Oz Garcia, author of The Balance, Look and Feel Fabulous Forever has just published Redesigning 50: The No Plastic Surgery Guide to 21st-Century Age Defiance.  Dr. Garcia and his team of world-renowned experts (Nicholas Perricone, Eric Braverman, David Barton) reveal how to: eat your way to a younger body, rejuvenate and destress with the best spa and body training strategies, achieve extraordinary skin, hair, and nails, and explore proven scientific anti-aging remedies.

Oz Garcia is the president of Personal Best, a nutritional counseling firm.  A nutritionist to celebrities (Hilary Swank, Kimora Lee Simmons, Frederic Fekkai), he has twice been voted as Best Nutritionist by New York, been featured in Vogue, Cosmopolitan, W, and Prevention magazines. 

Redesigning 50 is read in fourths: Part I--Food; Part II--Rejuvenation; Part III-- Beauty; and Part IV--Alchemy.  Dr. Garcia believes in "healthy aging" through physical and mental exercise.  He writes, "Although plastic surgery might be appropriate for some people in certain circumstances, there are now many far more enlightened antiaging options to bring you to what I like to call the New 50: a fitter, healthier, better-looking middle age than you ever imagined possible."  His book's purpose is to "lay down speed bumps" in the inevitable aging process through diet and lifestyle modification.  In fact, Dr. Garcia believes that the sex life can be vibrant and previous damage to the skin can be reduced and reversed, leaving you feeling and looking younger.

Food, the foremost element is a critical part in this plan.  Dr. Garcia introduces Essential Efficiency Foods: those which provide daily energy, improve the immune system, and boost the mood.  These foods are typically low on the glycemic index, high on the oxygen radical absorbance capacity scale, contain phytochemicals, help regulate hormones, control levels of cholesterol, and boost the mind--vegetables, fruits, seafood, lean poultry, beans and legumes, whole grains, specific starches, nuts and seeds, some dairy, spices and herbs.  Dr. Garcia's top tips for feeling and looking great, while reducing the waistline include:

Eat small meals throughout the day.

Begin with breakfast.

Eat a snack between breakfast and lunch.

Keep dinner light and have a snack later in the evening.

Meals should include a primary protein--seafood or dairy, have a vegetable and a starch. (Protein is rich in the enzyme glutathione, a detoxifier.)

Variety is key.

Dr. Garcia includes in Part I, a detoxification process, an explanation of probiotics, minimal recipes--this needs improvement, and directions for how to eat out. His theories behind food and its uses stem from visits to Japan and Greece, where some of the world's longest-lived peoples thrive.  Back in the '80s I too spent time in Japan.  Though I found the people to be extremely fast eaters, I noticed that the average person consumes white rice at every meal with a portion of protein--soy, chicken, pork, or seafood and a vegetable.  The meal though, even for a man, was about half of what I ate.  The Japanese who live long are the Okinawans, in the extreme South of the country.  Several studies have shown that their high fiber diet consists of sweet potatoes, vegetables, whole grains, fruit, soy foods, beans, fish, and lean meats.  David Bouley, a contributor to Redesigning 50, states that the Okinawan diet is approximately half the caloric density of the American diet.  The consensus is that our food needs to be a variety of fresh seasonal foods, eaten often in small portions, which will include a lean protein.  Awareness of what, when, and how much our food intake is what we really need.

Related: Seven Threats To Young Skin

             An Interview With Nicholas Perricone