7 tips to stop your summer weight obsession

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With summer approaching, you might spend time preparing for swimsuit season. Rather than dreading this time of year, here are some tips to begin to practice appreciating your body so you can enjoy the sun.

1.   Accept your weight.
You may think the more you fight your weight, the more you’ll succeed in losing weight. This simply isn’t true. Accepting doesn’t mean not taking steps towards changing your weight, it means not letting your weight hold you back from your life. If you’re waiting until you lose weight to apply for jobs or start online dating, your weight is going to weigh you down. Do what you care about now.

2.   Go on a weight-talk diet.
It’s tempting to ask your friends if you’ve lost weight, ask them about what they’re doing to lose weight, or discuss together who you think needs to lose weight. There is way more to talk about than weight. When the topic comes up, practice moving the topic to something more fun!

3.   Only visit your scale once a week.
Weight fluctuates within six pounds on any given day depending of what you’ve had to eat and drink. Rather than checking your weight compulsively and worrying you gained weight after you ate a big meal, only weigh yourself once a week and make it at a set time, like 8 a.m. Monday mornings.

4.   Go shopping.  
If you are in between sizes and your clothes are uncomfortably snug, you will constantly remember you’ve gained weight and eat to cope with this negative feeling. I’ve seen a lot of clients feel better and eat better by wearing clothes that fit. Buying clothes your size is not giving up, it’s being practical.

5. If you compare, be fair.
It’s weirdly tempting to compare yourself to the thinnest person you see or a celebrity you admire. Yet, this is so unfair and sets you up to feel inferior and obsess further. Rather than compare yourself to someone remarkably thin or fit, compare yourself to every eighth person you see. Better yet, don’t compare. When you notice you’re judging yourself in comparison to someone else, remind yourself that’s a judgment and let go.

6. Eat regular meals.
Many people who struggle with obsessing around food get caught in this cycle:

Overeat --> limit what they eat to make up for the indulgence --> feel hungry --> overeat.

Rather than get caught in this cycle of feeling too full then feeling too hungry, eat three meals and two snacks. If you ate too much for breakfast, eat a normal lunch; this will prevent you from skimping on lunch and splurging on dinner.

7. Relax your face when you look in the mirror.
One of the ways to improve your body image and stop engaging in negative thoughts about your appearance is to relax your face and body when you look in the mirror. There’s a facial feedback loop and the facial expressions we make solidify how we feel. Research on Botox shows people whose facial muscles are paralyzed experience less intense emotions. One way to relax your face is to ever so slightly lift the upper corners of your lips. If you don’t want your daughter to learn to grimace in front of the mirror, become a role model for self-acceptance.

Jennifer Taitz  is a licensed clinical psychologist based in New York City. She is the author of End Emotional Eating: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Cope with Difficult Emotions and Develop Healthy Relationship to Food. Visit her website drjennytaitz.com to learn more.

Jennifer Taitz

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Trisha Yearwood drops 30 pounds, shares her weight loss secrets

Published April 17, 2013

FoxNews.com

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  Trisha Yearwood on the cover of People magazine, left, and in 2005, right.PEOPLE/ AP

Trisha Yearwood has tried dieting before.

But now, the 48-year-old country singer has shed 30 pounds in just four months. Her secret? Exercising and following her own custom diet.

"I designed my own plan that's low-fat, low-sugar 90 percent of the time," the star told People magazine.

The rest of the time she snacks on her favorite, non-healthy foods, but heads to Zumba the next day to work out.

"I have a strength I never had before," she told the magazine. "I feel like I can do anything."

Yearwood said she is down from a “tight size 14” to a comfortable size 10, and she is grateful she has found a routine that works for her.

"I don't think you can name one diet I haven't done. I'm that girl who buys every magazine where somebody's lost 30 lbs,” she said.

But now, she’s figured out how to shed the pounds.

"I guess a part of me didn't want to hear that it's just really hard work!"

