If you missed our daily postings this past week, we invite you to take some time to catch up on our prior week's news and gear up for a new week of healthy living information and inspiration.

Oprah's touting The Genotype Diet. Maybe soon she'll start a "Diet Fad of the Month" club.

Want strong abs? Do what your grandmother told you and stand up straight.

Take a closer look at your lunch and make sure you're not falling for one of these salad slip-ups.

Stand up once and for all to the office vending machine with these healthier afternoon snacks.

Have your healthy habits taken a vacation? Get your groove back with these five tips.

Trick-or-treating is over for another year. Bev tells us how to handle the Halloween candy fallout.

What does faith have to do with weight loss? Karla shares her story.

Fitz talks to Cameron Mathison and scores That's Fit readers free hugs.

Is Victoria Beckham the latest celebrity marathon mama? Kristen has the scoop.

Have a great week everyone!

All my life I prayed to be free from the prison of obesity -- morbid obesity, that is. I tried pills, shots, shakes, no carbs, no fat, low calorie diets, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and countless other programs -- all with some results but never long term. With every failed attempt, I prayed even harder because I knew from reading the bible that God wanted me to be in good health. And I was not. Sure there were times along the way when I thought He'd turned a deaf ear but even deeper than that shallow thought was a stronger belief that He did hear me. And He would answer. I did not know when but I knew that He would. When He answered, I had no doubt that I was doing the right thing.

Everything about my gastric bypass experience was divine. I knew when I began my research that I was headed in the right direction, for me. All of my pre-op testing was a breeze when I'd heard of delays and issues. My insurance company approved it right away and I was scheduled within a month. Even greater was the fact that it cost me $165 out of pocket. A friend working at the same company with the same insurance at the same hospital with the same surgeon paid $4,000, the standard 10% co-pay. I called and called and insisted that the bill should be more. They assured me it should not. I paid what was due and have never received another bill.

I'm a bit of a sucker for memoirs. I even read A Million Little Pieces after James Frey was deemed a fraud. (He's still working, by the way. No such thing as bad press, right?) I just finished The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan.

Jacki Donaldson read and posted about the book a while back. But I read it after a new friend of mine recommended it. She recently went through the excruciating experience of losing her mother to ALS while living an airplane ride apart. I am currently going through the same thing.

The Middle Place instead involves dealing with cancer, but the themes involving parent-child relationships, distance, disease, and faith are the same. Kelly, who survived her cancer, struggles with all of it, but particularly faith. She is baffled by the Buddhist truth of detachment, "even to people." She still struggles with faith to this day, several years later. I struggle with it a bit as well and I suspect all of us do to some degree. It's the very nature of faith, after all. It's transparent, intangible.

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Living in this day and age, people have information at their fingertips to help them live longer and healthier. But apart from all the nutritional factoids, aged individuals can tell you what the Holy Grail of Longevity is.

When a recent survey was conducted, 100 senior citizens aged 100 to 104 piped up on what the secret to their success was. Almost a fourth of them echoed the same thing: faith and spirituality do more for a long life than medical care coupled with good genes.

It's hard to argue with their mentality of "living a good, clean life." But there must be something about the peace of mind that one can get from a lifelong commitment to faith. So can you guess what these same people considered their greatest achievement in life? Beating out their careers, it was raising a family, they said.

Apart from your regular diet and exercise routine, how does faith play a role in your overall health?

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