Product Description

Discover the Art of Aging Gracefully

At age sixty-eight, cover model Valerie Ramsey is the new face of beauty. She has appeared in magazines and ad campaigns and on runways and television. Now, in her wonderfully inspiring new book, Valerie shares a lifetime of hard-earned wisdom, insider secrets, and practical advice on how to look and feel your best--inside and out--at any age.

Gracefully includes:

• Proven nutrition secrets for staying slim and healthy
• Professional beauty tips for looking your best
• Personal visualizations for living your dreams
• Positive workouts for your body, mind, and soul

"Gracefully is simply wonderful. Valerie Ramsey is living proof that being older than fifty can be exciting, healthy, and sexy."
--Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Mother-Daughter Wisdom, The Wisdom of Menopause, and Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

"Valerie Ramsey is the new face, style, and attitude of aging. In Gracefully she inspires us to bring out the best in ourselves--physically, mentally, and spiritually--in order to make the fifty-plus years the best years of our lives. A terrific, uplifting, and informative book."
--Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., president and CEO of Age Wave and author of Bodymind, Healthy Aging, The Age Wave, and The Power Years

"I like the snappy way this gal thinks. She sends out a powerful message!"
--Rue McClanahan, Emmy Award-winning actress and author of My First Five Husbands . . . and The Ones Who Got Away

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13116 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Ramsey's best friend in high school was the beautiful Ali MacGraw, who hopscotched right over the gawky stage of adolescence. With such a friend, Ramsay says, you couldn't help but feel insecure. Readers might be tempted to feel the same as Ramsey describes hopscotching over her own gawky, aging stage. Beautiful and accomplished, she has gone from happy stay-at-home mom of six (of whom coauthor Hummel is one) to older career woman and runway model in her 60s. But while few women have her genes, or her success, they may benefit from Ramsey's frank advice and beauty tips. She includes such useful information as how to pose for a photograph, strategic uses for Botox, what to eat, how to exercise, what makeup to use, the advantages of meditation and how to stay sexual in a long-term marriage. None of it is particularly original, but it is heartfelt and admirably health conscious (except perhaps for the Botox). Not everything has been roses for Ramsey. She's a survivor of uterine cancer and was diagnosed with a weak heart. How, then, does she do it? Ramsey attributes much of her success to the power of positive thinking. And then, of course, there are those genes. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

A true inspiration for women of all ages, sixty-eight-year-old Valerie Ramsey lives the kind of life most of us only dream of. As a homemaker and mother, she successfully raised six wonderful children before entering the corporate world in her mid-fifties. Then, when most women would be planning their retirement, Valerie launched a brand-new career in modeling--at the seasoned age of sixty-three!

How does she do it? How does she stay so beautiful, so fit, and so vibrantly alive?

The answers are right here, in Gracefully. The perfect all-in-one guide for women in their forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond, it's filled with Valerie's best-kept secrets on how to look great and feel your best--at any age. Her invaluable three-part program includes her greatest insider secrets, professional tips, and time-tested advice on how to make the most of every aspect of your life:

In "The Body," she reveals the hair, makeup, and beauty tricks she learned in the modeling world, plus she offers her own personal regimen of nutrition, exercise, health, and skin care.

In "The Mind," she shares the motivational tools that gave her the courage and strength to meet life's challenges with a positive attitude.

In "The Soul," she demonstrates how to nurture your own spirit and shows the uplifting power of family and friends to make your life richer and more fulfilling.

With a little help from her friends in the health, beauty, and medical industries--as well as her own daughter and cowriter Heather Hummel--Valerie Ramsey has discovered a truly beautiful approach to aging, one that combines practical advice and personal insight with heartwarming anecdotes and inspiring guidance. Gracefully is so much more than a how-to book, diet guide, or exercise program. It's a complete, inside-and-out lifestyle plan that addresses many of the issues we face throughout every stage of our lives. Best of all, Valerie gives us the tools we need to continue our journey and build our dreams--to grow, live, and love . . . gracefully.

About the Author

Valerie Ramsey is a highly sought-after model who has graced runways, print ads, and television, modeling for Lexus and St. John's Knits and appearing on “Today” and “Extra,” among other shows. She is the media and public relations manager for Pebble Beach Resorts, the mother of six, and the grandmother of seven. Valerie resides with her husband, Wally, in California.

Heather Hummel, Valerie's daughter, is a writer whose work has appeared in Blue Ridge Anthology (along with David Baldacci and Rita Dove) and Messages of Hope and Healing. Heather is a graduate of the University of Virginia and is an active member of the International Women's Writing Guild. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

---

Customer Reviews

Uplifting
Valerie brings an uplifting, common sense attitude to this stage of our lives. She will make you rethink any negative attitudes and make you smile and be grateful for all that you are.

Wonderfully Easy to Read and Educational
My father gave me Gracefully for mother's day. I then went to see Valerie Ramsey at the Tattered Cover in Denver when she did a book signing there. I was so impressed! She is wonderfully open and honest about her own life and how she and Heather Hummel came to write Gracefully. I was inspired to read the book cover to cover! The book is so easy to read - simple to understand and effortless to apply the concepts contained therein to one's own life. This is a book that would be perfect for anyone. May I only grow older (I am 41) as gracefully as Valerie Ramsey has!

The Balance of Beauty
Valerie Ramsey understands the true wisdom of beauty--that even though it is outwardly visible, its true source comes from within. Perhaps that is why all treatise on beauty should be written from the perspective of someone, like Ramsey, who has lived a life that allows for true beauty to flourish. Aging is bounded by time, beauty is not. And so, Ramsey, in prose that is clean, compelling, and--most of all--entirtely applicable, demonstrates what is so obvious and yet, for our youth obsessed world, often overlooked in terms of how to cultivate beauty, grace, and soulfulness throughout our lives.