Real Fitness for Real Women:
A Unique Workout Program For the Plus-Size Woman
By Rochelle Rice
138 pages (February 2001)
Warner Books; ISBN: 0446676217

Are you a woman of size? Tried every diet? Watched your weight go up and down in a desperate attempt to look like a fashion model? Sick of feeling marginalised because of your weight? Tired of always thinking about food, calories, and body image? Or are you simply tired? Rochelle Rice's Real Fitness for Real Woman is a refreshing guide to help woman of size to get fit, feel better, and move away from the obsession with weight and thinness. Rice is the creator of In Fitness & In Health, an exercise program specifically designed for the plus-sized woman, women discriminated against by traditional fitness programs, and embarrassed away from the size conscious and often strenuous aerobic programs found in most gyms.

The premise behind Real Fitness for Real Women is that it is self-love and self-care that makes you beautiful, rather than any external advertising or artificially imposed societal standard, and that every woman has the right to feel beautiful. There is a chapter on getting motivated, including the importance of written, visual, and musical affirmations. There are chapters on finding support groups, on evaluating your current abilities, along with a fairly basic assessment questionnaire. The book also looks at things like the specific types of skin and foot care requirements of the plus-size woman. The real heart of the program however, is a 6-week workout, which slowly and gently develops a regular workable exercise program progressing incrementally to a 20 minute weekly session.

The workout is not strenuous, and focuses on many different areas of fitness, from breathing to stretching, abdomen work, low-impact aerobics, meditation, and strength training. The photos use real plus-size women, and the routines are not complicated, offering a daily focus or assignment for non-exercising days - things like being true to yourself, drinking lots of water, thinking about how you hold yourself, and eating extra fruit and vegetables.

There is also a chapter on food, which talks about how damaging the word "diet" can be, and why it doesn't help you lose weight: "for every diet, there is an equal and opposite binge". The chapter is a refreshing rethink about food, as friend rather than enemy, and the need for sensible eating, rather than extreme diets or eating for emotional reasons. Most importantly though, the book doesn't talk about 'losing weight', or inches; only about feeling better, stronger, and more healthy - a goal well within the reach of every person, large or small. Real Fitness for Real Women is well written, sensitive, and refreshingly free of the overwhelming focus on being super slim, or faddish weight loss regimes.

All women need to be fit, and all women need to feel good about themselves - to enjoy their own individual and unique beauty, and Rice's book is a celebration of that. Highly recommended for the plus-size woman. Click here for more information, to read excerpts, and customer reviews, or to purchase a copy of Real Fitness for Real Women =>Real Fitness For Real Women