Henner, Marilu

Wear Your Life Well: Use What You Have to Get What You Want

It's not enough just to live—you have to wear your life well! Learn how in this inspiring guide from New York Times bestselling author and beloved actress Marilu Henner.

Ten years after actress Marilu started her bestselling Total Health Makeover series, she's in better shape than ever—at peak health, working with a very active online community at Marilu.com, and celebrating life with her new husband, whom she helped to cure of cancer. Now she's back with an inspiring guide to making your life work for you, whatever your age or condition.

Are you happy? Are you living the life you want, or are you living for other people? Are you guided by your own plans or by the design of others? Do you see your life as a daily grind, or are you eager to face each day and every new challenge? Do you get along well with your family, friends, relatives, and coworkers, or do you harbor anger, resentment, or guilt? Are you working toward a dream, or are you daydreaming about not working? In essence, do you Wear Your Life Well?

With the verve of a teenager and the wisdom of a sage, Marilu breaks down all the elements in our lives—our minds, our bodies, and the world around us—that can sabotage our progress, and helps us discover the best in ourselves. She pinpoints the often surprising ways we are compromising our lives and offers smart, sensible, healthy alternatives. And Marilu also includes a Booty Camp Life Blitz—a five-day jumpstart that uses the principles in the book in a very specific, directed way to get you a fresh start on the path to optimal wellness. So whether you need a major life change or simply want fresh ideas on improving your life, let Marilu be your cheerleader, muse, and guide.

The 30 Day Total Health Makeover: Everything You Need to Do to Change Your Body, Your Health, and Your Life in 30 Amazing Days

Are you ready to make a change?
Spend a month with Marilu!

"Health is not just about weight or appearance, but rather about a much bigger picture. I really believe that you can't be a healthy person unless everything is working together. Your body, your mind, your living space. Live in my world for 30 days and I promise you will feel better."

-- Marilu

Marilu Henner's Total Health Makeover

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.

When Was The Last Time You Felt Really Healthy?

Now's the time to create the healthy, balanced life you want -- and become the truly vibrant, happy person you were meant to be. Combining good humor with solid science, Marilu Henner provides essential information on every aspect of health and fitness, including:

• Detoxing your body
• Preventing or alleviating health conditions from obesity to cancer
• The secrets of stress reduction
• Real food and the organic way to fuel your body

Free yourself forever from diets and disease-causing toxins, boost your energy, lower and maintain your weight -- and change your life.

Healthy Life Kitchen

Move over, Martha Stewart: there's a new chef in the kitchen and she's on a mission to improve everyone's life from the inside out. It's Marilu Henner, bestselling author of Total Health Makeover and The 30-Day Total Health Makeover, but perhaps better remembered for playing Elaine on the popular 1970's TV show Taxi. So much more than a cookbook, Henner's hefty page-turner is like a detox program for the kitchen. She begins--in her typical, perky style--with a hard yet humorous look at the reader's kitchen and how it functions. Next she preaches the dangers of sugar (Henner calls it "kiddy cocaine"), red meat ("animal products are the number one cause of our number one killer, heart disease"), dairy products ("bovine slime"), about 200 food additives, and certain cleaning products. Nicely designed charts make the technical information easy to read; thankfully, Henner's engaging, chatty prose nicely complements the wealth of serious data presented here.

Once the kitchen is free and clear, Henner walks readers through the health food store, describing key staples, tasty items, favorite brands, and foods with kid appeal. Then she's on to the bulk of the book: the many savory recipes for entrées, appetizers, sides, salads, sauces, and desserts. Dishes like Linguine with Red Clam Sauce, Coconut Shrimp with Curried Hummus on Wonton Squares, and Killer Brownies certainly don't sound low-cal or low-anything, yet each recipe--borrowed from Henner's pool of friends, relatives, and favorite chefs--follows her Healthy Life food-combining rules (don't mix proteins with carbohydrates, eat fruit separately, etc.) and are free of dairy, red meat, and refined sugar. Especially helpful are the tasters' and contributors' comments that accompany nearly every recipe. And since Marilu has an opinion about everything (it's her book, after all), she too offers comments, suggestions, and anecdotes galore. --Liane Thomas

If you're like most people, 70 percent of what's in your kitchen right now is unhealthy and has to go. Now the good news ...

This book will show you that there are healthy and tasty alternatives to everything in your refrigerator and pantry, and the transition is easier than you think.

When it comes to food, most of us go through a constant tug–of–war between the foods we love and the foods we feel we should be eating. But what if we didn't have to give up our favourite foods? What if we could take recipes from our childhood or our favourite cookbooks and find healthier ways to enjoy them?

