With a growing number of overweight people, you're likely to see at least one pot belly on your morning commute.

A pot belly, or beer belly, is excessive fat in the center of the abdomen which makes the belly round and protruding. While women can get a pot belly, they tend to be more prevalent in men. The biggest causes are overeating and a sedentary lifestyle.

The only way to lose a pot belly is to lose weight. You cannot spot train body parts, but crunches may help tone the stomach muscles. Additionally, you must burn more calories than you consume each day, which is easier if you follow a low-fat, reduced-calorie diet and include at least 30 to 60 minutes of vigorous exercise in your daily routine.

Even if you don't have an excessive amount of fat hanging over your jeans, but still want to slim your stomach, avoiding foods that contribute to bloating can help. Cut back on salt and eliminate gassy foods like broccoli, onions and cauliflower. Carbonated drinks (like soda), alcohol, fried foods and spicy meals can also lead to bloating.

If you don't have a pot belly, but want to tweak another body region try these tips from That's Fit:
Love handles
Arms
Shoulders
Legs
Thighs

Incredible abdominals are on everyone's wish list, right? Who wouldn't want a flat belly which is bumpy only because of amazing musculature? Sounds sweet, right? Eating right plays the largest role in your weight management, but without exercises like the ones shown here, incredible abs will never make their debut. Train like this several times a week, watch what you put in your mouth and enjoy your amazing transformation!

For more innovative training videos and waist-slimming recipes from my new book, The Everything Flat Belly Cookbook, visit Fitzness.com.

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If you switch to vegetarian meals for just one day, you'll save about nine pounds of carbon and roughly 890 calories. Do it for two weeks, and you'll cut the carbon footprint by about 122 pounds and your cals by nearly 12,460. Going green isn't just good for the planet -- it's good for swimsuit season too.

Are you ready to bust out your bikini in preparation for baring your bod this summer? Well, if your intention is to not bust out of the thing when you slip it on, then you might want to consider going green. If you're not convinced this is the way to go, then check out what registered dietitian Kate Geagan has to say. The author of "Go Green Get Lean: Trim Your Waistline with the Ultimate Low-Carbon Footprint Diet" says the American diet is the SUV of eating styles. Clearly, it's time to downsize.

• Two weeks of banning beef (raising beef accounts for 18 percent of global warming emissions worldwide, says Geagan) can shave three and a half pounds off your frame.
  
• One month of halving your sugar intake can save you about 7,500 calories (and about 855 pounds of carbon). Geagan says the typical American eats about 150 pounds' worth of sugar in one year. Cut processed foods and sodas for starters.
  

It's all about smart choices, says Geagan. "Every day we make dozens of food choices. Make smarter ones and you can have an immediate impact on the planet and your health." And yes, on that itsy bitsy bikini too.

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Walking is great exercise all on its own. It's perfect for most any fitness level and doesn't require any special equipment. But if you add a few of the following techniques to your daily walk, you can significantly increase the number of calories burned and burn some of that dangerous and unsightly belly fat.

CNN recommends one of three methods for putting the punch into your walking workout:

• Plyometrics: These moves might make you feel a little silly at first, but you'll be the one laughing when that belly felt melts off. Add moves like bounding, jumping, and skipping to your walking workout.
• Hills: This is easy if you live in a hilly neighborhood. Substitute about 25% of your usual flat walking route with a hilly one. If you live in a flat area, you can program a hilly workout into a treadmill instead.
• Intervals: Intervals are surprisingly fun. Just keep up your normal moderate pace for ten minutes, then speed up for one minute. Return to your former pace for three minutes, then speed up again for a minute. Repeat this three or four times, then go back to your moderate pace.
  
  

Check out the full CNN article to find out how to make these walking techniques work for you and get ready to blast that belly fat!

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The recommended amount of calories for most adult men and women is somewhere around 2,000 per day (give or take, depending on factors such as weight, basal metabolic rate, activity level, etc.). Now, factor in the 458 calories the average American takes in a day from juice and soft drink consumption (source: Obesity), and it's clear that there isn't all too much room left for actual food.

