You may know A.J. Jacobs as the author of three New York Times bestsellers. These include The Know-It-All, a memoir of his experience reading the entire encyclopedia cover-to-cover, The Year of Living Biblically, where he aims to follow the Bible as literally as possible, or My Life as an Experiment, published in hardcover as The Guinea Pig Diaries, where he takes on various experiments, including outsourcing every task in his life to India, following George Washington’s rules of life, practicing radical honesty, and even doing everything his wife says.

My interest was piqued when I learned that Jacobs had written a book on a two-year quest to become the healthiest human being in the world. And although his ideas of the methods to attain this ideal may be a bit different from yours or mine, I thought Performance Menu readers would resonate with Jacobs’ experiential approach, thoughtfulness and willingness to approach theories at odds with one another with an open mind.

Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection comes out on April 10. After reading an advanced copy, I spoke with Jacobs by phone.

The first thing I asked him was what he found more contradictory, the tenets of the Bible or modern-day health advice. He said that it was close, but when pressed, said that health advice is probably even more contradictory than the Old Testament. “They are both very confusing, and I feel like I need some sort of fitness rabbi to help me figure out what’s going on, with all the conflicting advice, but luckily I think I found some fitness gurus…” to offer guidance along the way.

In the book, Jacobs explores caloric restriction (and portion control), cuts back on sugar and eats a wide variety of superfoods. He works out with a personal trainer in a gym, builds a treadmill desk and explores a dizzying array of exercise options, including everything from laughter yoga and IntenSati to Crossfit and HIIT. He even took a pole dancing class, and Strollercise was mentioned in passing as well. He digitally ages his face and hangs up the photograph as reminder from his older self to take care of his present self.

Although Jacobs chooses more mainstream avenues than those we might find most effective in his book, some aspects do resonate. “I definitely tried to dive into the Paleo lifestyle, because I do think there’s something to it,” he said, adding that the premise that our bodies were built for millions of years to live in one way and we’re living in a different way is a concept that makes sense to him. (Jacobs’ favorite Paleo-themed websites include Conditioning Research, Mark’s Daily Apple and Science-Based Medicine.) And he did describe the time experimenting with MovNat, taking an outdoor workshop with Erwan La Corre himself. “I love him because he’s in amazing shape, and he had us in Central Park, we did a workout; took of our shoes and our shirts, and it was cold, it was like April I think, and we were crawling around on the ground, crawling over logs, carrying logs, climbing trees….” Jacobs also remembers the requisite argument over food choices during this session. “There was a big debate among the, I was with 5 or 6 other cavemen, and there was a big debate about whether it was okay to cook meat, because one of the cavemen was very orthodox and thought it should be raw meat ,” he recalls.

Although eating raw meat was not one of Jacobs’ experiments, he did manage t o engage in a long-running debate which would likely echo in those circles, and that’s about triathlons.

“You are putting a huge stress on your body, but at the same time, it’s an incredible motivator, because if you have a goal you’re going to be motivated to work out, so I decided my solution was to go right in the middle and do sort of a mini triathlon, so I had the motivation, but wasn’t straining my body too much,” Jacobs explains. As for whether it’s health or not, he doesn’t think one can generalize. “I think if the person is in great shape, then doing a triathlon is good, but if you’re at all out of shape. then it could be dangerous.”

(Jacobs sums this debate up best in the book: “On the ferry back, Tony and I tied to figure out whether the triathlon was, on balance, healthy or unhealthy. There were many unhealthy things about it. First of all, there was the postrace pancake breakfast, at which everyone (including me) shoved his or her face with simple carbs. There was also the lack of sleep, the noise, the three mouthfuls of microbe-filled New York Staten Island beach water that I swallowed during the swim, the unknown toxins from the Magic Marker with which our number was scrawled onto our hands and legs. On the other hand, it had its healthy parts. It spurred me to exercise every day. And as for the pancakes, at least one of my fellow triathletes offered me sugar-free syrup, which is marginally better than Aunt Jemima’s. It allowed me to socially connect with Tony, and for a few weeks there, I had a purpose, however absurd.”)

Many aspects of Drop Dead Healthy delve into areas one may not think of when working on improving their health. “What I envisioned was a full-body makeover, so I wanted to do everything from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet,” Jacobs explained. “I figured I needed to cover diet and exercise, and that takes up a huge chunk of the book, but there’s also these other lesser, other parts of the body that we just don’t think about as much but that are parts of health, so I thought I should probably do a chapter on hearing and on the feet and on the butt, which I found fascinating b/c it’s something you don’t see as much. There are a million books about diet and exercise but not as many about these other areas of fitness.”

This head-to-toe assessment has Jacobs purifying his air as well as his water, practicing finger fitness with Greg Irwin, exploring ways to combat noise pollution and working on improving his vision. He battles through varying views on hygiene, tests out ways to improve his libido, tries acupuncture and cursing as ways to relieve pain, works on improving his sleep as well as his sense of smell, like at least a handful of you, experimented with Nature’s Platform so he could squat on the toilet.

AJ Jacobs spent some time exploring neurofeedback and neurobics. Perhaps more accessible to readers who don’t have the time or money to hang out in brain research labs, he experimented with an iPhone app called the Brain Challenge, but deleted it. (“I don’t need to be trash-talked by a punch of pixels,” he explained in the book.) His current favorite brain exercise website is Brain Metrix.

My biggest criticism of the book is that Jacobs didn’t seem to go deeply enough into many concepts to see their outcome over time. “I think health is such a huge issue, you can never cover everything, but I feel like I addressed some of the most important stuff and changed my life in a significant way,” he said. He continues to run, work out, and use a treadmill desk. He also eats very little grain.

Jacobs tested out a wide variety of equipment during his two years of experimentation. “To me, the ones that I use the most are just the simple ones,” he said. These include a heart rate monitor and a pedometer. He also purchased an UnderArmour mouthpiece (called ArmourBite), which is said to reduce cortisol and maximize air intake during a workout, thus improving performance. “It juts the jaw forward and down a bit, which relaxes the face and also makes breathing easier, and they’ve done some studies that indicate that actually has some value,” Jacobs said, although he admits he no longer uses the mouthpiece. “What I do [instead] is I intentionally jut my jaw forward while I’m working out or running and that seems to be just as effective.” So in that case, you don’t even need the equipment.

Drop Dead Healthy may not make you change your mind on anything, but reading about Jacobs’ foray into the wilderness of contradictory health advice will not only provide entertainment, but may very well have you spending more time reflecting on your own choices.