Aside from her country music career, Yearwood currently hosts the cooking show “Trisha’s Southern Kitchen” on the Food Network. She is married to country superstar Garth Brooks. 

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Cash can bribe dieters to lose weight, study finds

Willpower apparently can be bought. The chance to win or lose $20 a month enticed dieters in a yearlong study to drop an average of 9 pounds - four times more weight than others who were not offered dough to pass up the doughnuts.

Many employers, insurers and Internet programs dangle dollars to try to change bad habits like smoking or not exercising, but most studies have found this doesn't work very well or for very long.

The new study, done with Mayo Clinic employees, was the longest test yet of financial incentives for weight loss. Doctors think it succeeded because it had a mix of carrots and sticks - penalties for not losing weight, multiple ways to earn cash for succeeding, and a chance to recoup lost money if you fell off the "diet wagon" and later repented.

Incentives are "not like training wheels where people learn healthy habits and then will continue them on their own" - you have to keep them up for them to work, said one study leader, Dr. Steve Driver of Mayo in Rochester, Minn.

And if you're looking to set up a system like this at work or among friends, the key is to make it self-sustaining, Driver said. The Mayo one did that by having people who didn't lose weight put penalties into a fund that paid rewards to those who did.

It's also a good idea to make people pony up in advance. One woman flew into a tizzy when she stepped on a scale at a weigh-in and was told she'd have to pay.

"She headed for the door" but later came back and paid, Driver said. "People in Minnesota are pretty honest."

Driver will discuss the study this weekend at an American College of Cardiology conference in San Francisco. The group released results Thursday. Mayo paid for the study and Driver owns stock in Gympact, a company with an Internet program that gives financial incentives for exercising.

The diet study involved 100 obese employees at Mayo Clinic but was not a workplace wellness program. Half were given weight-loss counseling, monthly weigh-ins and a three-month gym membership. The others had those things plus financial incentives.

The aim was to lose 4 pounds a month up to a goal that depended on their starting weight. If they failed, they paid $20 into a kitty. If they succeeded, they got a voucher to collect $20 when the study ended. Part of the kitty was used to pay the rewards. The rest was put into a lottery that anyone could win, whether they had made their weight-loss goals or not.

"People saw that if they stuck with it, they had a chance at winning more than they had lost," Driver said.

Participants in the financial incentives group also earned $10 a month and lottery "tickets" for coming to monthly weigh-ins and texting their weights to study leaders each week, said Dr. Don Hensrud, preventive medicine chief at Mayo. So people could have lost as much as $240 or won as much as $360, plus what built up in the lottery fund.

After a year, 27 of the 50 financial incentive participants came out ahead moneywise. About 62 percent of them completed the study versus 26 percent of the other group. The incentives group lost a little more than 9 pounds on average, compared to 2.3 pounds for the others.

The results are promising, but people may need to lose more than 9 pounds to make a big difference in health, said Dr. Kevin Volpp, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics.

"There's been an explosion of interest in this" and 86 percent of large employers now provide incentive programs like this, he said.

The cash was a big motivator for one study participant - Audrey Traun, 29, a lab training specialist who dropped 40 pounds, from 215 pounds to 175.

"I was impressed. I didn't think I was quite capable of that," said Traun, who lives in Kellogg, Minn. As the study went on, though, the cash became less important, and "it was actually more motivating to see my progress - pounds lost and how my clothes were fitting," she said.

Traun used the nearly $400 she earned in the study on a family vacation.

In England, there was big enthusiasm a few years back for campaigns using cash or gift certificates to convince people to make healthier choices, like getting vaccinated, quitting smoking and losing weight. But after a few limited trials, the programs have mostly petered out. The most successful were those that offered pregnant women vouchers if they stopped smoking; several of those programs are still in place.

"You have to prove these schemes work otherwise it's just money down the drain," said Eleni Mantzari, who studies financial incentives in health at King's College London. People often revert to unhealthy habits once the financial motivation is gone, she said.

