Posted Nov. 10, 2008 – You’ve got your shopping list, your party list and you’re planning to make the traditional holiday meal and still stay on your diet. Right! Well, it may seem nearly impossible to keep the calories down, maintain or lose weight and still enjoy the treats that the upcoming holiday season brings, but it’s not. With a few diet tricks and exercise, you can still achieve your diet goals. Check out A Healthy BET’s Holiday Eating Survival Guide for more.

Posted Sept. 26, 2008 – We’ve got a situation. On one hand, I applaud Essence’s special “Voluptuous Issue” for celebrating our curvy nature. We’ve got a number of examples of beautifully curvy women who help young girls feel better about themselves because they’re on top of their games. Actress and comedian Mo’Nique, who serves as a Essence guest editor for their “voluptuous” issue, brought her F.A.T. (Fabulous And Thick) philosophy to the issue, which features a plus-size fashion guide with Beverly Johnson’s daughter, Anansa Sims. But as we celebrate our curves, I also wonder if we aren’t sending the wrong message.

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Posted Aug. 19, 2008 – As the untimely death of singing legend Isaac Hayes shows, stokes can strike anyone at any time, even if you are doing the right things to stay healthy. It was incredibly shocking that Hayes would die as he was working out on a treadmill, but without knowing any of the details of his overall health his death becomes a reminder not that death can come no matter what you do to stay healthy, but that life is lived to the fullest if you do all you can to stay healthy.

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 Aug. 18, 2008 – The latest weapon in the arsenal of the obesity fight is a ban against trans fats, those pesky artery-clogging oils that mostly come from animal products that are used to make everything from pastries to French fries. Cities like New York, Seattle, Philadelphia and Baltimore, among others, and the State of California have banned trans fats from restaurants all together and New York, Chicago and Nashville have opted for a requirement that restaurants from Burger King to Starbucks lable their food with the amount of trans fats and calories on their menus. But when Los Angeles’ City Council passed a measure to stop new fast food restaurants from opening in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, I think they were they riding this the trans fats ban bandwagon right into the ground.

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Posted Aug. 13, 2008 – You might find this as strange as I did, but there are some folks who will vote against Sen. Barack Obama being our next president just because they think he’s too skinny? That’s right, as The Wall Street Journal’s Amy Chozick asked, “[Could]Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability?”  This question comes from the notion that most Americans of voting age are overweight – some 66 percent of the electorate in fact would be considered overweight; another 32 percent are obese, by most health measures. And to be string-bean thin, like Obama, is considered “different.” In fact, one “unnamed [Hillary] Clinton supporter” actually wrote on a Yahoo political message board: “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”

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See what fast foods a watch group says are bad for kids.

Posted Aug. 5, 2008 – Most fast food for children is unhealthy, loaded with too many calories and too much fat and salt, says a report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.  ”You can hunt around and you will find a few [kids'] meals that are nutritionally pretty good,” says Michael Jacobson, Ph.D., executive director of the center, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. “But the vast majority of meals are too high in calories, saturated fat, or sodium. They are all made with refined white flour rather than whole wheat flour – not the kind of meals we ought to be encouraging people to eat.”

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Posted July 10, 2008 – O.K., parents, if your child is overweight, it’s not cute any more. Too many little children are getting adult-sized illnesses because they’re eating too much of the wrong foods and not doing anything physical. And playing video games, other than the Wii Fitness doesn’t county. The problem has gotten so bad that now the Feds are telling doctors to begin prescribing statins – those cholesterol fighting drugs grownups take – to children. That’s not a good idea by any measure. First, no one knows what the long-term effects of taking a statin drug will have on young people. Also, in this pop-a-pill-for-every-problem society, why would we put a child on drugs without first figuring out whether changing his or her diet and activities would bring down the catastrophic cholesterol rates in children that can lead to heart problems and diabetes later on. Is that too much like work? I say, get those kids off the couch, stop using the TV as a babysitter and stop substituting fast food for a healthy home-cooked meal. If you can’t cook, there are plenty of fast-frozen vegetables and add-a-meat meals in the freezer section that make for quick, no effort dinners or lunches. Here are some other ways to eat healthy on a budget. Also, BET.com’s Body & Soul has some ideas.

