Eating Well

ROSIE DALEY'S cookbook is doing so well that her publicity agent doesn't care whether newspapers want to interview her. Why bother, when she has already had several appearances on her boss's television program? Her boss is Oprah Winfrey.

"In the Kitchen With Rosie" (Alfred A. Knopf, $14.95) is jogging -- in this case, out of the bookstores -- even faster than Ms. Winfrey is these days, so fast it is breaking records on everyone's best-seller lists. Industry estimates place average sales at more than 200,000 a week for the first five weeks of publication. It is now climbing toward the half-million mark and has surpassed books by such popular fiction authors as Stephen King and Frederick Forsythe.

Despite the fact that nothing in the title suggests that it is a low-fat, low-calorie cookbook, there is no doubt that the people who are buying it hope they will end up looking as svelte as Ms. Winfrey currently does. It will certainly help, but what made the television talk-show host look so good has as much to do with exercise as it does with healthful eating. And anyone who thinks she can look as good as Ms. Winfrey by eating Ms. Daley's very good food but remaining in the couch potato mode had better think again.

A lot of hard work has gone into the star's once-again-svelte shape. She runs 8 to 10 miles a day, every day. She works on the Stairmaster for 45 minutes, every day. And she does 350 situps, every day.

Most mornings she is out of her house by 5 A.M. for her first four-mile jog, and she doesn't go to bed until midnight, long after her afternoon jog, Stairmaster workout and situps.

It's a good thing Ms. Winfrey doesn't have to cook, clean house and take care of children along with her full-time job. And it's a good thing she needs only about five hours of sleep a night. In fact, she never has to go into the kitchen and be tempted by leftovers in the fridge: Ms. Daley does all her cooking for her. And if she is ever inclined to skip a workout, her personal trainer acts as her conscience.