Marilu Henner's Healthy Life Kitchen shows you a new way, a better way, to create a "health factory" in your home. Out go the red meat, dairy, and refined sugar products, and in come the freshest fruits, vegetables, grains, soy, seafood, poultry, and seasonings imaginable–and, in a few easy steps, you've created a Healthy Life you!

After inspiring legions of readers with Marilu Henner's Total Health Makeover and The 30–Day Total Health Makeover, Marilu presents the first cookbook in her bestselling series.

Healthy Holidays: Total Health Entertaining All Year Round

Holidays can be healthy!

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is tough enough, but when special occasions roll around most people throw up their hands and dive into the Super Bowl snacks, Fourth of July hot dogs, Halloween treats, and New Year's champagne -- knowing they'll regret it later. In Healthy Holidays, actress and healthy living expert Marilu Henner offers another choice. Here Marilu shows us how easy and fun it is to prepare healthy meals for family and friends for special occasions and holidays year-round.

As in her other bestselling health books, Marilu throws out the red meat, dairy, and refined sugar and fills the kitchen with the freshest fruits, vegetables, grains, soy, seafood, poultry, and "legal" sugars. But denying ourselves is not on the agenda:

• Start the year right with delicious New Year's Day recipes, such as Asian Grilled Salmon and Sautéed Asparagus with Shallots -- and pamper your guests with a spa party.
• Enjoy a romantic Valentine's Day with Honey-Baked Chicken, Warm Wild Mushroom Salad -- and Cupid's Chocolate Cake, made with healthy sugars to keep you in the mood.
• For a delicious Fourth of July picnic, pack some of these treats: Sugar Snap Pea and Cucumber Salad, Curried Tuna Salad, and Blueberry Cobbler with a Cornmeal Crust.
• Prepare a mouthwatering feast for Thanksgiving that gives a healthy start for the holiday season -- including Roast Turkey, Henner Holiday Dressing, Pecan Sweet Potatoes, and Pilgrim Pumpkin Pie.

Along with hundreds of healthy recipes Healthy Holidays offers dozens of creative twists on our favorite celebrations:

• For exercise on Saint Patrick's Day -- learn Irish step dancing!
• Act out a juicy scene with your partner for the Academy Awards.
• Throw a grab-bag Halloween party, and laugh as your husband ends up as Little Bo Peep.
• Explore the eight traditional themes of Hanukkah as an opportunity to incorporate healthy habits that could change your life.
• Learn the three habits that will keep your Christmas healthy -- and fill out the Henner Family Christmas Survey with your family!

Healthy Holidays is your complete holiday planning resource for great celebrations the healthy way.

Healthy Kids: Help Them Eat Smart and Stay Active--for Life!

In Healthy Kids, actress Marilu Henner guides you to better health for your kids by emphasizing fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains, and avoiding sugar, white flour, red meat, chemicals, caffeine, large portions, heavily processed "dead foods," and dairy (cow's milk, she contends, contributes to colic, diarrhea, bed-wetting, allergies, ear infections, and other health problems). "Healthy food equals healthy kids," Henner writes.

Henner offers the large picture--how to adopt healthy eating habits yourself and instill them in your children--combined with helpful tips. Your challenges are different in the first years of your children's lives, she writes, when you are basically choosing their foods and modeling behavior you want them to follow, than later, when children are more independent and make more of their own food choices. Healthy Kids offers information and pointers for each stage with chapters on pregnancy, infancy, toddler, preschool, and each stage of school from elementary to college. Henner also promotes exercise, creative games, and health-oriented teaching games (which seem rather heavy-handed; for instance, having your kids put food pictures into the food pyramid). Her 100-plus "Kid-Friendly Recipes" should be a hit, though, with healthy versions of pancakes, muffins, smoothies, soups, veggies, sandwiches, pasta, fish, chicken, and, of course, desserts. --Joan Price

We all want our children to be fit and healthy, but the current invasion of fast food, sugary snacks, and oversize portions are creating an epidemic of overweight, inactive, and unhealthy kids. The powerful influences of the fast-food industry, omnipresent junk food advertising, and the vicious cycle of TV, computer games, and Internet addictions only make our children more susceptible to a sedentary lifestyle and a lifetime of bad habits and obesity. Now, health pioneer and dedicated mom Marilu Henner says it's time to say good-bye to sugarcoated cereals, artificially colored cheese puffs, oceans of sugary soft drinks, nutritionally deficient school lunches, and fastfood supermeals!

As Marilu explains, parents who want the best for their children need to feed them fresh, whole foods to grow by. In Healthy Kids she shows you how to create a healthy, balanced lifestyle for your kids and how to make the transition from dairy-, fat-, sugar-, and chemical-laden foods to the vibrant, natural, nourishing foods we were all meant to eat.

