I applaud Joe Wicks for how he's inspired thousands of people to get healthy and fit, cook, and take better care of themselves and their bodies. I also admire how anti-diet he is and how he encourages people to switch their focus to being strong and healthy rather than what they look like.
Having said that, this book (and his two others, which I borrowed from the library and feel the same way about so won't log them separately) just didn't do it for me. That's probably because I'm not his target audience! Which is fair enough. But I am a healthy foodie and very interested in trying new things, so when I saw his books mentioned quite a lot by people I follow on Instagram, I thought they were worth checking out.
Unfortunately, for someone very well acquainted with healthy eating and nutrition, there was nothing new here. Also, as someone who doesn't eat meat I couldn't make 90% (possibly more) of the recipes. The lack of vegetarian recipes is really disappointing - there's maybe two or three, tops, in each book. Joe in fairness addresses this and explains he is a committed meat-eater and therefore doesn't really do vegetarian dishes...and I get that protein is what it's all about on his plan, but it is possible to get protein from eggs, tofu, lentils, soy beans, etc. You just have to be a bit more imaginative. I trained for and ran a marathon on a vegetarian diet! I did, however, enjoy Joe's method of making scrambled eggs (just skipped the salmon he suggests serving with).
The exercises included in the books are interesting but as I read more closely I realised it was pretty much a different version of the 30 Day Shred...so I think I'll stick to my much-loved 7 year old DVD for the high impact workouts!
I hope my thoughts don't come across as overly harsh. Clearly Joe is doing something right - his popularity speaks for itself, and his method is obviously working for lots of people. Good on him! But it didn't speak to me, so I'll stick with what I know :)