The Menopause Makeover is your practical guide to coping with menopause. Written by Staness Jonekos and Dr. Wendy Klein, this book is your one-stop planner to keep track of your body, mind and spirit during menopause. Step Two of The Menopause Makeover, How Food Can Set You Free, helps break bad habits and replace them with new ones.

The Menopause Makeover Step Two How Food Can Set You Free!
Like it or not weight gain is one of those unpleasant side effects of menopause and getting older. But before you blame everything on your hormones, Step Two of The Menopause Makeover will make you face the realities of poor eating choices. But this is not about blame and guilt. This step actually shows you that there are ways to deal with weight gain during menopause and not just resign yourself to carrying extra pounds.

One of the most important parts of Step Two in The Menopause Makeover is learning about your ideal weight – not your mother’s, your sister’s, your best friend’s, or that skinny model’s. Your body has its own ideal weight and there are ways to figure that out with The Menopause Makeover.

*There are several charts to calculate your ideal weight
*Learn that skinny is not automatically healthy
*What you eat impacts your health and weight but you do not have to live on nuts and twigs
*Your metabolism will slow down as you get older but you can improve it
*Find out what foods are good and the ones to avoid; then discuss a healthy eating plan with your doctor

How will Step Two help me with weight gain?
Step Two of The Menopause Makeover is designed to gently shake us out of bad eating habits. Menopause does contribute somewhat to weight gain as hormone levels fluctuate. But most of the time weight gain is due to eating more than you burn off. Taking Step Two helps you figure out where you might have gotten off track with your eating choices. This means that you can make changes that will help you shed those unwanted pounds and look and feel better.

Some of the other highlights of Step Two include:
*Sorting out the myths about fats; some of them are good for us
*Get to know the good crabs from the not-so-good ones
*Discover how protein helps you and why
*Are you an emotional eater? Learn the ways to stop using food to cope

The Challenges of Step Two of the Menopause Makeover
As you work through this part of The Menopause Makeover, you may uncover some unpleasant truths about your food choices. If you have been eating to deal with life’s stresses or eating too much of the wrong foods, this means admitting your part. The body and weight measurement charts are meant for your eyes only, so honesty is the best policy. Only by facing up to a lifetime of some poor choices can you learn the ways to take off the extra weight and keep it off.

This step also means having to rethink the way you eat from types of foods to portion sizes. Many of us were raised on large platefuls of food and told to eat what was put in front of us. This makes our ideas of portions a little out of balance. Most portion sizes are about the size of your fist, a deck of cards, an IPod, or a hockey puck, yet we eat far bigger amounts of food.

Step Two of the Menopause Makeover lets you discover the ideal amount of calories your body size and type needs on a daily basis. The good news is that making better food choices is not all about deprivation and starvation. You and your doctor can create a plan to follow that will get you started on better eating habits.

Included in The Menopause Makeover are shopping lists, meal planners and even some great recipes with real food that will make it easier to keep the right foods on hand. Even involving the rest of your household is easier when you find that changing eating habits is not sentencing yourself to eating endless plates of boring foods. By changing your eating habits now you can your body cope with some of those pesky menopause symptoms and prepare for a healthier you beyond menopause.

The Menopause Makeover may be challenging for you if you have been a little on the neglectful side when it comes to your diet. Once you see the areas where you can improve, you will be in a better position to feel empowered during menopause rather than simply be at its mercy.

Editor’s note: Even after changing eating habits over the last decade, there was still room for improvement! Learning about portion sizes and following them is a hard lesson but an important one. Being honest about the weaker areas and bad habits is not the nicest part of Step Two but it feels great knowing that there are solutions and that weight gain does not have to be a permanent part of menopause. Time to take back our bodies!


**Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. provided this review copy of The Menopause Makeover to me completely free of charge.**
The Menopause Makeover, Staness Jonekos with Wendy Klein, M.D., Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., New York, 2010, 302 pp.

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