That's Fit

Everyone knows it's more fun to gain weight than to lose it. And if you're getting paid big bucks to gain it, well, all the better. But there comes a time when the bagels and fried food have to be put away and the weight has to come back off.

That's what happened to Beyonce Knowles. She was asked to gain 20 pounds for her role as Etta James in Cadillac Dreams. But when shooting was finished, she was left not only with a paycheck, but with 20 pounds extra weight, which she had to lose for psychological thriller Obsessed. "I had to lose it," she said, "I was so angry with myself. I was like, 'D'oh! Why do you have to go through this?'"

Losing weight is such hard work. I've always wondered about celebrities who gain weight for roles. Matt Damon recently buried his fit figure under a layer of extra pounds for the movie The Informant, and Hillary Swank will put on 20 to 30 pounds (ironically) for the movie version of the book French Women Don't Get Fat. Not only is it hard mentally, I imagine, to get back into healthy habits after being out of them so long. But isn't all that yo-yoing hard on your body? Maybe not as hard as giving up a million-plus dollar role in a major motion picture, I guess. What do you think?

Parents are always trying to get their teens to eat healthfully, serving them healthy breakfasts and dinners as often as they can. But what about the hours in between? It's during those times, which typically fall around the normal school lunch period, that many kids make their own dietary choices. And, as a recent CDC study discovered, most high schools aren't offering the type of healthy choices you are at home.

A CDC study of 36 states found that in some states, it's very easy for teens to get unhealthy junk food both in their lunch lines or throughout the day in vending machines.

Amazingly, this is actually an improvement over recent years. In a related study, the percentage of high schools selling junk food during lunch periods dropped from 53 percent in 2004 to about 37 percent in 2006. However, there was not any change in the percentage of high schools selling junk food during non lunchtime hours, such as candy in vending machines or in the school store.

Prenuptial agreements are traditionally drawn up to protect parties in the case the marriage fails and they need to divide their assets. But according to Michelle Andrews, over at U.S. News & World Report, lawyers are increasingly seeing prenups that include clauses related to health.

Some potential spouses want to be assured their betrothed won't gain weight or pick up smoking. Others want a guarantee on how many times a week they'll have sex or, in one case, put a weight restriction on physical intimacy. Of course, these clauses aren't legally enforceable, but I suppose if your fiance asks you to agree to them, then you know up front exactly what you're getting into.

We all want our spouses and partners to take good care of themselves. But putting healthy habits on a legal contract? That feels controlling and manipulative to me, not emotions you want to feel when you're saying "I do, till death to us part." I'd have run, far and fast, if my husband had approached me with one of these.

What about you? Are you willing to put your health requirements on paper? Or does this give you the same icky feeling it does me?

As we've mentioned many times before here on That's Fit, most Chinese take-out menu items can be a disaster to your diet. Many are high in sugar and sodium, while some also contain a great deal of unhealthy fat. But could there possibly be something else in Chinese food that causes weight gain? There is indeed, say researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and it may be something you were aware of.

Monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer frequently used in Asian cuisine, can cause you to gain weight, new research published in the journal Obesity suggests. Rural Chinese men and women who consumed the most MSG were more than twice as likely to be overweight than their peers who didn't use the additive.

In the past, no definitive connection between MSG and weight gain in humans could be made, primarily because it was considered to difficult to measure the intake of the additive from processed foods. However, the UNC research team devised a method of analyzing certain data, which for the first time provided a clearer picture on the possible MSG/weight gain link. To read more about their findings, click here.

While Laila Ali has certainly been in the public eye through her boxing, appearance on Dancing With the Stars, and her job hosting American Gladiators, she's not under quite the same pressure as some Hollywood starlets to stay thin throughout her pregnancy. However, in an interview with Pregnancy, Laila spills about her stresses, and I think many of us can easily relate.

"I always thought I was going to gain a lot of weight because I'm a big girl naturally," said Laila, who, at 5'11' normally weighs in at around 175. "I thought, 'Oh God, I'm going to be like 250 lbs. and huge.' I know a lot of women have that fear. But, because I'm already a big girl, I was just imagining myself to be giant."

Her concern doesn't really stem from vanity -- she's mainly worried about having a big baby. She has a big sweet tooth, and she's working hard to control it, especially now that she's in her third trimester. She continues to hit the gym four days a week for cardio on the elliptical and light upper body weights, and it sounds like she's appreciating her body through her pregnancy. I bet she'll follow a sensible plan after the baby to get back to her fighting weight!

