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Emotional eating can be one of the most disruptive habits to a person’s life. The guilt over losing control, not to mention the worry over the added pounds, drives a lot of emotional eaters to hole up in their homes, cancelling plans and even sometimes missing work. The results can be devastating. But while it only takes a few minutes to make the decision to consume those ten cookies, it also only takes a few minutes to overcome the urge. You just need actions you can take right now to do so.

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From YourTango

By Christie Mims

You are sitting at your desk, buried under work, and you are exhausted.  So you reach for a can of soda, or a leftover cupcake from the company lunch, and eat it mindlessly as you click through your email.

As you get dressed the next day, you zip up your pants and think to yourself “Oh nooooo…my job is making me fat!”

Sure, you can argue about long work hours, loads of stress, no time to finish your New Year’s Resolution to lose weight (remember that?).  You can easily just blame your job.

We’ve all been there, trying to finish up a project before the next meeting and eating whatever is leftover in the break room for lunch.  Or coming home exhausted and surviving on a diet of caffeine instead of sleep.  You aren’t alone in feeling like your job is (literally!) a weight around your neck.

But the truth is that your job has nothing to do with it.

Your job isn’t grabbing a cupcake and shoving it in your mouth (for a long time, I was convinced my job was purposely buying cake…you know, just to mess with me!), it isn’t skipping workouts and making you chose a burger over a salad at lunch.

YOU ARE.

Read more on YourTango.com.

When I was in high school, there was no way you could have told me that those relationships I fostered within those halls weren’t going to last.  When people would say:  ”You’re going to forget the friendships you had in high school, but the ones you make in college are going to last,” I was determined to prove them wrong.  Well, those people were partially right.  I did keep a few of those friendships, I had no problem ending a few, especially one particular friendship over what I felt were unnecessary words.

In high school I was very thin though I never really exercised.  However, I was very active.  Besides being extremely hyper and constantly bouncing off the walls, I was also in marching band where we would have 2 to 6 hour practices that had us moving and marching for hours.  So, I could continue to eat very unhealthily (I’m a burger girl) but still stay thin.

When I got to college, I didn’t engage in physical activity but continued to eat extremely crazy, resulting in massive weight gain (30 pounds in a semester).  I rarely came home on breaks, so I didn’t see one of my high school friends for about two or three years.  I finally come home and she comes to my door and picks me up to go out to eat.  The moment I opened the door, her eyes immediately zoomed in on my stomach.  Honestly, I was in partial denial about my weight gain, and was still attempting to pour myself in clothes that I couldn’t fit; therefore looking like an overstuffed burrito.  (God, sometimes I’m too honest in these stories.  All right, let’s continue with my shame…)

The entire time we’re at the restaurant she’s looking me over and kept uttering comments like:  ”I mean, but what happened to you?…  You used to be so pretty.  I mean… you gained so much weight!”  I tried to ignore it but when I was absentmindedly flipping through the menu and reached the desert section and she quickly reached over and turned the menu to the salad section, I got offended.  We ate, went to a movie, she dropped me off, and I immediately erased her number from my phone.  At that moment, I was too done.  Though I was still trying to fit (unsuccessfully) into my old clothes, I knew deep down that I had turned into a “big’um.”  I wasn’t ignorant to the fact that the only comfortable item I had to wear was my oversized college hoodie, I was just HOPEFUL that I was being too hard on myself and I didn’t look as bad as I did.

For a very long time I held that grudge.  It wasn’t until someone asked me about a year ago why the friendship ended and I began to tell them.  The other person I talked to started going in on my ex-friend.  That’s when I surprised myself by defending her:  ”You know what, yeah, she was bogus for how she went at it, but honestly, I had gained some weight then.  Even though she was rude by how she said it, it did make me more conscious about what I ate and it did encourage me to work out more.”

Now, whether we want to admit it or not, humans are very sensitive beings.  No matter how much people want to argue with:  ”It’s unprofessional to get angry at negative criticism,” we all know that the moment someone goes in you, your natural reaction is to get defensive.  But what I’m addressing now is that even during those very rude moments that you can’t avoid, try to find something positive from it to better yourself.  People can always use more tact with the way they criticize you, and they’ll never put themselves in your shoes and think:  ”Is this a way that I would like to be talked to?”  But once you get past the ridiculousness, there might be something in that nugget of insults that you can use to make yourself a better person.

