Books to Support Women at Every Stage of Life
A woman’s life is comprised of several life stages, each having unique characteristics. Our bodies changes throughout our lives can be overwhelming, and taking charge of your health is vital at all stages. We want you to own your health no matter your age—from your teen years to menopause. We believe that knowledge is power and that preparedness is worthwhile.
No. 1
The Essential Oils Hormone Solution
Reclaim Your Energy and Focus and Lose Weight Naturally
Dr. Mariza Snyder
“An effective, easy-to-follow plan to balance hormones and become more energized.”–Amy Myers, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of The Autoimmune Solution
Do you feel energy-depleted and irritable, unable to sleep, stay focused, or lose weight? You may have attributed these symptoms to the natural hormonal fluctuations that occur with age. But behind the scenes, there are a host of pesky culprits wreaking havoc on your hormonal health: chronic stress, air pollution, chemical-laden foods and cleaning supplies, and the synthetic estrogens in personal care products. Women of all ages are left vulnerable to the consequences, suffering from unnecessary hormonal imbalance and frustrating symptoms that are often dismissed by their doctors.
Dr. Mariza Snyder is here to help put you back in control of your health. In The Essential Oils Hormone Solution, you will learn how to heal hormonal chaos and revitalize the body from the inside out with the support of high-quality essential oils. You’ll learn how essential oils work on a cellular level to mitigate the toxic loads we carry, and how to use essential oils to reduce cravings, get deep, restful sleep, ease stress, improve mood, banish the worst symptoms of PMS, regain focus and concentration, boost libido, and increase energy.
Featuring a 14-day plan to jumpstart your hormonal health, with over 100 essential oil blends, daily self-care rituals, and delicious, easy-to-prepare recipes, you’ll discover how to reset your body and pave the way for improved hormonal health, without taking hormones.
No. 2
The Menopause Diet Plan
A Natural Guide to Managing Hormones, Health, and Happiness
Hillary Wright, MEd, RDN, and Elizabeth Ward, MS, RDN
“My friends and well-respected colleagues have written The Menopause Diet Plan to help you feel healthier, happier, and more confident during this change in your life.”—Maye Musk, MS, RDN, and author of A Woman Makes a Plan
Menopause is uncharted territory for women, and it can be difficult to know how to ease the effects of hormonal changes that can often start in your 40s. With honesty and optimism, The Menopause Diet Plan encourages a positive, fad-free approach to managing your physical and emotional health during perimenopause and menopause. It highlights current scientific knowledge about the best diet and lifestyle choices to manage your weight; keep your heart, brain, and bones healthy; and decrease the risk for cancer and other chronic conditions. It also offers natural strategies to help diminish hot flashes, manage sleep difficulties and mood swings, improve energy, and more.
The Menopause Diet Plan takes a unique approach to eating before, during, and after menopause. Registered dietitians Hillary Wright and Elizabeth Ward provide a customizable, plant-based eating plan that is rich in protein, fiber, and other beneficial nutrients, moderate in carbohydrates, and low in saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars. Balancing evidence-based advice with real-life circumstances and personal experience, it combines the best of the world's healthiest diets with the latest nutrition research for women in the menopause transition. Recipes such as Peanut Butter Smoothie, Chicken Italiano, and Chocolate Oatmeal Energy Balls make it easier to eat delicious, satisfying foods that nourish your body.
With a comprehensive approach to better health, The Menopause Diet Plan helps women take charge of their well-being and live life to the fullest.
No. 3
Dr. Kellyann's Cleanse and Reset
Detoxify, Nourish, and Restore Your Body for Sustained Weight Loss...in Just 5 Days
Kellyann Petrucci, MS, ND
Even when you think you are eating and living healthfully, your body naturally becomes depleted over time, making it even more difficult to lose weight and maintain the energy and vitality you need to get through the day. This is something Dr. Kellyann Petrucci experienced firsthand in 2017 while she was writing her last book, doing nonstop TV appearances, and running her business. She gained 20 pounds, her hormones went haywire, and she was at a loss for how to turn things around. She decided it was time to hit the reset button and created her simplest plan yet, specifically designed to help the millions of women who are overweight, overworked, and overextended get reenergized both physically and mentally.