Most women don't intend to gain huge amounts of weight during pregnancy, but for many, it happens. However, more and more women are intent on keeping as slim a figure as possible throughout their pregnancies, with the ultimate goal being that, from behind, one wouldn't even be able to tell she was pregnant, and this trend is being referred to as pregorexia.

After seeing Nicole Richie get almost immediately back into her pre-pregnancy jeans, and watching Nicole Kidman stay lean throughout her pregnancy, women are looking at being able to wear regular clothes well into their pregnancies as a badge of honor.

Staying fit and healthy throughout your pregnancy is a great thing -- if you're not sure how much you should be eating when you're eating for two, Diet-blog has a guide to how many extra calories pregnant women should aim to consume daily in each trimester (and talk to your doctor about diet and exercise, of course). But remember, each woman's body handles pregnancy differently, and some women are more prone to gaining weight than others. The focus needs to be on maintaining a healthy pregnancy weight, not on how thin you look from the back.

Self magazine, a popular health and fitness publication for women, ran an article titled "When Weight Gain is a Warning" in their current issue.

If, after you've ruled out the more likely causes -- a hiatus from the gym, a few too many pina coladas, etc. -- the cause of the weight gain remains a mystery, certain health problems may be to blame. The article highlights a few that may be cause for pause.

A 5-POUND GAIN MAY MEAN...

Sleep Apnea. If you're also snoring excessively at night, have been experiencing headaches and feel tired all the time, sleep apnea may be the culprit. How it links to the five pound weight gain is as follows: sleep apnea greatly disrupts sleep, which in turn causes a rise in cortisol levels and the subsequent accumulation of fat. And, if you're not getting much sleep, you're obviously not going to exactly be an animal in the gym (well, maybe a sloth).

As fabulous as we at That's Fit think this blog is, the truth is there are hundreds of wonderful blogs on healthy living to be seen all over the blogosphere. So in this feature, Fit Links, we'll introduce you to some that have caught our eye.

While preparing for a recent camping trip, I decided to splurge and get my kids those little mini boxes of cereal. I remembered using them as a kid and thought they'd get a kick out of them. I was disappointed to discover that you can no longer eat the cereal directly from the box, but what surprised me more was that the boxes were about twice as big as I remember them.

My husband and I began wondering -- what came first? Are the cereal boxes bigger because people eat more now than they did 25 years ago? Or are people bigger now because portion sizes are growing out of control? (Seriously. One of those boxes would not even fit when we poured it into our cereal bowl.) It's all very chicken-and-the-egg.

So when I returned home and saw Mark's post on portion distortion, I laughed out loud. He's thinking the same thing I am! Divine Caroline talks about portion sizes then and now. And Rochelle at A Natural Choice reminds us what portion sizes should look like in the first place.

Got a blog you'd like to see featured on Fit Links? Tell us about it in comments!

In many ways, celebrities are just like the rest of us. Some of them pack on the pounds during pregnancy, while others stay relatively fit. Some of them love to exercise, while others want nothing to do with it.

Milla Jovovich is one of those celebrities who experience major weight gain during her pregnancy, and, according to her trainer Harley Pasternak, she "is not someone who embraces exercise." She got up to 192 pounds by the time she gave birth in November, and then she had to be ready to be filmed in a bikini less than half a year later.

She got back down to her goal of 130 pounds in five months by ... get ready for it ... working out hard and eating well. I know, it's not exactly breaking news, but we all know this is the system that works. Milla trained with Harley five days a week, and he prepared three meals a day for her and two snacks.

It's easy to assign blame when it comes to our collective weight gain. Poor food choices, sedentary lifestyles, overindulgence, lack of sleep, etc. But what if there was something else going on? Something far less obvious as the reasons mentioned? It turns out there may be.

A recent study, published in International Journal Obesity, found that certain viruses and bacteria may also play a role in weight gain. Specifically, these microscopic belly expanders may affect our ability to absorb nutrients from food and influence hormones that regulate appetite and metabolic rate. In separate studies, researchers discovered that overweight people tend to have more of these particular types of viruses than fitter people, suggesting that a link between the two variables is not outside the realm of possibility.

