Strive: 8 Steps to Find Your Awesome

Tennis star Williams debuts with an uneven guide to making “smarter” health and wellness decisions. After being diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome in 2011, Williams set about testing “philosophies and strategies both traditional and untraditional” to create sustainable nutrition, health, and wellness habits. She divided those routines into a system of eight “steps”—observe, appreciate, balance, enrich, soothe, believe, inspire, and strive—to be practiced daily. Her recommendations include observing one’s own helpful and harmful habits and social influences, as well as creating a more balanced diet by using smaller plates to help decrease portion size. Readers will be fascinated by the insights into Williams’s own routine, and her success lends credibility to advice that might otherwise feel rote (“Transforming your health and your physique by being more active may be a slow process, but it’s one that is guaranteed to work if you’re patient”). Unfortunately, some of the suggestions are tone-deaf or vague, as when Williams encourages readers to conduct an “off-the-cuff” audit of each meal to see how the “pendulum swings between good and bad,” and suggests that if readers are not “satisfied” with “where [they’re] at physically,” they’re “most likely not doing enough in terms of being active.” It’s a mixed bag. (Sept.)