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Joan Rivers makes fun of Adele's weight on Letterman

Who doesn’t love Adele? Joan Rivers, apparently.

The typically uncensored “Fashion Police” host made some harsh comments about Adele’s weight during her appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman.”

When speaking about her experience attending the Oscars, Rivers gushed that she got to meet Adele. But after Letterman replied, calling the singer a “lovely woman,” Rivers held out her hands widely around her and puffed out her cheeks, taking an obvious crack at Adele’s weight.   

The audience booed Rivers, who scoffed at their response.

“What’s her song? ‘Rolling in the Deep’? She should add fried chicken,” Rivers quipped.

After a moment, Letterman quickly changed the subject and Rivers followed suit.

But the comment wasn’t the first time the comedian has mocked the singer’s weight.

After the Oscars, Rivers tweeted: “On Sunday night, you could easily pick Adele's Oscar statuette out of a lineup. It was the only one wearing Spanx.”

Similarly, shortly after the signer gave birth last year, Rivers reportedly tweeted: “Congratulations to Adele on the birth of her 68 pound 8 ounces bouncing baby boy.”

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Woman claims she was denied massage because of weight

AURORA, Colo. –  An Aurora woman says she got turned away from having a massage because of her size, FOX 31 reported.

Laura Smith said she planned the massage at Natural Healing Center in Aurora for the day after she ran a half-marathon in January.

“She, the doctor, came out and said, ‘I’m sorry. But you are too fat for our table. You’ll probably break it, and you’ll have to pay for it.’ I was like, in shock. I’m hearing this?” Smith told the news station.

Smith said she left in tears. She told FOX 31 that at 6-foot, 3-inches tall, she weighs 250 pounds. She said she recently lost 47 pounds, but has had a massage before. 

“I’m not tiny," Smith said. "I know that. But, I’m working on it. Doing things to make myself healthier and feeling better."

FOX 31 spoke to Penny Wells, the owner of Natural Healing, who said she called Smith "large," not "fat."

Wells said she worried a table might collapse because one had recently broken under a 165- pound man.

At nearby Kambeitz Chiropractic Health and Wellness, Dr. Jim Kambeitz said a client’s weight has never been an issue at his clinic.

“There’s static weight, which most benches hold up to 2,000 pounds," Kambeitz said. "Then, there’s working weight, which is up to about 500 pounds for the patient. Then, you take into account pressure, the client rolling over, things like that."

Click for more from FOX 31. 

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Caffeine linked to low birth weight in babies

One cup of fresh coffee a day significantly increases the chances of giving birth to an underweight baby, a study has found.

The new findings from a large Scandinavian study suggest current guidelines on caffeine consumption during pregnancy may not go far enough.

A daily dose of between 200 and 300 milligrams of caffeine – roughly equivalent to one cup of fresh coffee or two cups of instant – increased the risk of a baby being small for gestational age (SGA) by up to 62 percent.

The association was independent of smoking, a major risk factor for low birth weight, which may be linked to caffeine intake.

Coffee, but not other sources of caffeine, was also associated with longer pregnancies.

The reason for this remains a mystery. It could be due to some aspect of behavior rather than the effects of any substance in coffee, according to the researchers.

Currently the World Health Organization recommends a caffeine consumption limit of 300 milligrams per day for pregnant women. 

However, the new study shows that even 200 milligrams per day of caffeine can increase SGA risk. Writing in the online journal BMC Medicine, the researchers concluded: 'This association should be further investigated and recommendations might have to be re-evaluated.'

A baby is said to be small for gestational weight if it weighs about 4.4 pounds or less after a normal length pregnancy. Such babies can suffer complications at birth or long-term health problems, including impaired neurodevelopment.

Along with nutrients and oxygen, caffeine passes across the placental barrier, but is not easily inactivated by the developing fetus.

Click for more on this story from Sky News Australia. 

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