Not too long ago, Poppy Montgomery was packing on the pounds -- about 70 of them, within the course of nine months. It was all part of a pregnancy characterized by lots of eating. Yes, the Without a Trace star ate without any guilt while growing baby Jackson in her belly, and she couldn't be happier about all that Häagen-Dazs ice cream she consumed. "I loved every second of gaining that weight," she says, "and I would do it again."

Poppy is still pretty happy. She's got a beautiful baby boy and almost one year after delivering her bundle of joy, she is looking amazingly trim and toned. So trim and toned, in fact, that she is baring her bikini body in People magazine's November 24 issue (page 88, if you're dying to check her out).

Poppy's secret: Recognizing she couldn't keep overindulging and signing up for the meal-delivery service Sunfare just three weeks after giving birth. Restricting her calories to 1,200 a day and working out with the P90X program (our readers say this workout system really works and from the looks of Poppy, I think they're right on), Poppy earned herself wiggle room in her pre-baby size 27 jeans. Now, this is one hot celebrity momma.

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Most people play to win. Otherwise, what's the point of the game? And whether we admit it or not, there's always a part of us that wants to be number one. But each of us has also had to contend with not winning, too. And that's OK.

In fact, it's more than OK -- in a moving article in The New York Times, losing is praised as a necessary and important life lesson. Losing not only teaches us humility but earning our victories the hard way teaches us how valuable it is to dedicate ourselves to something. As columnist John Scwartz points out: "Americans tend to frame things in terms of contests and wars that must be won or lost. Many challenges, however, are about hanging in there and managing a bad situation. Losing prepares you for the slog that is life. The world doesn't give us many finish lines, but it does give us the long run." To read more, click here.

I couldn't agree more. Your thoughts?

(via Well Blog)

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Rumor has it Get Smart actress Anne Hathaway has lost 28 pounds since splitting last month with her boyfriend, Italian businessman Raffaello Follieri, alleged to have been involved in wire fraud and money laundering. The ex-boyfriend is in jail awaiting trial. Hathaway is apparently wasting away.

Says one unnamed source: "She's slipped down from a [US] size 8 to size 4 and is hardly sleeping. She knows finishing with him was the best thing for her in the long run but she misses him and is worried sick about what will happen to him."

See that photo to the right? That's Hathaway not too many days ago on July 10. How does she look to you? Compare to the gallery of photos below, featuring the actress prior to her break-up and reported weight loss. I'll share my opinion after the break.

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For women who exercise, a sports bra is an essential piece of workout gear. For one Colorado state hiker, her sports bra became a lifesaver.

Jessica Bruinsma fell while hiking in the Bavarian Alps. Too injured to leave the place where she fell, she took off her sports bra and tied it to a cable that lumbermen used to transport timber. As luck would have it, the cable was out of service when she fell. When it was repaired, her bra moved down the line until it reached the bottom, alerting workers who then called authorities.

Jessica's quick thinking may have saved her life, but she's not letting this accident slow her down. If she recovers from this injury in time, she plans on training for a marathon.

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Fitzness Fiends is a section devoted to you, the reader! We all have learned so much on our path to becoming more fit, and now it's time to learn from and inspire each other! Fitzness Fiends are constantly working to better themselves. Some are perfect, some are not. All have health on the mind. Please send Fitz your answers to these questions with a photo of yourself. Time for you to be the motivator!

Name: Laurie

Age: 46

Occupation: Stained Glass Artist

How often do you exercise? Daily

What type of exercise do you do? Weight training, recumbent biking, and walking my dog!

What gets you to workout, even when you're feeling lazy? Knowing that I feel lazy, because I haven't worked out yet.

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Fitzness Fiends is a section devoted to you, the reader! We all have learned so much on our path to becoming more fit, and now it's time to learn from and inspire each other! Fitzness Fiends are constantly working to better themselves. Some are perfect, some are not. All have health on the mind. Please send Fitz your answers to these questions with a photo of yourself. Time for you to be the motivator!

Name: Vishaal Gor

Age: 23

Occupation: Documentation Specialist

How often do you exercise? Something EVERY day.

What type of exercise do you do? Interval jogging, elliptical, step mill, stair master, bike, dance, yoga, Pilates, weights, and Disneyland walking every week.

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Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is 110 pounds lighter than he once was. The 50-year-old presidential candidate shed so much weight that he reversed diabetes and heart disease and has become one of the most vocal advocates for the fitness movement.

Tipping the scales at 300 pounds a few years ago, Huckabee couldn't even lace his sneakers. Now, he's running marathons.

On finding time to exercise during his hectic schedule, Huckabee says, "I don't find the time. I make it."

And there you have it. Huckabee makes a conscious and deliberate effort to stay fit. That's what it takes. It doesn't take a gym, he says. Just look around your living room and work space and find ways to move more. Lean against a wall and do wall push-ups, for example. You'll strengthen your your chest, shoulders, triceps, and biceps with this one exercise.

Fitness is a win-win scenario, says Huckabee. You'll power your metabolism with trained muscles. You'll shed fat faster and keep it off. You'll achieve strength and energy. And you'll be more likely to survive and enjoy each day of your life. What a pay-off.

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Probably one of the scariest things that can come to mind when a person thinks "invasive surgery" is whether or not the medical team will accidentally sew you up with an extra sponge inside. That ranks right up there with the fear of being medically paralyzed while still conscious. In fact, did you know about 1,500 patients end up with stuff left in their bodies each year?