This is a comfortable, incredibly powerful 5-day cleanse protocol that resets your metabolism, giving you the kind of quick, confidence-boosting results you need to get back on a healthy track. The power ingredient in the Cleanse and Reset is collagen, which improves skin elasticity and brings back that coveted youthful glow, eases joint pain, heals leaky gut, supports weight management, and has anti-inflammatory properties. The healing and reparative smoothies, shakes, soups, and bone broth blends that you’ll enjoy on the 5-day cleanse are packed with collagen and can be adapted to any diet, with a focus on modifying the cleanse for the keto diet (along with great collagen alternatives for vegetarians and vegans!). The program also includes an optional 1-day “keto push” that you can follow for an extra boost the day before you begin your cleanse. Dr. Kellyann's Cleanse and Reset will help you slim your body, deep-cleanse your cells, and reclaim your energy and focus so you can start feeling truly good again.
This audio edition includes a downloadable PDF of recipes, meal plans, and more.
No. 4
The PCOS Diet Plan, Second Edition
A Natural Approach to Health for Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Hillary Wright, M.Ed, RD
An updated edition of registered dietitian Hillary Wright's popular book on nutrition and lifestyle management of PCOS, this prescriptive guide focuses on using diet and exercise to manage polycystic ovary syndrome and has new information on diet therapy and exercise, current food and fitness logging technologies, and all-new nutrition-backed meal plans.
PCOS is the most common hormonal disorder among women of reproductive age, according to the Mayo Clinic. Characterized by numerous small cysts in the ovaries, PCOS affects up to 10 percent of all women and 14 million women in the United States alone. It is linked to infertility, diabetes, heart disease, and endometrial cancer. While this disorder is believed to be genetic and incurable, it is controllable.
In this prescriptive plan, dietitian Hillary Wright demystifies the condition by explaining its underlying cause--insulin resistance--and helps readers understand how diet and lifestyle can influence reproductive hormones and decrease risk for diabetes, heart disease, and infertility. This book is packed with simple dietary and nutritional specifics: day-to-day strategies, sample meal plans, and shopping and snack lists. Updates include new information on diet therapy and exercise, the newest research on PCOS and soy and dairy, revised meal plans, and updated resources and shopping lists. The PCOS Diet Plan is the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to managing this increasingly diagnosed condition.
No. 5
The New Hot
Cruising Through Menopause with Attitude and Style
Meg Mathews
Brit-pop icon and outspoken menopause ambassador Meg Mathews refused to move quietly into this stage of midlife. Rejecting the idea that we should live in fear, suffer silently, or medicate ourselves unnecessarily through this natural hormonal shift, Mathews set out to get answers and advice from the medical establishment, alternative therapists, and her many friends in the midst of “the change.” When she launched the Megs Menopause website, it quickly became the trending online destination for pre- and menopausal women all over the world. The New Hot is her no-holds-barred guide to menopause, designed to empower and entertain in equal measure, including:
• The latest information about hormone therapy and bioidentical hormone therapy
• Her best tips and techniques for coping with menopausal symptoms (There are officially thirty-four possible symptoms; Mathews has personally dealt with thirty-two!)
• Dishy, girlfriend-to-girlfriend advice about what to really expect when you’re aging
Honest, stylish, and informative, The New Hot will help you take on menopause—and keep you sense of self, style, and humor intact.
No. 6
Burnout
The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA
“A primer on how to stop letting the world dictate how you live and what we think of ourselves, Burnout is essential reading [and] . . . excels in its intersectionality.”—Bustle
This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a roadmap to minimizing stress, managing emotions, and living more joyfully.
Burnout. You, like most American women, have probably experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to exist as a woman in today’s world are two different things—and we exhaust ourselves trying to close the gap. Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the all-too-familiar cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. They compassionately explain the obstacles and societal pressures we face—and how we can fight back.
You’ll learn
• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle
• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering from and preventing burnout
With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in Burnout—and will be empowered to create positive change.
A BOOKRIOT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
No. 7
The Female Brain
Louann Brizendine, MD
Every brain begins as a female brain. It only becomes male eight weeks after conception, when excess testosterone shrinks the communications center, reduces the hearing cortex, and makes the part of the brain that processes sex twice as large.
