To the Fullest: The Clean Up Your Act Plan to Lose Weight, Rejuvenate, and Be the Best You Can Be($14.82Value)

Description

Lorraine Bracco is one of the world's most dynamic actresses, but when she reached her fifties, she felt she was losing her luster. During the long illnesses of her parents, she began to gain weight and felt her energy and self-confidence take a dive. Watching her parents die within 9 days of each other was her wake-up call to take charge of her life. She made a commitment to herself to stay healthy. In To the Fullest, Bracco presents her Clean Up Your Act Program, a comprehensive plan to help women over 40 look and feel younger. The program includes an intensive liver cleanse to reboot the body to start fresh on the path to optimal health by eliminating gluten, sugar, eggs, and dairy. Two weeks of meal plans and a varied list of meals and snacks illustrate that hunger is not part of the program and that eating clean has endless flavorful options. Her Clean Up Your Act Diet, which follows the cleanse, will help you lose pounds and deliver supercharged energy. Bracco adds her own mouthwatering recipes to ease the transition to clean eating and suggests an abundance of satisfying breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks. She gradually lost 35 pounds and has kept it off. The book also includes testimonials gathered from women who have participated in Rodale's 6-week test panel. With winning honesty, Bracco provides the perfect combination of humor, comfort, and motivational support that women need to rise to life's challenges. From attitude adjustments to style tips, from finding new passions to making movement a habit, her advice and personal insights both inspire and entertain. Lorraine Bracco has appeared in countless films ( Goodfellas ), on television ( The Sopranos ), and on Broadway. Currently she stars in TNT's smash hit Rizzoli & Isles, playing the Rizzoli family matriarch. She was recently named Woman of the Year by the New York City Police Athletic League, and is launching her own line of supplements. She published a memoir, On the Couch. Bracco splits her time between New York and Los Angeles. CHAPTER 1 Wake-Up Call Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. --NORA EPHRON Being part of The Sopranos was exhilarating. I was on top of the world. Depression, money problems, a brutal breakup and custody battle, and a failed business venture had brought me down, but all that was behind me. I had come out of a dark place and was stronger for it. I believed I had some good times ahead. My father kept my feet on the ground by reminding me that when Clark Gable--the King, the biggest star in the world--left the MGM lot for the last time, he walked through that gate alone and uncelebrated. It was my father's way of cautioning me that my success playing Dr. Melfi was transient. I'd been around long enough to know that, but working on the show did solve some pressing problems and freed me for some much-needed self-reflection. I was light-headed with relief! I had raised my two daughters, Margaux and Stella, and worked hard to support them. By the time I turned 25, I had been a mother for a year. I had a little baby with a French father who was in love with someone else. I was so focused on getting by day-to-day that I never had a strategy for myself. I felt as if I had been floundering from one thing to another my whole adult life. With the astronomical success of The Sopranos, I felt validated for the first time. I finally could take a hard look and figure out what I had to do to get the most out of life rather than just struggling to survive. I did learn a lot along the way. I knew that life is never smooth sailing for long, but I believed in my heart of hearts I had lived through the worst. Nothing in my experience prepared me for the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges in store for me. The phrase "change of life" began to take on new meaning in my early fifties. I never believed hitting a certain age would make that much of a difference. I was who I was, and a dramatic shift wasn't going to happen to me. But it did. I had always been an eater, hungry all the time. I never stopped eating. Even so, weight hadn't been an issue. I was blessed with a hot and fast metabolism. When I hit 50, the metabolism I took for granted changed and the needle on the scale gradually started to move up. Getting dressed one morning, I stood there tugging on the zipper of my pants. I couldn't pull it up, no matter how much I sucked in my stomach. In denial, I raged through clenched teeth that the dry cleaner had shrunk the pants of my favorite suit. My answer to my increasingly tighter clothes was to tear out my hair. REAL TIME CHANGE Being a lifelong active, healthy woman, and someone who has always strived to lead a healthy lifestyle, I have noticed with the onset of menopause in the past 18 months, it has become more of a challenge to maintain as well as lose weight. MARY LAMPE SUDDELL NORTHPORT, NEW YORK Me: You can say that again! Join the crowd. Nothing had prepared me for how mu