Product Description

Advice on how to become more attractive often comes from those blessed with exceptional beauty to begin with. Yet a woman born to beauty instructing others on how to become beautiful is like a winner of the lottery teaching people how to make a fortune in diligent enterprise! In contrast, Tonya leads by her shining example to empower you to take responsibility for your own appearance and health. Placed by a physical disability in a disadvantaged position, Tonya was nevertheless able to fulfill her long-cherished dream of becoming beautiful despite adversity and being over the age of 40.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #468490 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10
• Binding: Paperback
• 362 pages

From the Publisher
Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You was named a 2003 Health Book of the Year Award finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s annual contest. It offers revolutionary solution to our rapidly aging society on how to restore health, to regain youthfulness and to reclaim physical attractiveness through the Rawsome Diet. The book addresses the integrated relationship between health and beauty and reflects the author’s six years journey in the raw food lifestyle.

From the Author
There is no natural beauty without 100% natural food. The lack of beauty, especially in people over forty, is the result of the consumption of devitalized and denatured foods. Cooked food depletes the body's enzyme reserves and damages its rejuvenating power. On the hand, the Rawsome Diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds in their raw state will help your body to make the most of its revitalizing abilities. By restoring the integrity of every cell and by facilitating the operation of every organ, it will bring your weight to its ideal mark, refine your features and add delicacy to your face.

About the Author
Facing several reconstructive hip surgeries to enable her to walk, author Tonya Zavasta sought a way to offset the devastating effects of anesthetics on her health and appearance. Using the same determination and intelligence that allowed her to achieve advanced degrees in engineering and mathematics, she immersed herself in scientific data on health and nutrition. She became more and more convinced that the solution to her lifelong quest for beauty and health was to be found in raw food lifestyle or the Rawsome Diet as she calls it. Tonya has been following the raw food lifestyle since 1997. The raw food lifestyle not only helped her to sail courageously through troublesome times, brought her general health and appearance to an all time best, but also opened a new chapter in her life.

Firmly believing that the roots of under-performing and under-achieving lie in feeling and looking less than your best, she is now on a mission: she wants every woman to look and feel beautiful. In her seminars, Tonya Zavasta- a dynamic motivational speaker and standup comedienne--delivers unforgettable messages about the possibilities available in personal transformation. Through her own example and lifestyle, she demonstrates how to transform yourself from sick and weak to vigorous and youthful, from plain to beautiful, and from insecure to self-confident.

Customer Reviews

No advice for adopting the raw food lifestyle
This is the first review that I have ever written, and I am writing this review because I think that the book is highly overrated and that this is a problem for those considering buying this book. Like others, I am sure, I use reviews to determine whether to buy a book. But this is the first book that received mostly five stars that I regret buying.

The reason why I regret buying this book is because the book is not very helpful in adopting the raw foods lifestyle. Rather than giving any practical advice, the book rambles on about beauty (the author discuss beauty envy, famous "beauties" of our generation, etc.) and gives some basic facts and generalities about the raw food diet, most of which are obvious to anyone who knows even a modicum about it (e.g., don't eat meat, dairy, and wheat--pretty obvious, eh?). It is clear that the author is totally obsessed with beauty, and so the book reads like what you would imagine one of her rants on beauty would sound like in person. Of course, there are some interesting facts scattered throughout the book, but not enough to make it worth buying. Also, while the author certainly knows a lot, you sometimes may doubt her reasoning ability based on some of the far-fetched conclusions she comes to. She also talks a lot about creationism, and her health theories are intimately tied with her religious beliefs. The most helpful things I learned from this books are the benefits of eating seaweed and fasting (though these sections are only a cursory foray into these areas), and that's about it (save a few random factoids).

So my advice is don't buy this book if you need advice on how to transition to a raw food diet or what a raw foodist eats on a typical day; the book is mainly an argument for why the author belives the raw food diet will make you beautiful (but there are still too few facts!!). You might want to consider buying this book only if you need inspiration to adopt the raw foods lifestyle, especially if you are doing it for beauty reasons, or perhaps if you want some basic facts on the raw food diet (i.e., you know nothing about it). However, I personally find the "I became a raw foodist and cured myself of disease X" stories more inspiring than arguments about how beautiful you will become, so if you are like me, I recommend just looking up such testimonials online, rather than buying this book. Finally, because I was so disappointed with the content of this book in comparison to what I was expecting giving the glowing reviews, I can only surmize that many of the authors friends wrote the reviews; she is from TN and a number of reviews appear to be from there. I hope this review helps!

Huge disappointment
Are you thinking about adopting raw food life style? Do you want to read a book that will convince and motivate you to do that? A book that will give you step-by-step instructions on how to break addiction to cooked food? Well, I was. And I didn't find what I was looking for in this book.
Obviously, the author did research, and from her writing it is clear that she is a highly educated and intelligent woman. Unfortunately, the book offers no practical advice about adopting raw food life style. Here is a brief summary of what is written here:
In first several chapters, you learn that the author was obsessed with becoming beautiful. In fact, the first chapter is titled: I will be beautiful or I will be dead. She also talks how most beauty books were written by women who were born beautiful and are therefore not competent to discuss achieving beauty. Next, she talks about how beauty is greatly appreciated and how, once you get it, you will be the object of much envy. Some weird Bible interpretations are mixed in, too.
Next, she devotes a whole chapter to write about how she opposes plastic surgery.
The eight chapter is the one I found inspiring. Here she writes how beauty is the natural consequence of health and how you cannot really be beautiful if you are not healthy.
In the following chapters, she attacks "the enemies" one by one: the meat, the cooking, milk, sugar, salt, cigarettes, bread, the medical profession in general. I was particularly disappointed in chapter about cigarettes. I have quit smoking last year after being a smoker for almost 10 years and was expecting to read how will eating raw food help my body and especially lungs cleanse themselves faster and better. Instead, I felt like she was judging me - almost as if she wrote: "serves you right".
Next she talks about juicing, fasting and exercise but doesn't go into any depth.
Finally, she gives you a few recipes and a list of resources.
So not what I was expecting and what was advertised...

I encourage all women to read this book
I am 21 years old I have suffered from acne, low energy you name it, and I just didn't feel good about the way I looked. I was surfing the Internet one day and something just lead me to Tonya Zavasta's Website. I think that was the day my life changed because being 21 years old watching MTV, extreme makeover, and people my age getting Plastic Surgery you feel that is the only solution to your problems. I ordered this book and all my hope was renewed. In Tonya Zavasta's book she tells you why you should omit certain foods and why the raw diet is the perfect diet. She explains everything and it all just all makes perfect sense. I have just started the raw diet which I plan to carry on for the rest of my life and I have also seen results this early on. I have heavy upper eyelid skin; a week after I went raw my eyes look much bigger when I wake up in the morning my eyes aren't puffy at all and my skin isn't a sickly pale that it once was and I use to hate looking at myself in the morning but now I can bare to look in the mirror at 7am. I go to college and people were telling me that my skin looked great and although I know a person's opinion shouldn't mean that much but it just seemed like people are very friendly to me now that I look healthier and prettier (vain I know but nevertheless true). I smile alot more I think my seretonin levels have just begun to balance out; the body truly knows best. People this diet truly works and I can't wait until it's been a year and I have detoxed totally so as Tonya say's I will truly see my most beautiful me. Get this book!

P.S. I think Tonya is the proof this diet works she looks amazing!