Health & Fitness 2023: Life Support

Forthcoming wellness titles prescribe a healthy dose of moderation.

We’d all like to feel our best, but most of us have to compromise. We can aim to age gracefully, but we can’t stave off decline entirely. We can take steps to stay trim, but for most of us, acquiring a movie star’s or pro athlete’s physique is only going to come from tremendous effort and deprivation.

This season’s health titles touch on myriad topics—aging, weight loss, addiction, problematic carbs—in a spirit of pragmatism and understanding. They include books on the science of getting older, guides to weight loss and fitness that prize realistic goals over outlandish ones, and a memoir that explores, with sometimes discomfiting nuance, the subject of substance dependence.See more