I’ve always admired those serene, slender women who gracefully saunter through life, their lean legs and contented faces carrying them through even the most turbulent of times.

Until recently, I’d assumed they probably had the same amount of stress as the rest of us, only they were self-disciplined enough to take out their frustrations at the gym instead of in front of the fridge.

Turns out, though, maybe they aren’t as stressed as the rest of us. Maybe that’s their secret to being slender: chilling out by mellow meditation, instead of cooling their heels with a vat of Chunky Monkey.

At the end of a two-year study, women who followed a programme of yoga and meditation had lost weight and kept it off, while those who focused purely on exercise and nutrition had not.

The ‘relaxed’ women were also generally happier and healthier at the end of the study.

Experts believe that reducing stress stops cravings for fatty foods and sweets.

The study suggests that dieting and exercise — although they do bring health improvements — may not actually be the key to weight loss.

All together now: Ommmmm. [Link]

In a world where even beauties like Jessica Alba are air-brushed so their hips look like a boys and their breasts jut from their chests like tv stands, what hope is there for normal women?

No wonder so many of us, constantly struggling to lose weight, already feel like we might as well go eat worms.

Then again, perhaps those worms are the secret to looking like Jessica Alba after all?

Although I forgot to mention it here, I flew down to Austin on Tuesday to be with my mother following her hernia surgery. Ordinarily, that kind of travel spells disaster for my efforts to diet and exercise. Not this time, however.

First thing I did upon arriving at her house: stand on her scale. (This isn’t as callous as it sounds: she was recovering in the hospital and didn’t feel up to visitors.) Granted, her scale was kinder than mine by a couple of pounds, but I figured it gave me a good baseline by which to weigh myself for the rest of the visit.

Second thing I did: drive to the grocery store. Since I have Celiac disease, and can’t eat gluten in any form, dieting can get extra tricky. If I get too hungry, but don’t have healthy yet gluten-free foods on hand, it’s too tempting to reach for potato chips, cheese or some other calorie-laden quick fix.

To prevent that, I bought a variety of salad fixings and fruit, brown rice and a carton of egg whites. (My one splurge was a small package of tortilla chips just in case I found myself dying for something to crunch besides my own knuckles.) After an hour in the kitchen I had several small salads fixed, wrapped and ready-to-eat in the fridge. Ditto with sliced fruit and brown rice. By the time I got her home, I was confident I’d not only be able to stick to my diet but would be able to feed her something more healthy than the take-out food she usually lives on.

I’ve started both mornings that I’ve been here by exercising for a half-hour in front of her TV. Nothing spectacular, mind you: some jogging in place, push-ups (the girl kind), squats and lunges, some dumbbell work and, of course, crunches. Lots and lots of crunches. So many, in fact, that at one point my mother wondered aloud whether she could’ve avoided hernia surgery had she been better about exercising her abdominals. (Answer: well, duh.)

And, of course, I’ve continued to sprinkle Sensa on all of my food without fail.

So now that I head home tomorrow morning, I figured I’d stand on her scale one more time before bedtime. You know, just to see if I’ve been a good girl on my diet or not.

Baby, I must’ve been extra good, because somehow I’ve lost another 2 pounds while I’ve been here. Sure hope my scale agrees when I get home!

Weight loss is continuing, albeit at a slower pace. I’ve been exercising quite a bit more lately, so as the scale stops reflecting rapid changes, I’m trying to convince myself that I’m replacing fat with muscle.

One truly good thing for my diet/exercise efforts: we moved my office from the basement (where there was a fridge conveniently located nearby) to the top floor of the house. Now when I want a snack I have to hustle down 26 steps, which isn’t really that big of a problem: going downstairs is easy. It’s the 26 steps to get back to my office that slow me down. Ditto if I want a cigarette (we don’t smoke in the house).

Yesterday, those trips — along with a few extras for doing laundry, moving the remainder of my office upstairs, dragging up the votive candle holders and other stuff necessary to prettify my space — added an additional 1109 steps to my daily average. Today my thighs and butt are definitely feeling that increase.

The bad part of moving my office is that I somehow messed up my right rotator cuff. Seriously messed it up. As in, I had to brush my teeth with my left hand today, and turning the steering wheel while driving my son to school was sheer torture. Rather than let this derail my exercise plan, I’m going to see my doctor this morning and demand painkillers. Good ones this time, too.

Of course, that means I’m going to have to step on the doctor’s scale, a self-esteem crushing machine that inevitably says I weigh 10 lbs. more than my home scale does. (I’m convinced that’s intentional since the stress will either trigger a heart attack which would make my doctor more money, or it’ll trigger depression which will make my doctor more money. See, like I said: intentional.)

