cover image The 5 Principles of Ageless Living: A Woman's Guide to Lifelong Health, Beauty, and Well-Being

The 5 Principles of Ageless Living: A Woman's Guide to Lifelong Health, Beauty, and Well-Being

Dayle Haddon. Atria Books, $26 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-7434-6341-6

This guide to""ageless living"" is primarily directed at women over 40, and while it doesn't contain any startling revelations or blazingly new information, the advice offered is solid and based in common sense. Haddon, a model who is, like her intended audience, a midlife woman, rightly contends that""everywhere we turn the media celebrates youth and tends to ignore a huge chunk of the population--us."" So rather than focus on looking younger, Haddon takes a more holistic approach and emphasizes looking and feeling better at any age:""The Ageless Living Principles show us the choices and paths that lead us to live our true life, our fullest life, and our highest life."" The author cites five areas that hold the key to her concept of ageless living--appearance, spirit, wisdom, body and relationships. Haddon's pointers, however, often tend toward the obvious. It probably won't come as a surprise to most readers that""when we don't make an effort with our appearance, we can feel distracted and vulnerable,"" or that Haddon's best beauty secret is""sunblock, sunblock, sunblock!"" Nevertheless, it's still good advice, as are Haddon's exhortations to enjoy nature, eat healthy foods, quit smoking and exercise.