Change Your Mind, Change Your Body: Feeling Good about Your Body and Self After 40

The rest of your life lies ahead of you. Do you want to spend it fighting your body and worrying about things you can't change? Or do you want to live your life to its fullest by combining age, experience, and creativity to develop a new vision for your body and self?

Women in midlife face many changes, such as children growing up, returning to the workforce, or retiring from it. Then there are the physical changes: crow's-feet, saggy arms, an expanding waistline. The transformations within us and around us can leave us feeling anxious, ineffective, and out of control, especially in a culture that defines midlife as the beginning of a decline. It's easy to look at our lives and ourselves and wish we could turn back the clock, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Midlife is a time of opportunity to renew, grow strong, set new goals, and redefine who you are. Change Your Mind, Change Your Body: Feeling Good About Your Body and Self After 40 gives you the tools you need to utilize your wisdom and experiences to shape a new vision of who you are and what you want your life to look like — right now.

Learn how to:

• Cope with the physical and mental changes that midlife brings

• Revamp ideas of what is sexy and desirable

• Turn fears of aging into tools for positive growth

• Develop a positive, realistic body image

• Embrace who you are and who you will become

• Set weight and exercise goals you can really achieve

• Help our daughters create a positive self-image

You have the power to renegotiate your relationship with your body, yourself, and the world around you, and Change Your Mind, Change Your Body will help you discover and use it.

With fantastic exercises, quizzes, and illuminating real-life stories, Kearney-Cooke gives women all the tools they need to stop fighting their bodies and renegotiate their relationships with their bodies, themselves, and the people around them.

According to a recent survey conducted by "Shape magazine, more than fifty percent of the forty million women of the Baby Boomer generation are dissatisfied with their bodies. The reason, women's health expert Ann Kearney-Cooke contends, is that most women view midlife as a departure point for decline--not renewal. Now, in the inspiring book "Change Your Mind, Change Your Body, Kearney-Cooke addresses these issues, challenging women in midlife to stop fighting their bodies, and instead to embrace the power within. In "Change Your Mind, Change Your Body, Kearney-Cooke explains that women in midlife face many changes--whether it's children growing up, retiring from the work force, or returning to it. Then there are the physical changes: crow's feet, saggy arms, and an expanding waistline. The changes within them and around them can leave women feeling anxious, ineffective, and out-of-control. But Kearney-Cooke encourages women to view midlife as a time of opportunity--a time to renew, grow strong, set new goals, and define who they are. With fantastic exercises, quizzes, and illuminating real-life stories, "Change Your Mind, Change Your Body will give women all the tools they need to renegotiate their relationships with their bodies, themselves, and the people around them.

Ann Kearney-Cooke, PhD,  is the director of the Cincinnati Psychotherapy Institute. She has been named a distinguished scholar for the Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia University in New York, where she developed the curriculum for the Helping Girls Become Strong Women Project. She has lectured at more than 150 conferences and written on the treatment of eating disorders, body image, and self-esteem. She was honored as a fellow by the American Psychological Association for her outstanding contributions to the psychology of women. She is the psychological expert for the monthly "Ask The Therapist" column of Shape magazine. Her work has been featured on shows such as NBC's Today, CBS's The Morning Show, and Oprah.

Contents

Introduction

Part One

Is Your Body Image Realistic?

1 Do You Have a Problem with Your Age?

2 Origins of Your Body Image

Part Two

Reconstruct a Healthy Body Image in Midlife

3 Set a Realistic Weight Goal

4 Beat Emotional Eating

5 Exercise for Strength and Power

6 Commit to Deliberate Self-Care

7 Assess Relationships

8 Learn from Other Cultures

9 Strut Your Stuff

10 Help Your Daughter Develop a Positive Body Image

Endnotes

Index