Healthy Kids offers a proven plan to help parents and kids alike learn to eat healthier and feel better. Inspiring and enjoyable to read, it features:

• More than 100 mouthwatering recipes your children will love

• Helpful, creative suggestions on getting your child into the habit of exercise

• Scores of tips on transitioning from dead food to live food

• A special For Kids Only section with fabulous food-based puzzles, games, and challenges

• Age-specific recommendations for what foods your children might like

• Timesaving shopping lists and helpful food preparation charts

• Expert advice from pediatricians, physical trainers, teachers, and expert nutritionists on all aspects of nourishing your family

As Marilu says, Healthy Food = Healthy Children. And Healthy Kids provides the essential information on creating a lifetime of nutritional eating habits for your growing children.

Marilu Henner's Body Victory: Pep Talk / Road To Victory / Winning For Life [ on 3 Audio CDs ]

3 CDs to take you completely through Marilu's 21 day program.

I Refuse to Raise a Brat

Marilu Henner, costar of the TV sitcom Taxi turned bestselling self-help author, has a strong message for doting parents: stop spoiling your children. Many of today's moms and dads confuse placating with loving, spurred by a desire to give their kids the world on a silver platter. Cowritten by Henner (mother of two boys) and her personal psychoanalyst Dr. Ruth Sharon, I Refuse to Raise a Brat explores the long-term effects of overgratifying youngsters and offers a wealth of situational advice.

Henner and Sharon theorize that a child's ability to balance independence and cooperation directly results from the parent-child relationship; too much negotiation, too many toys, exaggerated praise, and overprotection do not help that child in the long run. Instead of learning compliance, the child will learn that everything is open to discussion; in place of gratitude, the child learns greed (either physical greed for more "stuff" or emotional greed for more of the spotlight); and instead of feeling safe, the child will learn helplessness.

The women incorporate a question/answer style throughout their book's 12 somewhat disjointed chapters. Questions such as "Our 18-month old wakes up at five every morning and then he wants to play. What do I do?" receive a practical two- to four-sentence response from Dr. Sharon (Answer: "Don't blame your baby.... If he gets nine or ten hours' sleep, he has every right to wake up at 5 a.m.") Then Marilu responds--sometimes serious, often with a humorous anecdote or one-liner, or at times with a completely unrelated comment. Perhaps not the most authoritative resource, this book will still please, inform, and strike familiar chords in parents who seek nonphysical ways to gain and keep respect. --Liane Thomas

Parents often confuse love with overindulgence, afraid to subject their children to a moment of frustration or deprive them of anything they might desire. But in order to become resilient and responsible adults, children must learn that they can't always get their way.

Since motherhood is now her most important role, beloved actress Marilu Henner has often turned to Dr. Ruth Velikovsky Sharon, a highly respected psychoanalyst, for advice on raising her own children. This practical, accessible guidebook that they've compiled together shows parents how to:

• Establish parent-child contracts and effective methods of discipline
• Handle temper tantrums, bedtime issues, sibling rivalry, lying, and much more
• Help their children tolerate frustration and become comfortable with difficult feelings

Filled with dozens of real-life questions, practical advice, and humorous anecdotes, I Refuse to Raise a Brat is a witty and useful resource to help parents raise secure and self-reliant children.

The 30 Day Total Health Makeover: Everything You Need To Do To Change Your Body, Your Health and Your Life in 30 Days

Marilu Henner's bestselling Total Health Makeover introduced readers to her B.E.S.T. plan: a lifestyle focused on Balance, Energy, Stamina, and the use of only Toxin-free foods and products. While Henner and her many converts swear by the low-sugar, meat- and dairy-free meals in the makeover, it requires a major amount of effort and advance planning. (For example, if you went searching in your pantry right now, could you find quinoa, bulgur, or Soy Moo?) Many readers urged Henner to simplify things for them. The result is The 30-Day Total Health Makeover, with each day's menu and recipes preplanned for you. She even provides the shopping lists and mentions her favorite brands for cereals, soups, salad dressings, sauces, grains, and frozen foods.

Henner's aim, as with the Total Health Makeover, is to not only assist you with weight loss (if necessary), but to help you change your relationship with food. "Many of us only think of healthy eating as a polite way of saying we're going to be deprived," she says. "What if you didn't need that sugar and dairy anymore, and actually began to see it as a detriment? What if you had those foods once in a while but learned how to help your body recover from them quickly?"

In addition to the diet (which Henner says has helped her shed--and keep off--more than 40 pounds, and cleared up her once-splotchy complexion), she includes fun, motivational tidbits, including a "spa on a budget" and food and exercise tips. Typos are annoyingly scattered throughout the book, but it's worth overlooking them to absorb Henner's abundant enthusiasm for good health. --Erica Jorgensen

Healthy Kids