Posted July2, 2008 – What would you do for a bikini body? There are a lot of folks willing to go to unhealthy extremes to make that happen. But as Hollywood Trainer Jeanette Jenkins proves, you don’t need pills, surgery or injections to get the klller body we all want. Take the folks she’s been working with lately on Fox’s “The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet.” “It’s two regular people who wanted to lose weight and lost 20 pounds in 6 weeks,” says Jenkins, who used to host fitness chats for BET.com. But the takeaway message from the show, and from her book, “The Hollywood Trainer’s Weight Loss Plan,” Jenkins says, is that anyone can get a better body, even a bikini body, if he or she first believes that it’s possible, and then goes to work to make it so. (Watch the video below)  “If you create a positive attitude and have a positive image of yourself, then those things will help you achieve your goals,” says the high-energy trainer to such celebrities such as Queen Latifah and Terrell Owens. “You have to say to yourself, ‘I’m going to do this. I’m already beautiful, but I’m going to start now to achieve the goal to lose another 15 pounds or have more energy.” The pep talk is just one of the seven steps to weight loss that Jenkins describes in her new book. “The Hollywood Trainer’s Weight Loss Plan.” Another step in the process is a daily dose of heart-charging activity. Of course, make sure your doctor says it’s O.K., but the goal is to get in 30 to 45 minutes of a cardio workout each morning. The choice is yours – a power-walk, cycling, spinning, tread mill, swimming or whatever will get you moving. “You don’t need any equipment to do calisthenics,” Jenkins says. That’s why she suggests three sets of from 15-to-25 repetitions of crunches, squats, pushups, dips and lunges to help you firm up those muscles over the summer. As for what to eat, the trainer recommends meals that are heavy on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meat. For more of her seven steps to weight loss, or to see the exercises and get recipes, go to thehollywoodtrainer.com. You can also see if her team won the weight loss challenge on Tuesday morning on “Mike and Juliet.” Have a happy, healthy, Fourth.

Oprah and friends do a detox
May 27, 2008 – With summer quickly approaching, Oprah’s got a brand new thing. She’s saying bye, bye to burgers and other animal products for 21 days as apart of a detox fast. Now, it’s not as drastic as the Master Cleanse, or water fast. And, it’s a bit of a misnomer to call it a fast when it seems she’s simply cutting out a few things and transitioning to a vegan diet for three weeks. But, according to People .com, the 54-year-old talk show maven says she and three pals from her production company are banning animal products, caffeine, sugar, gluten and alcohol as part of a detox plan. Spring cleansing, or detoxification, is nothing new. But let’s be clear about what detoxing actually is. According to purists like Chris Strychacz, Ph.D., a research psychologist at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego, fasting means “water only,” he tells WebMD. He’s been fasting for at least 25 years now, an annual weeklong ritual every spring. “There’s a big difference between fasting and dieting ,” Strychacz says. The effects on the body are quite different, he says. So when Oprah says she’s going to detox, is she really going far enough, or does this sound like a gimmick. Other experts say a seven-day gradual detox, where you go from solid foods to liquids and transition back to healthy foods, is a good way to cleanse your system of toxins that build up over the years and gives you more energy in the long run. They warn against long-term fasts because it can throw your body into shock and make it hard to reset. Before fasting, or considering any extreme diet, it’s best to consult your doctor, particularly if you suffer from long-term health problems, such as high blood pressure, or diabetes, or are on any medication. But whether you chose a seven-day juice fast, or a streamlined diet, if you cut toxic foods from your diet doesn’t it simply follow that you will reap health benefits? What do you think?

First, big ups – I mean large ups – to Joy, who commented on the posting “Three little steps to weight loss.”

She send me to fitday.com, which helps you track your daily intake of carbs, calories, fat, etc. It’s free and registration only takes a minute.

I haven’t been on the site long, but I’m already impressed. The forms are easy to fill out. Now, if you don’t like facing the truth – like the real deal about that fried chicken sandwich I got at McDonald’s – you might not want to sign up. But remember this: you can plan your intake. So tonight, I’m having a salad, maybe some baked chicken and some steamed veggies to balance the calorie count for the day.

Thanks again, Joy.