book: The 4 Season Solution
Author: Dallas Hartwig
Pages: 218
Rating: 6/10
Genre: nonfiction self help
Who should read this book: fans of the Whole30 diet, people just venturing into the self help genre
Thank you very much to Simon and Schuster Canada for sending me this copy in exchange for an honest review. This one release March 10th.
Dallas Hartwig is the coauthor of the Whole30 and It Starts with Food. The 4 Season Solution centres around the idea that we need to be changing our eating, movement and socializing habits based on the seasons. In the summer, when the days are longer and there is more sunlight, we should be more active, more social and be eating mostly a high carb diet based on whole seasonal foods. In the winter we should be less active and less social because we have less daylight. We should be going to bed earlier to keep our circadian rhythm and eating more protein and starchy vegetables.
The blurb on the cover says, “The groundbreaking new plan for feeling better, living well, and powering down our always on lives”. I didn’t really find anything about this book groundbreaking, but I have read a lot of self help books and spiritual books so I think this one would be better for beginners to the genre.
Writing 2/3: Dallas Hartwig writes very clearly but he tends to repeat himself a bit. This one was a little wordy for me. However, his ideas and opinions come across very well.
Science 1/2: There were a lot of things expressed in this book, particularly about veganism that were not substantiated with any science or research. But everything discussed about Whole30 had lots of science to back it up. I find this often as a vegan, people don’t want to show evidence that you can survive on a vegan diet too. I think the Whole30 diet sounds sort of healthy but that doesn’t mean a vegan diet isn’t healthy. If you’re interested in learning about a vegan diet, backed by research and written by medical doctors with years of training I suggest The China Study by T. Colin Campbell PhD, or How Not to Die by Michael Greger MD.
Format 2/2: The way this book was laid out it was really easy to follow Hartwig’s thought process and plan for feeling better.
Feel 1/3: Overall I found this book wordy and lacking in research. The ideas are sound but they aren’t groundbreaking. I’ve read about all of them before. And I was particularly annoyed with the way veganism was portrayed as a poor long term diet option. I’ve been vegan almost 7 years and I’m not dead yet.
If you have tried the Whole30 diet and loved it you’ll probably like this book. And if you are new to the self help genre this one would be good. But I can recommend a lot of other better ones to choose from.
Angie’s Top Ten Self Help Books
- How Not to Die by Michael Greger
- The China Study by T. Colin Campbell
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
- The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Anything written by Brene Brown
- The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigall
- The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
- Everything is Fucked by Mark Manson
- You are a Badass by Jen Sincero
Happy Reading!
Read With Angie 