In short - the answer is no.

I have heard women lament about how as soon as they got married, 5-20 pounds immediately appeared on their frame, as if a wedding band were a magnet for saddlebags and love handles. The same deflection is heard every Fall when a bunch of kids trot off to college and promptly gain “the freshman fifteen”.

Image: stock.xchng

No, your husband and your marriage are not making you fat. And this is coming from a woman who has probably put on close to twenty pounds since the wedding day! To be fair, the slide downhill probably started a year or two before the actual wedding, but never the less - in the last 18 months or so…the difference is noticeable, as much as I hate to admit it.

Could I just blame Paul? Make it his fault that I don’t eat skimpy salads for dinner? Yeah, probably. He might even absorb that accusation just because who wants to be the guy to say, “Eve, you’re the reason you can’t fit into your favorite jeans anymore, not me.” No one wants to be that guy.

No, it’s not Paul’s fault. It is my concern and my stress, work, life that has caused exercise and moderation to escape my brain completely. The downside of an active childhood is that you can eat whatever you want without a second thought. As soon as that is paired up with an office job and long hours…the pounds are hard to stave off.

Don’t blame your husband if you are battling with your weight. That’s only going to stop you from doing something about it. Making it a consequence of married life only stalls the ability to change and start feeling better about yourself.

Okay, easy part is over. I know who is to blame. (Me.) Now the hard part - actually doing something about it.

Have you fallen off the healthy food wagon? It happens once in a while even when you have the best healthy eating intentions. I’m at that point right now. The last week or so have been hectic, and my food choices haven’t been great. I haven’t completely blown it, but need to get back on track.

If you have a lapse in your healthy eating plan how do you get back on track? Over the last few years I’ve learned a few things that help me get back to healthy eating when I start to stray:

• Don’t beat yourself up about it.
• Get right back on plan as soon as you think you can.
• Use it as a learning experience and let it make you stronger for the next time.

How do you get back on track when you fall off your healthy eating plan?

Image via stock.xpert.com

You may be getting older everyday, but I’m getting younger.

 About a year and a half ago, after I had my son, I went on RealAge.com . I was only 33 at the time, but after taking the questionnaire I discovered that my real age – the age of my body due to my unhealthy habits – was 38.5 years old!

Hello! Who wants to be five-and-a-half years older than they really are? Not me.

I joined the gym and started a cardio, weights and yoga. I took Chantix and quit smoking. I changed the entire way our whole family eats based on You, The Owner’s Manual. I overhauled my social support network and I grew closer to God, reawakened my spirituality and learned to meditate.

Yesterday I took the RealAge quiz again and found that while I am now 34.5 my real age has gone from 38.5 to 33.7.

This time my list of things to improve on only included vitamins and finding out what my cholesterol and blood pressure numbers are (I know they are normal, but I don’t know the exact numbers.)

What’s your Real Age?

If I were a smart blogger, I would have created a survey which would help determine the eating habits of small home business owners.

However, it would probably depress me…because, I think most of us in this category don’t eat as well as we should.

I know I don’t — which is weird because I’m kind of a self-proclaimed foodie.

I’m hoping in the year ahead, I change several of my bad habits — in the mean time, I thought I would give you a glimpse of how this small business owner  deals with meals during the working week:

• Breakfast: Tea
• Morning snack: Handful of Juju Bees (the thinking woman’s candy).
• Mid-morning snack: Handful of Wheat Thins
• Lunch: Several pieces of cheddar cheese.
• Afternoon snack: Couple of olives.
• Pre-dinner snack: Stand at counter, scarf down left-over take out food.
• Dinner: Tomato salad, beer?
• Post dinner snack: Doritos
• Post, post dinner snack, while preparing the morning’s plans: Twizzler’s.

I don’t know how many calories that is, but I know it’s not enough…and I’m sure JuJu Bees are not a food group.

Like many challenges that face the small business owner, taking good care of themselves is high on the list.

So in 2007, I’m going to at least try to schedule health-oriented mealtimes…at the table!

I have never been on a diet, but I have to imagine that having to manage and keep track of calories has got to be one of life’s more tedious endeavors.

I’m sure there must be thousands of books, articles, magazines, talk-show hosts, videos, experts, Doctors, movie stars, blogs and bloggers dedicated to THE best, most efficient, logical, easy, hard, demented, strenuous and not strenuous ways to lose weight.

It dawned on me that common sense and humor have a lot to do with success or failure too.

In the spirit of making fun of diets (not of people on diets), I have to put together my list of simple, everyday tasks — each with it’s own mathematical caloric equivalent — that are intended to take a more uplifting, if not sarcastic look at calorie-counting: (Talk to your doctor if you think these suggestions are stupid).

• Parmigiano cheese grating — 25 calories
• Phone conversation with mom — 175,000 calories
• Swiffering dog’s hair (every minute, of every day) — 85 calories
• Hanging window treatments — and then calling mom for help — 2 million calories
• Untangling holiday lights — 75 calories
• Looking up hundreds of holiday cookie recipies on the web — 10 calories
• Opening and closing refrigerator hoping there will be a chocolate cake (see definition of insanity) — 30 calories
• Imagining what to buy with your holiday bonus: 5 calories
• Worrying that you won’t get a holiday bonus because your boss hates you: 15 calories
• Negotiating with husband to clean out garage (which includes throwing out corroded golf ball collection) 100 calories.
• Getting rid of every pair of shoes that you thought were cute, but are really ridiculous: 20 points

I promise, if you follow this plan, you will be as svelte as you’ve ever been, and then you can go on Oprah and talk about it. (80 calories.)