Caught up in yourself lately? Your food, your weight, your exercise, your body image? It's hard not to be, what with all the attention paid to these issues on a daily basis and all. Margarita over at Glamour.com knows what it's like to get all wrapped up in herself. She also knows what it's like to help someone else -- which happens to be amazingly liberating. And slimming too.

Out to dinner recently with a friend whose arm was in a sling, Margarita was the go-to girl. She cut steak and buttered bread and all but forgot about her own issues. "My objective wasn't to self-medicate with food, or use this delicious-looking comfort meal to escape or reduce my anxiety or comfort me or any of the other million and one reasons I'd used food before," she says. "It wasn't about ME at all; it was about taking care of someone else. That was so satisfying to me that I didn't need to devour."

Let Margarita's story be your light-bulb moment. Let it guide you to service. Instead of cozying up to Oprah and a bag of chips in the afternoon, get to your local Humane Society and walk dogs -- not only will you soothe needy animals, you'll avoid snacking and get some exercise too. Got kids? Get inside their classrooms and cut paper, trace hands and play on the playground. Want to appreciate how lucky you are to even have food in your life? Start plating meals at a homeless shelter. Consider it the art of distraction. When you're busy being busy, there's less time for grazing all day or fretting about your figure. And the bonus: You get make the world a better place.