Health Habits: Diabetes: A Patient’s Guide To Changing Behaviors & Mindset For Disease Management, by Justin Kompf

One of the troublesome aspects of this book is the way that the hype does not really match with the book that is provided. The book seems to present its author, a young doctor, as being some sort of health expert, when the book provides pretty standard advice. I cannot really blame the author for all of this. Diabetes is a pretty scary disease but like many matters of health, the principles for living well are pretty basic and fundamental. Living well, at least in the general sense, is more about doing what one knows one should do rather than learning something new, and that is certainly the case here. It is perhaps regrettable that there is little new here and that (at least for this reader) much of the advice provided seems particularly inopportune for many readers, and that certainly hinders the appreciation that I had for this book. In reading this book, I kept on wondering what more the book had to offer, and eventually it became obvious that the author did not have much to offer, and much of what he did say seemed to apply mostly to a fairly affluent audience that would be able to travel to one’s second house in order to adopt better living habits than in one’s normal home, for example, which is simply not realistic for some people. It is strange that the author expects his readers to be fairly well-off and able to buy whatever they would need in order to live better. It does make it easier to change one’s behavior and mindset if one does not have to worry about financial limitations, it must be admitted.

Among the more particular difficulties I have with this book personally, is the way that the book emphasizes certain exercises that would be particularly difficult for people with diabetes as well as other aggravating conditions. The author seems to think that people should run and go to the gym as their main sources of weight management in terms of increasing exercise, and does not tend to have a lot of information about how people can seek to exercise more if they have existing mobility issues. To be sure, many people who have been struggling with diabetes for many years would likely have issues that would prevent them from being able to take up some of the options discussed here–many of them in fact–which leads me to think that the author is aiming this book at a very narrow audience, namely those people who have just been diagnosed with diabetes but who are well-off enough and in perhaps good enough general health with no complicating factors so that there are no material difficulties to following the basic and straightforward and even somewhat obvious ideas that the author has in mind. The author is aiming this book at people who can buy whatever food, equipment, memberships, and the like they need and who simply need to change their mindset to live in healthier ways. Unfortunately, he has very little if anything to offer for those whose disease is complicated by other health concerns as well as by limitations beyond their mindset, which is lamentable.

In terms of its contents, this book is about 150 pages in length. It begins with a short preface and an introduction that says, rather obviously, with the reader. The main body of the book then consists of six chapters that are full of charts and sheets that are meant to help the reader figure out a plan and execute a plan to improve their health. The author begins by urging the reader to only change what they want to, seeking to provide a low pressure solution, we might imagine, to the problem of living better (1). After this the author urges readers to remove the word can’t from their vocabulary (2), which again suggests that he is aiming this book mainly at those who can do what they want without a great deal of limitations and does not want to admit that there may be limits to what other people can do. The third chapter, which is also pretty obvious, discusses the importance of focusing on becoming healthy (3). After that the author discusses the need for people to set the right goals–goals which are specific, measurable, and the like (4). This is followed by a discussion of how the reader can create a change menu (5). The last chapter of the book then discusses how the reader can execute their plan (6). The book then ends with an afterword, information about the author, and references.