This time, though, I won’t have to stand there listening to her cluck while I try levitating. This time — even with the stupid scale intentionally inflating my weight — I’ll still check in weighing 15 lbs. less. I’m just not going to give her the satisfaction of admitting I did it by following her advice to eat less and exercise, and that’s intentiona on my part.

After looking over one of my food and exercise logs, Donna B. wondered what BRM was. Well, it’s a typo. I meant to type BMR, which stands for basic metabolic rate. That’s the number of calories your body needs just to live and maintain minimum functions, assuming you didn’t move a muscle all day (e.g., you slept).

Although I’d answered Donna in the comments, she pointed out that this is useful information for those of us trying to diet rationally. So, at her suggestion, I’m sharing that here with you, too.

When it comes to dieting, your individual BMR is the single most important number to determining how many calories you should be getting (or not) per day. Many of us have a tendency to cut calories back too far in the hope of speeding up weight loss. But when you understand your BMR is what’s needed just to keep your lungs and heart working, well, you can see why your body’s metabolism will slow down if you aren’t eating enough calories for those functions along with your other activities.

Ultimately, calculating BMR is a complicated mathematical equation that’s well beyond me:

Yeah. Er, I just use a BMR calculator.

Once you know your BMR it’s easy to figure out how many calories you need to maintain your current weight at your current level of activity:

• Sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
• Lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
• Moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
• Very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
• Extremely active (rigorous hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

So, if you’re trying to lose weight you take your BMR x (whatever your number is) and subtract 15-20% to get the number of calories you should eat in a day. Cut back beyond that and you’ll stall your metabolism, along with putting your health at risk. Eat too much more than that and, well, you just aren’t going to lose weight no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise.

Just keep in mind it’s not safe to go below 1200 calories per day for women, or 1800 calories per day for men. If that’s where your BMR x (whatever your number) – 15-20% takes you then it’s time to give serious thought to upping your activity level.

Dieting in the Big Apple just got a whole lot easier now that chain restaurants are posting the calorie counts of their foods on prominently displayed menu boards. The law requiring such disclosure went into effect in May but enforcement was delayed until last Friday to allow companies to implement the required changes.

Not that everyone’s eager to learn their Cinnabon buns contain a whopping 850 calories each, .

“I’m going to eat whatever I’m going to eat,” said Erika Roberson, 19, after eating at an Applebee’s restaurant. Of course, she’s nineteen years old so perhaps her metabolism can handle the 2,027 calories in an Applebee’s Riblet meal.

But give her a few years to the point where her metabolism slows and salads seem like a more sensible choice. Or not, because even the

Frankly, I love the thought of seeing calorie counts on menus. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect the counts to contain too many surprises. When you order burgers and fries or ribs and slaw you know your plate is a diet-buster.

But what about the hidden chef tricks (like melting pats of butter on plain grilled skinless chicken breasts to improve flavor) that turn seemingly innocent meals into diet land mines? Would you, for instance, have suspected that Pecan-Crusted chicken salad at TGI Friday’s contains 1,360 calories — the equivalent of three double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s?!

I can’t say that calorie counts would necessarily scare me off from ordering an item I was having a serious jones for. But they would enable me to budget the rest of that day’s calories (and possibly the next day’s, too) accordingly. And that means I’d feel better about eating out more often. It also means I’m likely to spend what’s left of our discretionary budget at those restaurants that make my life easier: those who don’t sabotage my diet while still offering choices my non-dieting family members can enjoy, too.

These days, people are cutting back on discretionary spending — whether it’s shopping second-hand or not at all, switching policies to cheap life insurance or going without altogether in favor of filling the tank or taking on second and sometimes even third jobs. One of the first things to go: spending money dining out. Restaurants would be smart to do what they can to attract business, particularly if that means by doing something as simple as posting the calorie content of their menu items.

I’m really not sure what I did right over the past seven days, but I’ve managed to lose five — yes, five! — pounds. Oh, I know most of it’s probably water weight, but if I was carrying around that much excess water I can’t say I’ll shed a tear to see it go.

A couple of things I know I’ve been doing differently (and, apparently, right):

1. Eating breakfast every morning. Specifically, I’ve been eating All-Bran cereal. Yes it feels like chewing on bull bars and sticks until that split-second when the stuff turns to mush. But it’s most definitely filling and seems to keep things going smoothly, if you know what I mean.

2. Eating 5 servings of fruits/veggies daily without fail. Having a cup of sliced strawberries and banana on my All-Bran makes it go down easier and gets a fruit serving out of the way first-thing. I love celery sticks stuffed with Laughing Cow cheese, so my mid-morning snack knocks out a veggie serving. A salad at lunch, some chunks of cantaloupe around mid-afternoon, and whatever veg I’m serving at dinner takes care of the rest. Meanwhile, I’m too stuffed to think of snacking.

