Not a Life Coach: Are You Ready to Change Your Life? From the Sunday Times No.1 Bestselling Author

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All in all an incredibly bland listen from a stereotypical personal trainer, providing absolutely no original thoughts or highlights. I’m sure I will dip in and out of it in the future for a bit of inspiration, as I do love James’s “why not? All I saw were people saying that he was talking about social media and just packing a bag and travelling.

Every reference book he cites would be far better to read than this book (I haven't read them all but I have read a good proportion). Giving it a very generous 2/5 stars here when really it only deserves a one, subjectively speaking of course, objectively I would say this book is good for those who aren't self-aware enough to understand themselves and their own values. Personal trainer James Smith’s new book, Not a Diet Book, offers frank advice on getting in shape and busts some major diet myths. I also don't agree with the author asking on Facebook to give him good reviews because someone has given him a one star review! I purchased this title based on Jame’s Instagram content, which was mostly good humoured, punchy advice about wieght loss and approaches to life, these 1-4 min videos are entertaining yet informative, I have now learned through 6.With hard-hitting home truths and a helping of tough love, be prepared to reset your outlook, redefine your goals and truly consider: What does success truly mean to you? Someone who's doing exceptionally well in his career saying you don't need to be a millionaire to be happy and clearly not had to worry about paying the bills each month to survive we can't all drop everything and run off to new zealand! Yet at the same time, Smith focuses a lot of providing stories about himself and relates that to how it can help you, which is neither good nor bad, but I believe it would have been better for him to more frequently have the reader in mind instead of himself. This book is full of contradictions, one minute he’s saying he believes people should leave their careers if they don’t align with their utopian vision of their future, the next he’s idolising people working in checkouts of supermarkets, admiring the nobility of it. I agree with him on most basic fitness related issues such as obesity and how individuals should take ownership of their health and their life.

Instead you are getting a crass account of the life of someone living in dreamland on the other side of the world, who has cashed in on the vanity trend of Instagram and travelling. If you are looking for an easily digestible review of self improvement, and enjoy hearing personal stories, this might be the book for you! For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. It reads more conversationally than I personally like from a non fiction book but I can see how this would be helpful for people who don’t normally read non fiction.Let me start by saying I've followed JS for years, love his fitness content, loved his first book and love his general approach to health and fitness advice. The book is a cheese fest of 'perfect world' advice about always do what you want to do, live how you want to live, and reeks of a young man's thoughts on the world who has no children, no commitments and has made it good relatively quickly so has never lived in the real world. It felt a bit self-centered a lot of the time, but I understand his point, just not something that I found particularly useful. Since cutting it out, I've been a little better and also tells you how even though things may be against you now, the "future you" will have your back because it would know how to deal with it so there are some great bits of information to take from reading this.

Since reading that, it has made an impact on me and I've even realised what was feeding my negative thoughts. From his Facebook Lives with Brian the bird in Bondi to a brief stint as a JSA member during the first Bali competition where I learned all I need to know to maintain and improve my fitness level. He doesn't blow smoke up your arse and tell you what you want to hear and he doesn't feed you bullshit.The book is part self development, part stories about James’s own development and part him adding definitions to words or phrases.