Books to Help You Stick To Your New Year’s Resolutions

Agapi Stassinopoulos (Arianna Huffington’s sister) has written a slim book of 52 meditations (one for every week of the year) that will help you break through your own barriers and achieve a life of peace and wellbeing. As she teaches you to trust your creativity, she also places a serious emphasis on self-care, which includes taking time for yourself and meditating. *Emoji praise hands.* You’ll find yourself going back to this one all year long.

Any time I complain that I don’t have a free moment to cook myself a healthy meal, I think of Katie Wells. She’s a mom of six kids, a lifestyle blogger and the author of this awesome cookbook that features over 200 easy-to-prepare meals that aren’t microwaved mac & cheese. Even if you don’t have kids, you can still benefit from the grain and refined sugar-free recipes—trust me, her Beef and Zucchini Stir-Fry is a crowd-pleaser for appetites of all ages.

Whatever your 2017 goals are, we bet they have something to do with habits—either breaking bad ones or reinforcing good ones. In her new book Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, teaches readers that habits are the building blocks for change and only by changing those can you expect new action to stick. Her easy-going (read: non-judgmental) voice helps you understand your own habits, and then she uses herself and friends and family to test her theories, so the advice you’re getting is spot-on. With Gretchen’s help, we think you can lose those ten pounds, hit the sack earlier and finally finish that big project.

You’ll have to wait a few more days until this book is out on January 17, but people are already calling this book the next Lean In. While the glass ceiling wasn’t shattered with the election of our first woman president and we still have quite a ways to go until we achieve something that feels like equality, Sallie Krawcheck, the CEO and Co-Founder of Elle Vest, argues that all is not lost for women in the business world. In fact, she argues that women should stop attempting to compete at a man’s version of the game and play up their unique strengths in order to shine. A must-read for any #GirlBoss.

The Blender Girl is a blogging sensation whose mantra is all about boosting immunity and energy, while at the same time making delicious, nutritious, and most of all, easy food. If you’ve been looking for a way to sneak more vegetables into you and your family’s life, look no further than this book and your own blender.

Through working with her patients, neurologist Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary realized that, unless the brain is primed for weight loss, it simply will not happen. The brain is linked to food addiction and cravings, but Dr. Chaudhary’s teachings will help you reframe your brain to allow weight loss to happen. Only then, she argues, can you live a fully primed life.

Entrepreneur Tim Ferriss was looking for a way to hack the human body—yep, you read that correctly—by finding shortcuts to healthy living. His decade of research has led him to sleep only 2 hours a night and feel fully rested and spend 4 hours total in the gym each week while increasing his muscle mass by jaw-dropping proportions. Pick this up if you want to accomplish a lot this year but aren’t sure you have the time.

You would think that having a father as tuned into mind, body and spirit as Deepak Chopra is, the whole “living with intent” thing would come easy to Mallika Chopra. But no, she’s just like us—someone who, while trying to meditate can’t help but fixate on her to-do list, then feels guilty she can’t find tranquility. Her refreshingly funny memoir will not only make you feel less alone in your quest for enlightenment, but she shares the paths she took while trying to make her life more intentional, as well as the advice she received along the way.

There’s nothing better than a warm bowl of soup, but what if your soup could work for you? Accomplished chef Rebecca Katz argues that soup actually has cleansing power and can help make you feel better from within. Her easy-to-prepare delicious recipes for dishes like Chicken pho and Moroccan carrot soup will energize and detox you while tasting great.

Success is more than the six-figure salary or the corner office. As media mogul Arianna Huffington discovered when she collapsed from exhaustion, striving for money and power leads to burnout. In Thrive, she helps redefine what it means to be successful to include our well-being. After all, she argues, when was the last time you read a eulogy that noted the deceased’s long hours at the office? Once we take cherished memories and experiences into account, Huffington shows us we may be much closer to success than we originally thought.

Imagine a diet where you didn’t have to count calories, ignore whole food groups (ahem bread), eat a lot and still lose weight? It exists. Haylie Pomroy, nicknamed “the metabolism whisperer,” teaches you how to kick-start your metabolism and turn your body into a fat-burning machine. Her plan consists of rotating what you eat and when to keep your metabolism guessing. There’s also a companion cookbook!

In life, we will all stumble and fall. It’s in these moments of failure that we are tested the most—and how we get up says a lot about our character. This is the crux of Brené Brown’s latest book, in which she interviews creatives, CEOs, military brass and teachers about the ways they recover after a mistake. The lessons she gleans are insightful and will help you when you inevitably falter on one of your resolutions.

This diet plan isn’t just for pregnant women or new mothers; it’s a simple way of eating that cuts out sugar and focuses on Satisfying meals full of protein and Energizing meals with more carbs. It’s also incredibly easy-to-follow, with menu plans and shopping lists to make this fit into any lifestyle.

Gerad Kite, a former therapist, realized all the talking wasn’t helping his patients. So he turned within and found a secret, calming place within all of us that, when accessed, provides stress relief and meditative calming. Drawing on ancient Chinese philosophy, he teaches us all how to find this place within ourselves and how to get back there when times get stressful.