3. Safely satisfying my desire to chew. Sometimes I think I eat simply because I feel like chewing. I bought some Haribo gummy bears, which are fat free and high on the chewosity list. Ten of those suckers can keep my mouth busy for a good 20 minutes, after which my jaws are too worn out to think about eating again for a while.

4. Eating dinner earlier. I’ve lately wanted to get dinner and dishes out of the way so I can have some uninterrupted evening time to myself. As a result, we’re eating two hours earlier than we used to, which has cut out my pre-dinner snacks.

5. Early to bed, early to rise. I’m very bad about nighttime snacking, but going to bed earlier completely cuts out those snacks. It makes it easier to get up early in the morning, a time when I rarely feel hungry and find that All-Bran and fruit to be more than ample. Meanwhile, I’m getting my recommended hours of sleep, and since sleep may be more important to weight loss than diet, that’s got to be helping, too.

Who’d have thought that five simple steps would’ve made five pounds difference in such a short time?

I’ve never understood how a woman could find anything remotely attractive about Jack Nicholson, an actor known in part for the number of women he’s bedded over the years. (Now that the man has no functioning saliva glands, I’m betting there are quite a few more women disenchanted with him, too.)

That said, I can guarantee that, his senior citizen status aside, I’d wallop him to kingdom come if he tried using his purportedly favorite pickup line on me:

He says, “You walk up to someone you like and you’re feeling relaxed, they think, ‘Oh, here comes the shark’ and you say to them, ‘When did you get pregnant?’”

Seriously, are there really women who’d find this charming?

Which is not to say that I’d turn down baby gifts, mind you. I’d simply eBay them… along with photos of Nicholson sprawled out on the floor. Us chubby girls can put a lot more oomph in a right hook than Hollywood’s skinny mini’s, after all.

Now that I’ve started Blogging For The Money, a blog about my passion to teach people how to start a blog, write better and make money at it, I’ve decided that one of my blogs must go. The readers at Electric Venom voted, both publicly and via email.

We’ve all agreed it’s time for me to let Chubby Mommy go.

My instinct is to turn this into a static niche site related to dieting, fitness, weight loss and health news with the occasional promotion of fitness-related gear like the Nike golf apparel. By “static”, I mean that I don’t intend to blog here further even though the site itself will most likely feature RSS feeds, links to other topical blogs and ads pertaining to those topics.

I’d much rather see this domain go to someone with a passion to help it reach its potential. If anyone is interested in purchasing the domain ChubbyMommy.com please contact ChubbyMommy at Gmail. Serious inquiries only, and by serious I mean you need to plan on something involving 3 digits.

UPDATE: After much encouragement from readers, I’ve decided to keep the blog. Thanks for the positive feedback, folks. I’m not sure how I’m going to find time to run five blogs but I’m determined to make it work.

Ever since that prime rib Christmas dinner I’ve been waddling around in my least-restrictive clothing, miserable and bloated, feeling very much like some fat-riddled sausage crammed into a casing that’s three sizes too small.

That, of course, hasn’t stopped me from sitting down with my family at each and every meal and, although I’ve tried to restrict my portion size, I’ve fantasized about telling my husband and kids, “Oh, Mommy’s not going to join you for this meal. She’s just not hungry.” Unfortunately, that wouldn’t go over with my family and might very well set a bad precedent for my youngest child who’s constantly trying to skip meals in favor of sugary snacks all day long.

So I’ve sat with them. I’ve eaten with them. I’ve left the table feeling like I’m going to explode any second, and I’ve lain in bed at night imagining all the food we’ve had over the holidays turning into a large, fossilized lump in my stomach. That, at least, is what it feels like it’s doing.

I think it was Audrey Hepburn who said, just as she began acknowledging her anorexia, that she resented food. Though I’m about the least likely person to ever become anorectic — I enjoy cooking and eating far too much for that — I certainly do understand her resentment.

People who abuse alcohol or drugs have it, in that sense, a lot more easy than someone who overuses food. They know that breaking the cycle of addiction means going cold turkey, on their own or at one of those drug treatment centers. But with food? You can’t just decide “I’m never going to touch the stuff again.”

You’ve got to have food, got to deal with it at least once every day or so. Then, when you do you’ve got to somehow find the self-control — which you didn’t have just the day before — to know when to stop, when you shouldn’t have one more bite. You’ve got to force yourself not to think about it, not to want it, not to give in to the little voice inside your head that quickly begins screaming “Oh, but I only want ONE little bite of cheese! Please? Just one? C’mon, one bite won’t do any more damage than you’ve already done.”

I’m fasting today. I’m doing it to give my system a break and to hopefully purge that huge mass of holiday food that’s been congealing in my gut for days now. But I’m also doing it to remind myself that I can, that I can just say no to food, even if it’s only for one day.