Most of these objects are sponges, which no doubt cause complications down the road. Doctors are human too, after all. Thankfully a very non-human technology is starting to gain traction that could really help medical professionals keep track of sponges easier. Enter Loyola University Medical Center. This is the first facility in the Midwest to use the new system that could potentially save lives.

This is how it works: Each sponge has a unique bar code, much like grocery store items. Before it actually be used on your body during surgery, it has to be scanned into the system. Only an authorized individual keeping count can track the sponges. If a sponge goes in or comes out, it gets scanned. The system will throw a tantrum if a doctor tries to end the procedure with an improper count of returned sponges. This won't replace the good old fashioned hand-count, but it will certainly help. Let's hope more hospitals adopt the new technology across the country.

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Bear Grylls (at right) used to be a more cuddly bear. The athletic star of Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild recently revealed to me that he used to be quite overweight. After completing his service to the British Special Forces and getting married, Bear gained two and half stone! Not familiar with stones? Well, each of the British survival expert's extra stones equal a whopping 14 pounds! That's quite a lot. 35 pounds to be exact.

Bear is ripped now. How did he make the transformation? He decided to! Bear says that he just was sick of being a loaf and changed his ways. He also was suffering from back pain. (He broke his back during a free-falling parachuting accident). To stay in shape for his adventures and remain pain free, Bear trains three hours a day. He varies his workouts with: martial arts, running, climbing, yoga, swimming, pull-ups, push-ups and more. When he's not eating all sorts of disgusting live and dead animals to demonstrate survival skills, Bear avoids meat and dairy. He feasts on fruits, veggies, and whole grains.

The guy knows what it's like to be out of shape, and has decided that's not the way he wants his life to be. His training is not 'easy' for him, but it's something he feels passionate about. Bear is not chubby at all anymore. In fact, his ripped. What a lucky lady his wife is to get to cuddle up with that Bear.

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Are you in your mid-to-late 20s and still living with your parents? Did you spend four or five years at university and wind up thousands of dollars in debt, working at a job that you can't imagine going back to tomorrow let alone for the rest of you life? Are all of your friends starting to settle down, get married, buy homes and have kids? And finally, does all of the above really freak you out?

If you answered yes to these questions, you could be suffering from a quarterlife crisis. This relatively new phenomena is similar to the better known midlife crisis, but while the midlife crisis is known to affect men (and women to a lesser extent) in their 40s who want to reclaim their youth, the quarterlife crisis attacks the psyche of twentysomethings trying to negotiate the ever-expanding gap between adolescence and adulthood.

I once participated in a class discussion about the affliction at university and nearly every other student admitted that they suffered from mild to extreme anxiety over the direction that their lives were (or weren't) taking. Perhaps the worst thing is that there's no solution or cure, we all just have to make the best choices we can with the information that we've learned so far and ride it out until we hit our 30s.

If you are suffering from a quarterlife crisis, you can at least take comfort in the fact that there's an entire Web site devoted to the affliction where you can chat with thousands of others going through the same things you are. You may be feeling lost and misguided, but at least you're not alone.

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Having weight loss surgery isn't just about committing to the moment and the surgery, but about committing to a permanent lifestyle change as well. Surgery is no guarantee of weight loss, but research shows that surgery patients who make it to more of their follow-up appointments have better success in the long run.

Unfortunately one of the biggest reasons patients miss follow-up appointments is lack of insurance coverage, but hopefully studies and statistics like these will help change that. In the meantime do what you can to get to your appointments -- even years later it really helps the payoff to your health!

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So you've lost some weight, maybe you've reached your goal or maybe you're just partly there, but how do you hold on to the progress you've made? Or maybe you just can't seem to get the scale to move, despite an exercise routine and cutting back on calories. According to this article, an important concept to remember if you want lasting weight loss is that quality counts. The quality of the food and the nutrition you give your body, the quality of the exercises you're doling, it all adds up. There really is no cheating when it comes to living a healthier lifestyle -- you're either doing it or you're not. There's no bluffing your way through.

So try some of these tips, and try them for real: don't drastically cut calories, keep junk food out of sight (therefore out of mind, hopefully anyway), make fitness a priority, beware of drinking in too many calories, change your mindset, realize that every little bit counts, find your inspiration, and get help if (when) you need it.

These ideas aren't easy to do every minute of every day, but my favorite is "every little bit counts." So give yourself some credit, even if you just did a "little bit" today, it's still something. Then do two "little bits" tomorrow!

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The Breathing Diet? The Bigger Hips Diet? The Smoker's Diet? Do these exist? No, but if a few readers over at MSNBC had their way, they just might. These wacky workout inquiries are all fun to read, and the answers return to the same theme over and over again -- there's no magic pill, no special exercise that will help you lose weight in exactly all the right places.

As I read this article, something struck me. The people asking these questions are looking at exercise as a means to an end -- something they must endure to have something they want, a better body. There are many days when I drag myself to my workout, doing it only to appease the guilt, or not doing it at all on days when my conscience will let me off the hook. If there was a magic tea to whittle my hips or a breathing exercise that would trim my waistline while I enjoyed the upcoming return of Lost, I would probably jump at it.

But by categorizing exercise as a chore, I think we do ourselves a great disservice. Our bodies were built for motion and the benefits we reap from regular physical activity shows that. Rather than trying to dodge exercise, maybe we should celebrate it. I love the burst of energy I get during a workout and how strong I feel afterward. After I finally convince myself to strap on my shoes and get warmed up, I even enjoy the working part of a workout.

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