Now, I’m not as thin as I was in high school, but I’m definitely not as fat as I was when I saw my former friend.  But whenever I feel very sluggish and don’t want to work out, that conversation encourages me to make healthier decisions in my life.  Whether she was trying to help me, I don’t know, but without that conversation I honestly couldn’t start helping myself.

Kendra Koger is on twitter @kkoger.

When you think about children’s book authors Laura Govan’s name is certainly not at the top of the list. But you never know what these Basketball Wives will do next. Watch above as Laura explains the inspiration behind her new clothing line, why she’s writing a children’s book and her upcoming wedding.

Move over Jennifer Hudson! Jessica Simpson is the new celebrity spokeswoman for Weight Watchers.

Why Jessica Simpson? Because God forbid a new mother’s first order of business be to bond with her baby. She has weight to lose and fast!

It’s terrible the amount of pressure placed on celebrity mothers and, by extension, non-celebrity mothers to lose baby weight as quickly as possible as soon as they leave the hospital.

Worse, are the celebrities that face the pressure themselves and then turn around and cover magazines promoting their weight loss as an even prouder moment than birthing a healthy baby.

Even “Queen Bey” has completely fed into this nonsense. She made headlines after telling her fans at a concert that she lost 60 pounds in five months by running on a treadmill and eating lettuce. I hope she was only kidding because that is ridiculous, especially since she is (or was?) breastfeeding.

New mom, actress and author Tia Mowry says that she was encouraged to seek surgery to help her lose her baby weight. At a book signing in DC, she told BellyItchBlog.

“Money was being thrown at me to do surgeries and I said no, ‘I want to do it the right way’ because I know there are moms out there who can relate.

“I lost 5 lbs a month which is what your OB/GYN suggest you to do, I would work out 3 times out of the week because moms, who are working moms, who want to spend time with their baby, don’t have time to be in the gym 2 hours a day.”

And why should they? It’s one thing if a person had a baby a decade ago and is still calling the extra poundage “post-baby weight”, but we really need to give these brand new moms a break.

Studies have shown that most mothers return to their pre-pregnancy weight just a year after giving birth. So why glorify someone who has dropped the weight in five weeks as though that is something to be proud of and aspire toward? It’s unrealistic at best and dangerous at worst.

Granted, there are some things that newly pregnant women try to do while expecting to prevent a colossal amount of weight gain and that definitely helps them bounce back quickly. This is how Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr was able to walk in that famous fashion show last year just months after giving birth. However, if a pregnant woman piled on 75 pounds in ten months then it will (and should) take longer than ten weeks to strip it off.

Women have enough body image issues and pressures as it is. It’s not fair that a new mom should be subject to intense scrutiny and cruel insults (like the comments directed toward The Help‘s Bryce Dallas Howard and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) simply because they aren’t working overtime at the gym immediately after pushing a human being out of their uterus.

The expectation to make the weight evaporate seems standard because there aren’t enough celebrities, like Tia Mowry, who say publicly that taking care of their baby and their body is much more important than wriggling into a bikini in record time.

Instead, Jessica Simpson accepting the Weight Watcher’s advertising gig and Beyonce announcing her lettuce diet are prime examples of celebrity moms that insist on being part of the ever-growing problem that is expecting women to be walking around in ever-shrinking bodies and, quite frankly, it’s sad.

Do you think new Hollywood mothers are taking their post-baby weight loss too far?

Alissa Henry is a freelance writer living in Columbus, OH. Follow her on Twitter @AlissaInPink or check out her blog: This Cannot Be My Life

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I’m not saying this is Bey’s fault, but I knew all the attention on her dropping her baby weight so quickly was going to spiral out of control with that type of rapid weight loss becoming expected for new mothers. She was hardly the first to do it but she’s been praised for it more than most, while on the other side of the globe, Bollywood star and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is being blasted for not losing her post-baby weight soon enough.

