Tom’s Daily Goals by Tom Daley.
(Published August 2018).
In this book Olympic diver Tom Daley tells you how to make healthy living a habit by sharing seven habits that help him live his best life.
The habits addressed in Tom’s Daily Goals are movement, positivity & mental care, immune system, food, stress & resilience, digital detox, and sleep.
It includes yoga instructions, recipes, workouts to boost your brain, breathing exercises, and other lifestyle tips.
Tom’s advice is personal and thorough. He explains what, why, when, and how, and he tells you how it has benefited him personally.
Some facts in this book aren’t news. I’m pretty sure we all know that it’s important to get about eight hours of sleep every night and that you need to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables to get enough vitamins in your body to boost your immune system.
However, even though some things we might already know, Tom goes into detail and explains why some facts are true.
Plus, the wide variety of topics (or habits) discussed in Tom’s Daily Goals makes it a useful book for everyone. Because even if you’re quite into healthy food and you basically know all there is to know about that, you’ll probably still be able to find some new and beneficial tips when it comes to workouts, meditation, sleep, digital detoxing, and so on.
Tom included short “if you do one thing” segments and I think they are a helpful addition. If you’re anything like me and you feel easily overwhelmed by a lot of information and ‘things to do’ and you simply don’t know where to start and how to stick to something, those segments can help you get started.
There’s a variety of healthy recipes for breakfast, lunch, supper, the weekend, and dessert & drinks in the book, such as sweetcorn pancakes, Tom’s rainbow salad, baked peppers, aubergine & sweet potato cake, Tom’s dead easy banana ice cream trio, and a virgin orange mojito.
Usually, everything you’re supposed to do with the ingredients is mentioned in the instructions of a recipe. However, Tom’s recipes include lists of ingredients that already state if an ingredient needs to be sliced, halved, chopped, deseeded, and so on.
I prefer Tom’s way, because (as I mentioned above) I’m easily overwhelmed and I often don’t know where to start. So this way you can have all of your ingredients ready to go in little bowls before you go on to the rest of the instructions. I’ve also seen this in Tom’s cooking videos on YouTube and it looks very organised and handy.
The digital detox section is one that instantly motivated me to look into my use of social media. Tom asks the question “do the people you follow on social media inspire and excite you?” and urges you to be picky about whom you choose to follow. I went through both my Twitter and Instagram, unfollowed a bunch of people, and am now following only 30 and 22 accounts respectively (I followed over 100 people on both accounts before). I did this a couple of days ago and it’s honestly already such a relief and timesaver. Why endlessly scroll through social media in moments of boredom or procrastination, staring at people you don’t know and who you aren’t truly inspired by, interested in, or amused by, when you can spend that time doing things that actually matter and make you feel good?
One thing that did bother me a little was the lack of detail and sources when it came to mentions of certain researches and studies. You’ll find phrases like “recent research shows”, “there is compelling scientific evidence”, and “according to one Korean University study” everywhere in this book, but there are no sources in the footnotes or at the back. Now I know that this is a lifestyle book and not a scientific paper, but it would’ve given Tom’s statements more credibility if he had gone into more detail or stated his sources somewhere. It’s also not only about credibility (because I do trust that Tom knows what he’s talking about and isn’t making anything up), but at some points there are mentions of studies I would’ve liked to look into out of pure interest and so it would’ve been helpful if he’d pointed me into the direction of said studies.
I can’t give Tom’s Daily Goals five stars, because it doesn’t contain a lot of new information and some advice therefore isn’t very deep or groundbreaking and because of the lack of sources for the studies that are mentioned.
The wide array of healthy lifestyle topics, the personal touch, and the thorough explanations and instructions definitely do make it worth 4 out of 5 stars though.
This review can also be found on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2537438018
Written by Larissa 