The Jane Austen Diet

Austen's Secrets to Food, Health, and Incandescent Happiness

By: Jane Austen, Bryan Kozlowski

Narrated by: Steve Marvel

What can Jane Austen teach us about health? Prepare to have your bonnet blown....

From the food secrets of Pride and Prejudice to the fitness strategies of Sense and Sensibility, there's a modern health code hidden in the world's most popular romances.

Join Bryan Kozlowski as he unlocks this "health and happiness" manifesto straight from Jane Austen's pen, revealing why her prescriptions for achieving total body "bloom" still matter in the 21st century. Whether that's learning how to eat like Lizzie Bennet, exercise like Emma Woodhouse, or think like Elinor Dashwood, explore how Austen's timeless body beliefs are more relevant, refreshing, and scientifically sensible now than ever before. After all, it's still a truth universally acknowledged - Jane Austen's heroines don't get fat.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Bryan Kozlowski and Jane Austen (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Surprisingly scientific!

As an Austen fan and fitness fanatic, I picked up this book with skepticism. Happily, the author did his research and presented what is now known to be fact regarding grass fed beef, intermittent fasting, the goodness of fat, and a mind-body connection in an entertaining way. To be sure… Jane was ahead of her time in all regards!

Gimmicky But Surprisingly Wise

I found the relentless quotation of lines from Austen's novels and letters, and the liberal peppering of Austen puns, cringey. I thought I was also going to cringe at the health advice. On the contrary; I could agree with almost all the author's advice about human well-being.

I found this interesting.

This book was a bit enlightening. I had never seen the hints about “proper” eating habits until they were pointed out to me. The next time I reread Jane Austin’s books I will do so with this book in mind.

Intelligent, sound advice, in modern terminology

Take 20 ounces of water, 9 tablespoons of sugar, place in a plastic bottle. Pay $2 and enjoy being sick, overweight, and vitamin deficient. This horrible stuff requires 1/3 more sugar than Jane Austin would have eaten in a day, and we pay the price for it. Even poor people drink it. That would be our modern soda, or bottle of cola. That 9 tablespoons of sugar, in a single drink , contains 1/3 more sugar reccomended by health advice by governments and experts for daily use today. Then we delight in calling good, upstanding butter fat, and refuse it a place on our thick slabs of sugar laden "bread". I'm certain Jane Austen would have called it cake. Even current laws in Europe define bread as wheat flour, yeast, water and salt. Adding fat and sugar requires defining such edibles as confections.

Our modern idea of a healthy diet is described by the books of Jane Austen as health destroying, and, rightly so. Having to subsist upon a diet of bread was for the poor, and even the poor would have made free use of available fat and meat. The author clearly explains our modern scientific efforts confirm what Jane Austen knew! A vegetarian diet is not just bulky and deficient in calories, when we eat raw veggies, we are actually paying a fortune for what amounts to Styrofoam for our bodies. It makes me think of air-popped corn, which we eat without butter and salt for "good health". Modern studies prove that adding fat and cooking your veg makes the vitamins available to our bodies. We're familiar with fat soluble vitamins, A and E, which we can't get from the carrots and mushrooms unless we cook them and add a tasty sauce. Jane Austen sure wasn't going to waste money by serving a salad of raw lettuce and carrots. she would have boiled them well, and dressed it with meat drippings, butter, cream, or a sauce of all three.

I also like the author's assertion that we need to be more active, but in a common, effective, normal way. Stop driving across the parking lot to get to the store. Make it a habit to bounce out of bed into your shoes and hit the door to start the day out in the morning light. Seven miles walked daily do not account for the activities required for each day- walking to the dining room. Walking from the parlor to the washroom. Pacing about the room, going back upstairs to get your shawl, none of it counted as unneeded, but it did not figure in one's daily activities! If it wasn't considered activities then, why do we think it counts now?

This book has really made me think about how lazy I really am. How spoiled. Food is so available, I can take a box from my freezer and stick it in the microwave, and then gorge on a day's supply of energy in a portion which wouldn't satisfy a 10 year old, and I can easily eat an entire cake alone, never able to fill the void caused by loneliness. Jane Austen writes frequently of dinners, all taken early in the day, and always a public and therefore, social event. This author points out how unusual snacking was! Low blood sugar levels are not a malady to be avoided, but, really, it's normal! And when you eat your breakfast matters. Two hours after rising is good, because you can easily fast twelve hours overnight. Eating your main, and largest meal after noon, but before early evening is smart, because we have enough time to use up our energy, possibly by walking! And then, a light supper, a couple hours before bed. Modern research tells us to not go to bed on a very full stomach, but not hungry, either. Huh. What else can I learn?

Definitely get this book if you are fed up with diets. Or, if you just want to know what and how to eat to make the best use of your time and resources. I never would have thought to think about how people in the past thought about food, but this author does very well to show us how very different our habits really are.

Very Amusing

I really loved the idea of this book. At times it doesn't seem to flow well in terms of organization or sequence. I also thought the narration lacked color. All in all, however, it was a fun and light hearted take on health and nutrition that any Jane Austen fan would enjoy.

Enjoyable surprise

I heard about this book on YouTube, and I thought it sounded interesting. What a great surprise it was for me, and what a practical compilation of information! The information corresponds to a lot of things I learned in other areas, but it is using Jane Austen's works to show that this information has been around and known for a very long time. The author's writing voice is self deprecating and humorous, but I felt that he truly takes the topic of health seriously. It was a pleasure to listen to....and implement.

Fabulous!!!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young woman in search of a husband must be on a strict diet. Right? Well, hardly. That is, not according to Jane Austen. This absolutely brilliant book marries the best of modern health research with the ideas of Jane's own health philosophies from the Regency period. A match made in heaven, no doubt. Whether you are fascinated with the Regency era, or just want to know a little more how you can bring the ease and simplicity of Jane Austen's lifestyle into your own fast-paced life, this book will grab your attention from the very start and keep you a friend till the end.

Sensible

A refreshing look at health and wellness from Jane Austin’s perspective that resonates today - two centuries later. Very entertaining!

Witty and lively. Just like Jane

Loved it. Especially loved the peeks at Jane's life as related to health and her insights she relays in her books.

Funny and insightful...

I think this might be the last health/diet book one would ever need! It’s funny witty and well written...it will have every austenite nodding along in agreement.