Indian tabloids have heavily criticized the 38-year-old blue-grey-eyed beauty with headlines like “SHOCKING! Fat Aishwarya Rai!” and “Aishwarya’s Baby Fat Woes!” in the seven months since the actress gave birth to her daughter and the general public hasn’t done much to calm the discussion. Most recently, a report by “Bollywood CIA” posted on YouTube put together before and after pictures of the star against the sound of an elephant trumpeting in the background. Comments from the 500,000 viewers have included:

“Instead of losing some of her flab after her delivery the Bachchan Bahu has gained 5 or 6 kilos…we think it is time she hire a good trainer to help her sweat it out in the gym.”

“She is a Bollywood actress and it is her duty to look good and fit”

“She needs to learn from people like Victoria Beckham who are back to size zero weeks after their delivery.”

“The woman is in the PUBLIC eye! Her baby is 7 months old and she looks like she gave birth yesterday! Not to mention she has a double chin! Sorry, many of us have had kids and WORKED hard to lose it. Motherhood doesn’t give you license to be overweight.”

“Wouldn’t have recognized her…is that really her in the taxi…too many kebabs.’

I can only imagine the emotional toil this has taken on the actress who Julia Roberts once said was “the most beautiful woman in the world” and who has always been revered for her looks. ABC points out though, that Aishwarya is not shying away from the spotlight just because of public opinion. She fully intends to walk the red carpet during the Cannes Film Festival, which just began yesterday, with her daughter. But of course, this news has sparked even more discussion about what she could possibly wear given her post-pregnancy weight.

Stardom often comes with a heavy price but this shouldn’t be one of them. Putting this type of pressure on a new mother is unnecessary, especially when we know if she did snap back to a size 2 too soon, people would say she spent too much time in the gym with a personal trainer rather than being with her new baby. You really can’t win as a woman in Bolly- or Hollywood. Meanwhile Jessica Simpson is reportedly “excited” that she’s signed a $4 million deal here in the US to drop her baby weight ASAP using Weight Watchers. It never ends.

What do you think about all this pressure for new mothers to lose their baby weight immediately?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Weight loss and weight gain seems to be a consistent problem in the USA.   With so much focus on diet fads and weight loss programs, it can be tough to know what’s right for you and your body.  These celebrities have done it all with their weight: kept it off, then put it back on.

celebrityhealthfitness.com

Kirstie Alley

Who can forget our favorite lady from “Cheers” during the early ’90′s?   Kirstie Alley became a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig from 2005 to 2008, when she was almost 228 pounds. Before that, she would constantly go up and down with her weight.   Her stint on “Dancing With The Stars ” in 2011 has kept her in shape and even starting a weight loss campaign.  ”Cheers” to that!!

A few days ago, a newlywed woman wrote an article on The Huffington Post about her husband telling her that he would divorce her if her weight got to what she calls a PBN—pretty big number. Despite only weighing 110 pounds, he decided to give her a warning, although he let her know he would get her help if she ever got close to approaching the PBN. But, if she didn’t lose the weight, he was out, and she rightfully took offense to his statements. By the end of the article, she stated she had made peace with her husband’s ultimatum, having done quite a bit of research and finding that a lot of couples tend to include some sort of legal language related to weight in their prenuptial agreements. The newlywed felt every spouse has a deal breaker in his or her relationship and weight just so happened to be her husband’s so she couldn’t be mad that he laid the consequences of that choice out on the line. I still say she had a right to have a ‘tude.

Before even addressing the silliness of a weight clause, if gaining a significant amount of pounds was a no-no for her husband, he should have mentioned that before the wedding—when you lay out all of those other expectations you have for your spouse. If that’s something significant enough to make him consider divorce, then a pre-marital discussion should have been had about it. Perhaps he was too ashamed to bring it up, which would be understandable, considering what we’re talking about here. I am in absolute agreement that if someone starts to pick up weight or do anything down the line that you have an issue with, you have a right to voice concerns to your partner, no matter how trivial they may be. However, when we’re talking about the idea of someone leaving over weight, that’s a bit extreme.

