Vicksburg businesswoman and fitness guru Linda Fondren has spent two days with the great and powerful Oz.

Not the wizard of book and movie fame, but cardiothoracic surgeon, author, health expert and television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose television show and books on health have drawn an audience of thousands.

Fondren is a guest on Oz’s show, which airs at 3 p.m. today on Jackson station WJTV, channel 12. She spent two days in New York filming a segment of the program, which will center on her book, “Shape Up Sisters!,” an autobiographical book that combines her life story with a plan for fitness and permanent weight loss.

Her book goes on sale May 7 and will be available locally at Lorelei Books. Her interview with Oz will be rerun May 2 on WJTV.

Fondren, who ran for Vicksburg mayor in 2013, said her book “is not an eat-seaweed and do Pilates with skinny celebrities book.”

Instead, she said, the book provides an exercise program that women can incorporate into their daily lives. “It’s a program for busy people,” she said.

According to her website featuring the book, “‘Shape Up Sisters!’ is a get-healthy prescription for regular people with jobs, budgets and real-life challenges,” adding,

“Linda offers tactics to incorporate exercise into daily activities, delicious recipes and menus for eating healthfully on a budget and motivation for a major attitude shift.”

“In the book, I give women the tools to develop a determined mind-set and change their       life. It is filled with daily, flexible, realistic suggestions for action and reflection designed to integrate into their life as they live it,” Fondren said.

She said representatives for Oz called her about two weeks ago and invited her to come on the show. She said her publisher, Rodale Inc., which publishes health and exercise magazines and books, was responsible for interesting Oz in inviting her on the show.

“They read the book and decided ‘this is someone we need to have on our show,’” she said, adding the show’s producer and several others of the show’s staff were in Vicksburg Monday meeting with her and shooting video in town.

She called her time on the show “incredible. It was an overwhelming experience. I watched Dr. Oz when he was on Oprah’s channel, and he wrote a book on fitness that I can truly say was the only fitness book I have finished. Other fitness books are too scientific, but his book was written in a way that people can understand.”