Louann Brizendine, M.D. is a pioneering neuropsychiatrist who brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and whom they’ll love. Brizendine reveals the neurological explanations behind why
• A woman remembers fights that a man insists never happened
• A teen girl is so obsessed with her looks and talking on the phone
• Thoughts about sex enter a woman’s brain once every couple of days but enter a man’s brain about once every minute
• A woman knows what people are feeling, while a man can’t spot an emotion unless somebody cries or threatens bodily harm
• A woman over 50 is more likely to initiate divorce than a man
Women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.
No. 8
Quit Like a Woman
The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol
Holly Whitaker
“You don’t know how much you need this book, or maybe you do. Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEO
The founder of the first female-focused recovery program offers a groundbreaking look at alcohol and a radical new path to sobriety.
We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but.
When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it.
Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.
No. 9
Eat Better, Feel Better
My Recipes for Wellness and Healing, Inside and Out
Giada De Laurentiis
This book is the culmination of a ten-year journey. . . . I’ve made a conscious effort to take control of my health because it had finally become impossible to ignore the fact that the choices (or lack thereof ) I’d been making for the past twenty years just weren’t working for me anymore.
In Giada’s most personal book yet, she gives you an inside look at her path to wellness and how she maintains a balanced life. Giada walks you through how to select food that can actually make you feel better and curate a personalized wellness routine to support a healthy mind and body. She shows you her own process of reconfiguring her diet to control inflammation—and how you can use the same steps to turn your life around. Giada also includes information on how to use complementary wellness tactics like intermittent fasting, meditation, and other self-care routines to optimize your well-being.
Giada devotes an entire chapter to her 3-day reboot—which she follows several times a year—and offers more than two dozen dairy-free, sugar-free, and gluten-free recipes to accompany the plan, as well as a 21-day menu outline that makes good, healthy cooking easy to implement at home. Even though it’s so much more than a cookbook, Eat Better, Feel Better also offers 100 new recipes, from Italian-influenced ones like Fusilli with Chicken and Broccoli Rabe and Pan-Roasted Pork Chops with Cherry and Red Wine Sauce to her everyday healthy favorites including Quinoa Pancakes; Sheet Pan Parmesan Shrimp and Veggies; Roasted Cauliflower and Baby Kale Salad; and Chocolate and Orange Brown Rice Treats.
Eat Better, Feel Better is the perfect jumpstart to wellness.
No. 10
The Essential Oils Menopause Solution
Alleviate Your Symptoms and Reclaim Your Energy, Sleep, Sex Drive, and Metabolism
Dr. Mariza Snyder
What if menopause didn’t have to be a struggle?
Your body is always changing—necessarily and beautifully—throughout life. During menopause, however, declining ovarian function and fluctuating hormones often clash with environmental toxins, stress, and digestive distress, leading to the symptoms we have been told we should expect: hot flashes, weight gain, brain fog, low libido, and irritability. But as women’s hormonal health expert and bestselling author Dr. Mariza Snyder explains, you can and deserve to experience a good night’s sleep, clear thinking, stable moods, an energized metabolism, and pain-free sex. The solution is not to medicate the changes, but instead get to the root cause of what’s really going on in the body. In The Essential Oils Menopause Solution, Dr. Mariza offers a cutting-edge, comprehensive plan to do just that, including:
• a clear explanation of what’s happening in your body before, during, and after “the change,” and how certain lifestyle triggers exacerbate hormonal imbalance.
• the latest science behind the benefits of essential oils as safe, effective solutions for perimenopause and menopause symptoms.
• more than 75 recipes and protocols designed to provide solutions for deep, restful sleep, anxiousness, mood swings, fatigue, hot flashes, low libido, brain fog, vaginal dryness, digestive distress, and much more.
• a proven 21-day hormone-balancing program complete with meal plans, exercise recommendations, supplementation, and herbal therapies designed to reverse the myriad of symptoms affecting millions of women today.
• easy self-care rituals to support every system of your body—from digestion and vaginal health to mitochondrial and liver function—throughout the perimenopausal and menopausal transition.
Dr. Mariza Snyder is committed to helping women feel their best; her work is dedicated to solutions that heal a woman’s health from the ground up. In as little as twenty-one days, The Essential Oils Menopause Solution will help you reclaim vibrant, optimal, and long-lasting health.