I’ve actually had this discussion with one of my guy friends and I told him my issue really boils down to the fact that if a man couldn’t handle me gaining weight—something that can come off just like it came on—what would happen if I was paralyzed in a car accident or had a breast removed because of cancer, or something worse, what then? If a man would leave over my weight affecting my physical appearance, surely he couldn’t really honor vows to stand beside me in sickness and in health where I’d be affected far beyond the physical. It doesn’t even have to be that extreme, the simple aging process can make somebody look like a totally different person after wrinkles and sagging set in, does that give the spouse the right to leave then? It’s those factors that make it hard for me to imagine having a serious discussion about something like weight gain possibly stunting the growth of my marriage. That debate ended up leading us to a talk on what he would want if the shoe was on the other foot, and he said if he became deformed in some sort of way or physically dependent on his wife to the point that he couldn’t have relations with her, he would give her permission to sleep with someone else. Like a weight-clause prenup, I was opposed to that as well. If you’re going to sleep with someone else you might as well leave me totally, permission to go outside of our marriage is not something I see myself ever granting. Again, what is the point of vowing ‘til death do us part and all of those other things if when it comes down to looking like you did in your 20s or him leaving, he’s out.

The funny part is whenever this discussion comes up women are quick to point out the fact that they don’t want a man lugging around a beer belly in his 40s or a receding hairline either, yet men never seem to think about having to stay in shape for their woman. That’s likely because women aren’t placing more emphasis on how a man isn’t allowed to change physically than on how he loves, respects, and treats her. There appears to be a lot of truth to the saying that men get with a woman hoping she’ll never change but some things just have to be accepted. No it’s not cool to let yourself go physically after you trap somebody in to marriage, as some men see it, but the idea of jumping ship because of hitting a PBN isn’t cool either. I can’t speak on what someone should do if they tell their partner their weight is getting out of hand and they refuse to change, but I think the idea of putting a limit on how many pounds a women can gain with no regard to the number childbirth, medications, and the simple aging process can have on one’s body is not OK.

Would you ever add a weight clause into a prenup for your husband or sign one he gave you?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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From YourTango.com

Stay in shape before the summer starts with these great tips!

Spring is here, which means that summer is coming, which means that everyone is starting to freak out about wearing shorts and bathing suits in the very near future. It happens every year. We feel the weather starting to shift and, suddenly, “bikini body boot camps” start popping up all over the place, and everyone you know starts doing a cleanse.

However, In the middle of all this renewed effort and dedication — there’s a roadblock. Actually, several roadblocks:

• Easter — with all the chocolate bunnies and creme eggs.
• Lent — when people often give up food vices, but then go on a splurge once it’s over.
• Passover — replete with traditional foods that are delicious, but not always healthy.

And, for some of us, there is also spring break — a few days of vacation where our healthy eating habits go on vacation too.

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Source:Dailystab.com

The answer is a live-in trainer. Yup, Bey is supposedly taking no chances whipping her body into even better shape then it was in before she got pregnant by keeping her motivator in her line of sight 24/7.

The NY Post says Beyonce has moved her personal trainer Marco Borges in with her to keep her on track to drop the 40 pounds she gained while pregnant with Blue Ivy. So far, she’s lost 14 of those pounds since giving birth Jan. 7, thanks to Marco’s intense regimen. According to a source:

“Beyonce and Marco are up at 5 a.m. for a two-hour workout, and they do it again at 5 p.m. They do a mix of cardio, Pilates, plyometrics, yoga and, of course, dance.”

As far as eating is concerned, she’s “living on protein shakes, egg-white omelettes, pineapple chunks and lots of ice-cold water.”

It’s pretty safe to say you won’t catch Bey in a weight loss infomercial any time soon. From the looks of her few nights out since becoming a mommy, her routine is on point. Which doesn’t surprise us considering her work ethic. As the source points out:

“She’s exhausted but totally dedicated. Beyonce’s vowed to have a better body than ever before… and she’s a woman of her word.”

Can’t knock the hustle.

How did you bounce back from weight gain after giving birth?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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