Rovenia Brock - Dr. Ros Ten Secrets to Livin Healthy: A Nationally Renowned Nutritionist and NPR Contributor Shows You How to Look Great, Feel Better, and Live Long by Eating Right

Praise to Dr. Ro for offering us such a clear process for caring for our body's temples. We need to know what works and what doesn't; what to do, and how we must do it to get results. Dr. Ro's Ten Secrets to Livin' Healthy is clear, clever and practical. Read it. Use and honor the process. Be well!

Iyanla Vanzant, bestselling author, spiritual life coach

A valuable and inspirational book on how to eat and exercise. If African American women use this book as a guide, it will bring about a complete revolution in the health and well-being of the black community. Follow her advice, cook a few of her recipes, and see for yourself.

Floyd J. Malveaux, M.D., Ph.D., Dean, Howard University College of Medicine

Minorities are more likely than whites to have health problems, including obesity. Clearly we must take our health matters into our own hands. We desperately need to know Dr. Ro's Ten Secrets, and USE them! Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.

This book is written to create a healthy mind-set which will produce healthy choices by the reader. It is insightful, life changing and I couldn't put it down! As a cancer conqueror I strongly recommend this to anyone who is serious about Livin' Healthy. This book is going to change lives! Les Brown, author of Live Your Dreams

This book will help you to move on, move up, and move ahead in living the best and healthiest life possible. Read it, reread it, and tell your friends and family. Once you do, livin' the good life will be a secret no more. Malik Yoba, actor

Dr. Ro has produced a seminal work which provides highly accurate nutritional information in a very readable format. It reads almost like a novel.

Allan A. Johnson, Ph.D., L.N., Professor and Chairman, Department of Nutritional Sciences, Howard University

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

To Change Your Life,
You Have to Change Your Mind

My mother, Larvenia Brock, who got pregnant with me, her only child, when she was 44 years old, died from stomach cancer when I was 9. She was diagnosed with the deadly disease the same year I was born.

Larvenia had a very independent, entrepreneurial spiritshe owned a successful cab company in Washington, D.C., which she ran during the week, and operated a thriving juke joint on weekends but she couldn't translate her business smarts into smart health choices. Though my mother in her younger days was a shapely bombshell with an hourglass figure, she didn't lose her pregnancy weight after my birth and remained heavy throughout my childhood. To add insult to injury, healthy eating wasn't on her radar screen. Believe me, you rarely get stomach cancer unless something is really wrong with your diet. And something was definitely wrong with my mother's diet. Larvenia never met a steak she didn't like; she ate chitlins on holidays and downed pig feet and whiskey on weekends at the juke joint. Though vegetables were plentiful in our house, they were usually prepared with lard or fatback and either deep-fried or slow-cooked until all the nutrients leached out.

That diet finally caught up with my mother, and she became very sick. The overweight powerhouse I had known for my first nine years ended up confined to bed, a tiny shrunken shell of her former self. During her final days she was unable to keep down even a forkful of watermelon, which had been one of her favorites. Her best friend, Rosetta Lewis, would send me off for it, saying, Run to the store as fast as your little legs will carry you. I did, thinking if I could just make it to Safeway get my mom's watermelon, and race back without delay, I could somehow stop the bandit that was robbing me of my precious mother. I was wrong. Even the love and unyielding dedication of a 9-year-old could not stop the inevitable. Finally, the person I depended on for everything, even life itself, died. The devastation of that blow crippled my spirit.

On her deathbed, Larvenia left instructions for Rosetta to raise me, with the assistance of my extended family, to adulthood. Rosetta was a wonderful second mother to me, but unfortunately her health choices weren't any better than Larvenia's had been. She overate on a regular basis. She had lived through the Depression, so throwing away food was unthinkable. A native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Rosetta was accustomed to eating standard southern fare: greens seasoned with fat-back, pig feet, potato salad, chitlins, pork chops, and anything smothered in rich gravy, including crispy fried chicken and rabbit. Over the years, I watched Rosetta battle heart disease, high blood pressure, and breast cancerall illnesses that probably could have been prevented, or at least delayed or lessened, had she chosen a healthier lifestyle. Despite the duration and variety of her ailments, Rosetta lived to be 86, so I got to have her with me until 1996. Some of you might ask, What's wrong with that? She lived a long life, right? Well, yes, she did, but it certainly was a hard one. Her kidneys had failed, her heart problems weakened her, and eight years before she died she suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed on her left side. That she had a long life is true. But was her quality of life what it could have been? I think not.