Marilu Henner's Total Health Makeover (HarperChoice) Book

Marilu Henner, known as Elaine on TV's Taxi and star of the musical Chicago, was once very overweight, with sallow skin and a weak immune system. She waffled between starving herself and gorging herself. Since cutting dairy products and caffeine out of her diet, adopting a food-combining plan, and following a program that's code-named "BEST"--for balance, energy, stamina, and toxin-free--she's shaved nearly 100 points off her cholesterol count and 50 pounds off her frame, and she looks younger at 45 than she did at 19. If you don't count her pregnancies, her weight hasn't changed by more than 5 pounds over the past 11 years. Henner's 10-step health program outlined here is strict, but she offers tips for getting your feet wet. Start by cutting out caffeine one day a week, she advises, instead of going cold turkey, and make just one meal each day dairy-free, so the change doesn't come as a shock to your system. Her "anti-milk manifesto," which reveals exactly how milk is produced and how it negatively affects the human body, is quite a stunner. Her plan offers sound advice for becoming more mindful of how you treat your body, how and what you eat and why, and how you react to stress, along with how to make improvements in all these areas. Henner's especially trustworthy because she's been through the wringer: "After nineteen years of experimenting, a thousand mistakes, over 400 books (read, not written), at least 200 bad diets over my lifetime, five doctors, two physical therapists, three nutritionists, two personal trainers, one therapist, and a partridge in a pear tree, I have found what I believe are the best answers this planet has to offer about living a healthy, happy, and balanced life." And she holds nothing back as she passes on her hard-earned knowledge about nutrition, digestion, exercise, preventive medicine, detoxification, and stress reduction.Read More