Does this mean that viruses are solely to blame for the girth of our nation? I wouldn't exactly make that leap just yet. I think the aforementioned reasons -- poor food choices, sedentary lifestyles, etc. -- are far more likely to be causing us to run out of belt notches. Still, it's an interesting theory, certainly one that merits further investigation.

How often does this happen: You're watching your favorite show on TV, munching on a snack as you do. Going into this whole situation, your intention was to only eat a small portion of that food, but you instead ended up devouring the whole thing. Are you to blame? Well, yeah. Completely? Mmmm ... pretty much. C'mon, there has to be something else to blame? OK, fine, you can blame the TV show a little bit.

This assignment of blame is not entirely unfounded. Obviously, the TV show itself didn't make you eat more (leaving out the psychological effects of some commercials, of course); rather, it was the distraction the TV show created that may have contributed to your overindulgence. For example, RealAge.com cites a related study, wherein women who ate snack cakes while playing a video game wanted to eat more of the food than the women who ate without any distraction.

Evidently, if you eat the same food for a period of time, your palate essentially becomes bored. You feel full sooner and don't want as much of that food. This is known as sensory-specific satiety, say the folks at RealAge, and it helps keeps your appetite in check. But get distracted for an extended period of time, and this appetite-control mechanism gets turned off.

If you pound a couple cans of soda per day, you're drinking your waistline bigger with each gulp. Even drinking one regular soda a day really isn't the best idea, for it drives your blood sugar through the roof and boosts insulin levels -- both have been linked to a number of health complications. So is drinking diet soda the answer?

Not so, says a growing body of evidence. Studies show that people who drink diet soda daily have higher obesity rates than non-drinkers. As if that weren't enough, there's plenty of information out there suggesting that dark soda (diet or regular) can contribute to the growth of kidney stones.

If you're already rolling your eyes in anticipation of what you know I'm going to say next (you're right, I am going to say it), please allow me to at least offer some tips on making a more interesting drink out of it. Here it is ... ready? Drink water. There, I said it. Now let me say this much -- if H2O is a bit too boring and flavorless for you, try adding fresh fruit to your water jug, such as berries or lemon or orange slices. There's truly no better way to stay hydrated and replenish your fluids than drinking copious amounts of water. Sorry for sounding like a Boy Scout about it, but it's the truth.

Americans are extremely productive people. If there is one thing we are good at doing, it's working. The unfortunate downside of our productivity in the workplace, however, is our consequential lack of sleep.

All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy. But, all work, some play, and no sleep make Jack an extremely unhealthy boy. Getting less than seven to eight hours of sleep each night can cause an increase in ghrelin levels, the hormone responsible for making you crave salty, sugary, and fatty foods.

If you're having trouble squeezing in enough sleep at night, you can still benefit a great deal from a 30-minute power nap during the day. The trick is to not nap past the 30-minute mark, for it is as that point when your body begins entering in the deeper stages of sleep. And, waking up during this portion of the sleep cycle could potentially leave you feeling tired again. So, stick to 30 minutes and under and you should feel plenty refreshed and recharged, in addition to being able to stave off cravings for comfort foods.

While Jennifer Lopez was pregnant, there were rumors that she was unhappy with, even embarrassed by, the amount of weight she gained. However, she's now proudly announcing that she put on 50 pounds while carrying her twins, and though she acknowledges that it's a lot, she feels she had good reason.

She told OK! Magazine, "I gained a good amount of weight, which I was focused on because twins can sometimes have a low birth weight. I gained 45-50 pounds, a lot for my frame, but for twins it's right on." She also said she was proud of how she looks after giving birth, flaws and all. Lopez even admitted playing with her "little leftover belly."

I've got to say that it's refreshing to see a celebrity who is happy with her post-pregnancy body, even enjoying it a little (or pretending she is). So many stars feel such pressure to drop right back down to a size six (or zero, Nicole Richie), and that's just not realistic for anyone who can't spend all day with trainers and personal chefs.

Think you're a healthy eater? Why? Because the foods you eat are labeled as being a "Healthy Option?" If so, you may also be wondering why your waistlines seems to telling a different story.

It turns out that most people will consume 131 percent more calories when they select food labeled "Healthy Option" on menus and on packaging, say researchers from Cornell University. What's more, because they're convinced that their meal choice was low in calories (which, incidentally, researchers also found is seldom the case), many people will go on to have more drinks, sides, and desserts.

At the end of the day, you're Healthy Option can quickly become the biggest challenge to your opting to eat healthy.