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