Cameron Diaz’s The Body Book
May 28, 2014
There’s no use in refuting it: Cameron Diaz is beautiful. Since her screen debut at age 21 in The Mask, the 41-year old actress has captivated our hearts many times both on screen and off. She’s one-third of the action-packed Charlie’s Angels trio and easily moves from lighthearted comedic relief in projects like The Other Woman to intense dramatic portrayals such as that of a hurting mother helping her daughter battle leukemia in My Sister’s Keeper. She effortlessly shines in Hollywood, an atmosphere filled with shimmering spotlights, lush red carpets and glamour; yet it is her self-worth and inner beauty that delights this world the most.
Cameron Diaz recently published The Body Book, which inspires women to embrace their bodies and to love how they look. Diaz described her book as, “…the basic science of the body and how it works. It’s not an idea of a fitness plan or a nutrition plan, it just information for you to have.”
She teaches her readers to love themselves, love their bodies and offers inspiration for improving each individual’s overall health.
Known for her honesty and candor, Diaz also opens up about her physical insecurities in her book saying, “I did not like my body when I was a kid. I was all skin and bones, all arms and legs. I was really, really skinny and the other kids let me have it because of that. I hated being skinny […] I have a lot of girlfriends who struggle with their weight, and they all remember feeling self-conscious about being heavier than the other girls as young women. Skinny was their dream. I was on the other side of the spectrum: I wished I had curves. Dreamy, lovely curves. Skinny or fat, when you’re at the extreme, being made fun of leaves a psychological scar […] That skinny frame, the body I had been ashamed of and wished away and wanted to trade in for a curvier model, was actually a strong, powerful body. And it was MY body.”
Cameron Diaz wrote The Body Book with a single goal in mind: to create what she calls “whole-body health,” by establishing a combination of mental clarity, discipline, physical well-being and strength and emotional balance. To Diaz, beauty is not measured having a perfect body, having a diet exclusively of kale and superfoods or exercising daily, it’s dependent on one thing: self-discipline. She writes, “The way you’re going to get there is by harnessing your discipline to put into action of all knowledge and awareness you’ve gained so that you can start making smarter choices about what you eat and how you move…Nutrition and fitness and awareness and discipline are not just words,” she says, “They are tools. They are power. They are ways to care for yourself that empower you to be stronger, smarter, more confident, and truer to yourself.”
In The Body Book, Diaz also focuses on the anatomy of the body, the heart, the mind, the muscles and describes the feeling a person experiences when they release all of their energy to simply move.
“When you get moving, your heart races…you feel exhilarated…excited…like you’re really alive,” she writes, “And when you’re done, your body hurts in that amazing way that lets you know you really used it. Your brain is sharper. Your senses are more alert. That’s the kind of stuff that makes you feel good about your day.”
At its heart, The Body Book encourages Diaz focuses encourages women to improve their bodies from the inside out. Beyond understanding the difference between fresh, frozen or canned vegetables, The Body Book urges us all to embrace the notion that every woman has a different anatomy and body type and that every woman is beautiful in her own way.
“Unfortunately, as women, we are constantly being pressured about being more beautiful, about being thinner, about looking younger, or sexier, or blonder or more brunette. As women in today’s society, we are encouraged to compare ourselves to other women when what we need to do is focus on our own strengths, our own capabilities, our own beauty.”