The best way to a lean healthy body is to focus on a diet that is rich in lean protein and unsaturated fats, healthy fruits and vegetables, and limit your intake of carbohydrates.  Women will do especially well on this eating regimen because our metabolisms tend to store carbohydrates as fat, rather than burn them for fuel.

New research even points out that a diet high in carbohydrates actually increases women's risk of heart disease.

Women who ate a diet high in rapidly-absorbed carbohydrates -- nutrition experts describe these carbohydrates as having a "high glycemic index" -- were at increased risk of getting cardiovascular disease, especially if they were overweight, Dutch researchers found.

Getting on the right track to health and fitness is really quite simple.   The bottom line is eat whole foods that are closest to their natural state (not processed, packaged, and glamorized) and exercise, do something to burn calories.