Your Body Beautiful: Clockstopping Secrets to Staying Healthy, Strong, and Sexy in Your 30s, 40s, and Beyond

by Jennifer Ashton M.D., Christine Rojo

Overview

The popular medical correspondent challenges women to reinvent their health and wellness routines, and make midlife their most vibrant years yet.

Demi Moore, Cameron Diaz, Courteney Cox, and the list goes on. The world is realizing that a woman's thirties and forties can be the most beautiful, energetic, and passionate time of her life. Today's women can maximize this stage- and lay the foundation for optimal health and well-being.

Dr. Jennifer Ashton embodies this philosophy and wants to help you enjoy these often overlooked years and feel and look your absolute best. Dr. Ashton's passion, warmth, and wit have made her America's fastest-rising women's health expert and medical correspondent. Here, she outlines a powerful approach to health care that can help you unleash new energy, strength, and sexiness. Integrating the latest scientific research, she has created a five-part plan, including:
• A simple eating plan, tailored to keep energy high and your weight healthy for your changing metabolism
• A high-powered fitness program to help you work out harder in less time
• Stress-reduction techniques and simple strategies for relaxation
• An effective, step-by-step sleep plan
• Prevention advice for reducing your risk of heart disease, cancer, and other potentially fatal ailments

Authoritative yet written in a friendly, girlfriend-to-girlfriend voice, Your Body Beautiful and its transformative strategies will help you look and feel younger, stronger, and more vibrant than ever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583334584
Publisher:	Avery
Publication date:	01/05/2012
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jennifer Ashton, M.D., OBGYN is a popular medical correspondent and fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She is the author of The Body Scoop for Girls, Dr. Ashton maintains her own private clinical practice, Hygeia Gynecology, in Englewood, New Jersey.

Christine Larson Rojo is a nationally published journalist whose work has appeared frequently in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Glamour, More, Redbook, Working Mother, and many other publications. Rojo is coauthor of four books, including The Body Scoop for Girls.

Table of Contents

Section 1 The Body Beautiful Prescriptions: Five-Week Plans To Transform Your Life

The Make-or-Break Years: Why Your Thirties and Forties Determine Your Lifetime Health 3

1 The Five-Day/Two-Day Plan 17

2 Sleek, Strong, Sexy: The Five-Week Workout Prescription 43

3 Clockstopping Secrets for Skin, Hair, and Beauty 65

4 Happiness Habits: Beating Stress, Depression, and Anxiety 102

5 The Body Beautiful Prescription for Better Sex 121

Section 2 Clockstopping Secrets For Lifetime Wellness

Stopping the Clock on Disease 139

6 Sexual Health Makeover: Contraception and STIs in Your Thirties and Forties 141

7 Great Expectations: Pregnancy for Grown-ups 156

8 Hormones: The Truth About Hormone Imbalances, Menopause, and Hormone Replacement Therapy 175

9 Beauty and the Breast 190

10 The Heart of the Matter: Keeping Your Ticker Ticking 212

11 Boning Up: Preventing Osteoporosis 237

12 On the Attack: Arming Yourself Against Cancer 251

Epilogue: Your Body Beautiful for Life 279

Acknowledgments 281

Notes 284

Index 290

What People are Saying About This

Dara Torres

"Dr. Ashton has done a terrific job of creating a 5-week program that any woman or mom can follow. The insight into our lives and the tools she provides will make an immediate and long-lasting change in anyone's life! I highly recommend it."

From the Publisher

"Dr. Jennifer Ashton has provided a one-stop shop for all the tools we need to live the vibrant, healthy and sexy life we all want and deserve." -Dr. Laura Berman, sex and relationship therapist, host of In the  Bedroom

Kathy Smith

"If you want to look and feel your best after 40 (and who doesn't?), Your Body Beautiful is for you. Dr. Ashton offers groundbreaking tools that help you actually control the way you age. Follow these techniques, and this can be the healthiest, sexiest, most energized and beautiful stage of your entire life. This is the book all your girlfriends will be raving about-and for good reason."

