Marilu Henner's Total Health Makeover: Another View

 

Actress Marilu Henner (remember "Taxi"?) has been in the health and wellness biz for quite a while now. She's published several New York Times bestselling books, and her website marilu.com hosts a fee-based interactive program ($10 per month, $90 for the year) to provide the tools, guidance and assistance to "make your life over" into one of total healthy living.

Marilu has 10 commandments for healthy living. They are:
-Watch for chemicals in the foods you eat. Eat more natural and organic foods.
-Cut back on - and try to cut out - caffeine and nicotine.
- Replace processed sugar with natural alternatives. Use natural sugars - fruit, maple syrup, raw honey, blackstrap molasses. Avoid chemical sweeteners.
-Limit - or eliminate - red meat. Select organic, vegetarian-fed, free-range poultry and ocean fish instead.
-Avoid dairy products (anything made from the milk of another animal).
-Combine your foods for efficient digestion. Eat fruits, animal proteins, and starches separately.
-Reduce the fats you eat. Fats from fish, nuts and vegetables are good for you. Avoid saturated and trans fats.
-Exercise daily. Exercise helps with weight loss and general well being. Make it fun!
-Get enough sleep. Regular sleep restores your energy by giving cells time to repair.
-Do everything with Gusto!

If you join the website you'll have access to articles, recipes, nutritional information, progress journals and charts, message boards, live chats with Marilu and online classes in everything from nutrition and exercise to beauty, fashion, style, entertaining, organization, family matters and managing holidays.

There's no doubting that Marilu Henner looks fit and fantastic at fifty-something years old, so she's definitely doing more than a few things right. Her super-positive (gusto!) approach to healthy living as a whole - not just healthy weight - is to be lauded, and her advice and encouragement to "Wear Your Life Well" (the title of her new book) and "use what you have to get what you want" asks you to look at the big picture of your life - remember that it is the only life you have, and empower yourself to make it what you want it to be. This hits at the very heart of the weight loss battle - that it's a mind game. You need to be in the right frame of mind, a healthy mind - to be inspired and motivated to get up, get out and get after your life each day - to keep a healthy body. Getting to the right frame of mind may require work and sorting out in others areas first - work, family, relationships - but once there, everything else (including weight loss) starts falling into place.

As to the specifics of her diet plan - there is nothing new here, nothing you haven't heard before either from staid institutions like the American Heart Association or more alternative advocates of vegetarianism. Marilu's dietary advice is a blend of already well-established recommendations for good nutrition, and for the most part are simply common sense. Like any diet, it's ultimately up to you to decide the limits of what you can/want to live with. We do find the food combining advice questionable, as no health/nutrition experts have produced research to prove that the practice is effective for weight loss - but if it eases digestive issues for even one person, then by all means. The peripheral lifestyle advice - beauty, entertaining, etc. - is obviously geared to women, but again, we do agree with Marilu that "total healthy living" is more than just healthy weight, so more power to her for making the savvy business decision to incorporate Oprah/Martha Stewart-style "good living" advice into her brand. Bottom line: marilu.com is an interactive ladies' magazine.