So many women don’t want to be seen.  Instead of waking up in the morning with an excitement to feel the pride that comes from wearing clothes that bring us closer to our femininity, our power, our sexy… so many of us use that time to fade in, cover up and try as hard as possible to mask the parts of us we rather not acknowledge.

It’s not that I’m against comfy clothes – I love them in fact.  It’s about the mindset of wearing them.  It’s about feeling like you have a choice – wear something sleek that you feel confident and radiant in or hide in something you can disappear into? When you don’t have a choice, and you feel like the only option available is to blend in, hoping not to be seen – that’s suffocating.  It robs you of your joie de vivre – that unmistakable vitality.  When a woman is in touch with that, I don’t care if she’s 20, 50 or 90, or what her body size is – her glow is the sexiest thing.  Because when you radiate joy from within, your beauty shines outward for miles and lights up the world around you.

On the other hand, there is nothing as harmful to a woman’s well-being than the feeling she isn’t enough or beautiful as she is.  And while there are tons of diets and exercise plans, self-help books and professional trainers willing to offer you their quick fix, the reason why none of them seem to work is that they don’t focus on the internal empowerment piece. Not to mention, most of them lack the current science that I can’t wait to share with you below (keep reading to learn what I discovered that’s changing women’s lives everywhere!).

I know this to be true, because like you, I’ve had my own experience trying to feel beautiful in my aging skin.  As I entered my 40’s I started noticing weight creeping on that hadn’t been there before and my old ways of burning it off didn’t seem to work anymore.  I despised this feeling, and it made me realize I didn’t have any control. (Boy was I wrong about that part, but I’ll get to that later). Suddenly all of those fancy programs on the market seemed to speak to me in a way they never had before.  Before I knew it, I had become vulnerable. I would be willing to try anything to feel sexy again.  And then it hit me.  These feelings I was having – they weren’t really about my weight or my skin after all but about something so much deeper.  This internal dissonance within me at its core was about feeling like I still had so much to offer, so much to accomplish in life and heck I wanted to look hot doing it all.  Was that too much to ask?  I was 40 – something, not nearly ready to fade out!  I realized then and there that a woman’s desire to age well is mostly her request to hang on to her identity as a powerful human being.

As I researched the ways women could harness the jewels of the natural world to assist them age gracefully, I realized there is an entire world at our fingertips.  The current science of aging says it isn’t about controlling your calories (how much you eat or burn at the gym) but by activating a process in your body called autophagy.  Autophagy is a fancy word for self-cleaning.  It’s a process constantly occurring within your cells largely dictated by how you eat, exercise and live your life.  Since autophagy renews your cells, enabling them to function sharper and get rid of the gunk clogging them up (which leads to disease and accelerates aging), it behooves you to activate it. There’s a particular cycle you want to establish though – you don’t always want to keep it turned up, so it’s essential to be strategical in how you design your lifestyle, so you set yourself up for the exact amount of autophagy necessary to keep you healthy, lean, and full of this sexy vitality.

As I learned about autophagy, I wanted to understand how I could modify my exercise routine to take advantage of it.  It turns out autophagy rates increase when cells are starved, or when they’re placed under physiological stress, like increasing heart rate and straining muscles. That’s exactly what happens during exercise. In fact, it’s such an exciting part of research that some have suggested that the true benefit of exercise is that it helps get rid of our toxic waste via autophagy, and that’s what provides all of the long-term benefits like improved cardiovascular health and immune system.

One of the leading pioneers in autophagy research—Dr. Beth Levine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center—showed that exercise sharply increases the amount of autophagy taking place in muscle cells. She did this by looking at mice running on treadmills—first seeing autophagy increase at 30 minutes, then maximizing to 100 percent at 80 minutes, and then plateauing. The American Aging Association recently ran its human study in older adults, which supported the same findings as Dr. Levine.

A related benefit? Exercise helps burn fat. Because excess body fat gunks up the autophagy process, exercise is like a one-two autophagy punch—it improves the system by stressing the cells and by getting fat out of the way.

The best part: You can expect instant results. Autophagy ramps up during and immediately after one single bout of endurance exercise. And it has long-lasting results.

Running Was Making Me Fat

Has this happened to you too?  As I entered my 40’s, I realized that my normal long runs weren’t yielding the same results.  I guess everything happens for a reason because right as this was happening, I started to learn about the science of autophagy.  It was hard to stop running, but when I transitioned to specific exercises designed to boost autophagy, everything changed for me.  Everything!  The stubborn weight fell off, my energy increased, my sleep quality improved and I just felt sexy.  Like I said above, it’s not about if you look sexy as much as if you feel sexy.  Once I learned the science and had the personal experience to support it, I had to create a program celebrating the genius exercises that helped me transform myself from the inside out.

That’s why I’m so excited to share my targeted exercise program with you in my new book, Glow15.  It is on bookshelves now and available online too.  If you are looking to liberate yourself from your personal prison of self-doubt (or shame) and feel eager to feel like you have a choice in the kinds of clothes you wear, please check it out and give the program a try.  Like me, I’m sure you will be pleasantly surprised!

In the book, you’ll find a structured program designed around two types of exercises known to specifically activate autophagy: RET and HIIT.  RET is short for resistance training, and HIIT simply stands for high-intensity interval training.  It’s the sophisticated combination of these two exercises perfectly timed to just the right amount that will yield amazing results.  Spoiler alert!  Less is more.  In my book, you’ll be happily surprised to see that you don’t have to exercise for hours.  In fact, doing so might increase the biology of aging (like it was doing it to me when I was continuing on those long runs).  Instead, I outline how to optimize your workouts, so you burn more fat, increase energy, improve recovery time and of course activate your autophagy for a longer, healthier, sexier life!

Shawn’s Story

I’m not alone. Many others have tried the program and also experienced these life-changing results. One 46-year-old woman Shawn, a mother of four and a business owner, told me she tried everything to lose weight—different diets, different exercises, different everything. And it all failed. She kept trying to hide her body, wearing big shirts “always untucked” because she didn’t want anyone to see her bulges. “My control-top stocking tightened my breath and circulation more than my tummy,” she said.

But once Shawn tried Glow15, her transformation began. She took 4 inches off her waist, going from 33 inches to 29. “I’m tucking my shirts in now!” And she lost more than 7 pounds in the first 15 days. She even lost 13 percent of her body fat—dropping from nearly 33-percent to 28.5 percent—all in just 15 days. Those changes created momentum for her to keep going.

Shawn recognized that some parts were an adjustment, but now she can’t imagine life without it. “Glow15 is no longer just a plan for me,” she says. “It is my lifestyle.”

Stories like Shawn’s inspire me, their results drive me, and my hope is that they will motivate you to Glow too. By following a lifestyle that activates autophagy, countless women have seen immediate results—in all aspects of their lives. How they look, how they sleep, how they feel.

Order Glow15 and get my Glow Kitchen recipe book today! And join my free Facebook support group for Glow15 here.