Cameron Diaz

It would be easy to dismiss this one as another fluffy celebrity diet book but it's much more than that, it's a level-headed book about knowing yourself, doing your best with what you have and eating, moving and thinking in ways that make you better at living. This is a sensible, smart book written as if Cameron is your big sister offering advice. Not preachy, just sensible. I would love this to get into the hands of many young women who are struggling with self-image. It doesn't say that show more this weight or that weight is right, but that there is an ideal weight where you can do things with yourself and feel good and that's where you need to aim.

Cameron Diaz admits to bad habits that she's working with changing, but that occasionally she does indulge herself but she knows that she can't do that all the time to herself and that we should follow suit. It's probably not for everyone but I found it had a lot of food for thought for me. show less

The Body Book: This may not be my favorite book ever written, but I totally appreciated it. I had listened to the audiobook version from my library, but I'm still going to pick up my own hardcover copy as a reference. 
Most of the information is stuff that many of us may have picked up by now, but Diaz doesn't take that for granted, which was great. You never know which pieces and parts are the ones that people already know and which aren't. That said, I found it great to have everything show more compiled into one volume that was easy to get through and not laden with technical terms or jargon. 
As someone who found a culture of fitness in the latter half of those years I have lived so far, I also appreciated that the book denounced the (fad) diet, makes the distinction between "goal weight" and having a healthy body, and basically breaks down how your eating habits can improve upon pretty much everything in your life. Not that you're killing yourself with every bite or any of the crazy stuff, but that you can help your health now and later in life without certain foods or with others.
There's an extensive "practical application" section that provides advice and encouragement that anybody could use and there's no "this is the way to do it that will definitely work for everybody". It's all about how to listen to your body and it's needs and ignoring what society says you should look like. If you hadn't guessed, I'm all for just about everything in the book. 
The narrator was great too. I had originally thought that Cameron Diaz would narrate but she passes it off after the intro and comes back in at the conclusion. The narrator, Sandy Rustin, captures Diaz's speaking style and I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't her. It was freaky. Maybe I'm just crazy. Crazy is possible with this. 
Anyway, it's a great book, particularly as a reference for your own health and options as you navigate new, healthier habits, if you need them as I do. I get better and worse and the encouragement was just what I needed in this newest phase of improving my own health.  show less

The Body Book

I was enjoying this book in the beginning. It was great information presented in a understandable and memorable way. I think this book would be great to have in print because it references so many aspects of the body and health. However, halfway through it started feeling like high school biology. While learning what muscles you have and exactly how they work can be interesting hours of this broken down became boring quickly. Honestly I felt like the book was done, as far as show more information I wanted a disc before I gave up.

The narrator did an excellent job. At times I forgot that Cameron was not in fact reading the book.

***DNF so no rating show less

Much like The Body Book, this was very science-y but easy to follow. She focused a lot on how our cells work and how they age, and what we can do to ease the process. It was a great way to learn how to embrace aging, instead of running from it.