Calories have to count. If getting 2,000 of them a day is the goal, wasting almost a quarter of them on sugary drinks -- many of which offer no nutritional value -- is truly doing your body a disservice. This is the same reason why I'm not much of a fan of those 100-calorie snacks, as I've written in the past. True, these so-called "healthy packs" contain far fewer calories than the more traditional size packages, but there's nothing healthy about empty calories.

If you're drinking almost 500 calories a day, in addition to popping one or two 100-calorie snack packs, a waistline expansion is likely in your future. The only way to prevent it would be to cut back on the actual real food you eat, which is probably the worst option. Rid your diet of the soda and snack packs instead. As for your real food consumption, if you stick to the suggested average of 2,000 calories a day, you should be just fine.

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Entertainment Tonight closed a recent show with a blurb about Marie Osmond and her recent weight loss. A brand new Marie Osmond, the hosts called her just prior to flashing before and after photographs of the former Dancing with the Stars contestant.

Forty pounds this Osmond girl has lost and boy is she proud. She's never looking back, she says, and is simply in awe that she has a waistline again.

A combination of dancing and Nutrisystem is what helped Osmond combat her out-of-shape and too-much-weight condition. She looks great. Congratulations to her.

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Lisa Marie Presley is one celebrity who is not putting up with media reports pegging her as fat. In fact, she's suing British newspaper the Daily Mail for suggesting she has an unhealthy appetite and is gaining weight like her father Elvis did.

It's not appetite plaguing Presley. It's pregnancy. Yep, the 40-year-old singer is pregnant. That's why her waistline is expanding.

Presley is none too happy to be announcing her news in this fashion and on this MySpace Celebrity blog, she writes with fervor about sharing her happy news amidst a media attack.

Will Presley win this lawsuit? It's a possibility, says Mark Stephens, a leading London media law expert who says "for an observation that would not be actionable in the USA, she will undoubtedly be recovering damages in London."

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Although the health-conscious avoids meaty items like hamburgers, ice cream and pizza, can those foods be good for your figure? Some think so.

Those foods all sounds like diet disasters, but items like sirloin tips, T-bones or strip steaks can be a decent protein source if dieting. While plant-based protein sources can be much better, many just can't stomach too many veggies every day.

In Australian, researchers found that overweight women partaking in protein-rich diets that contained many meat items lost more weight than those who curtailed meat intake and calories while eating more carbs. As always,a very balanced diet is probably the way to go for most people ,, just don't go too far one way or the other.

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Emmy-award winning Rachael Ray, host of the syndicated talk program Rachael Ray, guru of two Food Network series, cookbook author, and magazine extraordinaire, has a thing or two to say about holiday weight watching.

The holidays are no time be watching one's waistline, Ray tells OK! magazine.

"Oh, I don't care about any of that crap," says Ray. "I try to eat well so I can afford not to worry about any of it, but I don't care about my size. I have clothes in four different sizes in my closet!"

Don't think this 39-year-old is careless year-round. A Mediterranean diet is standard fare in her family, and she's sure it keeps her healthy.

""It's largely olive oil, vegetables and meats," she reports. "We've never been much into sweets in my family, so I don't think the holidays are too bad for our arteries."

Check out OKmagazine.com for more stories and recipes from Rachael Ray.

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If you're a guy who's sporting a good size beer belly these days, you may want to consider some measures to trim down. That's because larger waistlines are characteristic of metabolic syndrome; an aggregation of unhealthy physical traits that increases one's risk of heart disease and diabetes.

As if a risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease weren't reason enough to slim down, research from Cornell Medical College in New York revealed that waist size is also a fairly accurate predictor of potential prostate problems. In the study, 88 men (Note: the average age of study participants was 62 years old) who experienced moderate-to-severe untreated unrinary issues symptomatic of enlarged prostates were grouped according to waist circumference.

The researchers discovered that prostate volume, prostate specific antigen level, voiding symptoms, erectile dysfunction, and ejaculatory dysfunction were at increased levels in men with larger waistlines.

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