Editorial Reviews

Ashton, a New Jerseygynecologist, CBS News medical correspondent, and author (The Body Scoop for Girls), and journalist Rojo present a five-part plan to bolster women’s health now and in the future. Ashton, 42, argues that the 30s and 40s are foundational, make-or-break decades for lifetime health and “not a time to coast, health-wise.” In the first section, the authors address diet, exercise (incorporating high intensity interval training and weight training), beauty and sleep, stress reduction, and better sex. Section two focuses in separate chapters on hormones, breast health, heart health, osteoporosis, cancer prevention, and other diseases. Ashton, who describes herself as “old-school medicine with a new age approach” divides each topic into manageable five-week stretches designed to be repeated until new habits become second nature (i.e., for diet, cut bad carbs in week one, don’t drink your calories in week two, add a mid-morning protein snack in week three, add colors to your plate in week four, and add an afternoon protein booster, week five). She even includes a user-friendly five-week plan for revving up one’s sex life (week one, schedule in sex on the calendar). Combination pep talk and warning, Ashton’s message that women can and should take control of their own future health in these critical decades is backed up by current research and up-to-the-minute disease-prevention info. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

OB-GYN Ashton's (The Body Scoop for Girls) premise is that the good health habits women develop during their thirties and forties will keep them strong and vibrant in later life. It is also easier for people to change their habits, she notes, while they are still relatively young. Regular exercise and a healthy diet, as well as eliminating overly processed foods from their diets, will enable women's bodies to age more gracefully. Ashton's workout focuses on high-intensity interval training and owes a lot to Ayurveda practices. No gimmicks here, just good advice.

Library Journal

Health-and-beauty tips for middle-age women. On a mission to educate women ages 30 through 50 about making manageable changes to daily routines to ensure they carry their vibrancy into their 50s and beyond, OB-GYN and CBS News medical correspondent Ashton (The Body Scoop for Girls, 2009) presents a self-improvement plan involving "clock-stopping" tweaks in diet, exercise, skincare, stress management and sex life. As evidence, the author offers her own success at juggling two kids, two dogs, a happy relationship with her physician husband, a busy practice and daily TV appearances, alongside the observation that "the vast majority" of those included in Forbes' 2010 list of the world's 50 most powerful women "were in their forties or older." Encouraging readers to attempt the various behavioral modifications she suggests in five-week increments--"you can do anything for five weeks"--Ashton employs simple math and everyday contextualizing in doling out her advice. For example, in her "Five-Day/Two-Day" diet, she advises, "cut bad carbs and eat lots of veggies, fruits, and proteins" on weekdays, and "then take it easier on the weekends." A beauty tip for healthier skin includes the exuberant recommendation to apply at least 20 minutes before going outside "as much sunscreen as would fit in a shot glass," while a subheading for a section on breast reduction is glibly titled, "Honey, I Shrunk the Tits." The author's positive attitude, generally practical health recommendations and sassy style combine to lend her professional advice wide appeal. Whether Ashton's "clock-stopping" ambitions ultimately succeed, however, only time will tell. Holistic health advice for women of a certain age.

Kirkus Reviews

Dr. Ashton helps women reclaim the most vibrant years of their lives by redefining women’s health in the modern age.” — Dr. Mehmet Oz, host of The Dr. Oz Show

“Dr. Ashton helps women reclaim the most vibrant years of their lives by redefining women’s health in the modern age.”
—Dr. Mehmet Oz, host of The Dr. Oz Show

"Dr. Jennifer Ashton has provided a one-stop shop for all the tools we need to live the vibrant, healthy and sexy life we all want and deserve."
—Dr. Laura Berman, sex and relationship therapist, host of In the Bedroom

"If you want to look and feel your best after 40 (and who doesn't?), Your Body Beautiful is for you. Dr. Ashton offers groundbreaking tools that help you actually control the way you age. Follow these techniques, and this can be the healthiest, sexiest, most energized and beautiful stage of your entire life. This is the book all your girlfriends will be raving about—and for good reason."

—Kathy Smith, author of Kathy Smith's Lift Weights to Lose Weight

"Dr. Ashton has done a terrific job of creating a 5-week program that any woman or mom can follow. The insight into our lives and the tools she provides will make an immediate and long-lasting change in anyone's life! I highly recommend it."
—Dara Torres, 12-time Olympic medalist, motivational speaker, and mom

"Combination pep talk and warning, Ashton’s message that women can and should take control of their own future health in these critical decades is backed up by current research and up-to-the-minute disease-prevention info.”
—Publishers Weekly

"The author’s positive attitude, generally practical health recommendations and sassy style combine to lend her professional advice wide appeal."
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher