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Astrologically Positive Body Image

Body image is often based on what society says we are supposed to look like, but in magazines, movies and on TV you will see everybody you don’t look like. Maybe you are somewhat overweight, underweight or have some other issue like adult acne or terminally bad hair days. Here are some tips, through the signs, on how to love your body and yourself exactly the way you are.

Aries: Aries tend to stay happiest while in motion. Their body’s strength uniquely affects the emotions of the Ram child. Regular exercise added to the day results in an astrological attitude of a child - exploring local creeks and back roads, they take the path less traveled by. Their sense of self and body image will stay positive whenever they are in a state of movement, exploration and independence. Rise above negative self-absorption with dance, yoga or just a nice walk down the local promenade to go shopping for a new pair of Nikes.

Taurus: Positive body image means you feel good in your own skin. Taurus expresses self love by indulging in some soft and pricey threads to wear and to surround themselves with in the home; velvety-smooth sofa pillows, blankets and throws. Taurus is ruled by Venus so they have a naturally intuitive understanding of how mind-altering the material of a garment can actually be to the psyche. Consignment and resale shops are hot now and many carry gently used yet luscious clothing at a third of the price, which works for Taurus who is always grounded in the budget department. Do not be hard on yourself if you don’t look like Jessica Biel or Beyonce. They don’t even look like that. Those magazine covers are all airbrushed - so go ahead and love every well-dressed inch of your BFA (Big Fat Ass).

Gemini: If you are born under the sign of the twins you are blessed with an ability to actually read! (You’d be surprised how many folks can’t sit still long enough to finish a book.) A Gemini with an imperfect body can always benefit from sharing their insights with their less literarily inclined friends. When a Gemini is helping someone else somehow - with an email, on the phone or sending a singing telegram - they are not thinking about the size of their own backsides. Ponder this meaty subject on your own.

Cancer: Cancerians must be aware to not eat as a way of shifting a challenging mood or forgetting that last boyfriend. You will create a cycle where you then obsess about that extra fat gathering around the back of your upper arms not to mention your beefy badonkadonk region. Make self-absorption work for you by being very nurturing toward yourself. Accept what you look like now and stop worrying about how you’ll never be taller or have a flat stomach. The average women is a size fourteen wishing she were a four. Lots of us are a heck of a lot bigger than that (Janette insisted on that comment since only her right thigh is a size 14.) Get over it. Take hot baths, drink yummy teas, hum to yourself happily in the shower. Don’t isolate. Find new friends who love your hiney exactly the way it is.

Leo: You exude self love but sometimes the inner you has a challenge with what you consider to be less than “perfect” looks. Or maybe you project that perfectionism onto your family member or loved one. Be aware that while it’s true that the most attractive signs of the zodiac get the best jobs, money and pick of romantic partners, the first person you must come to terms with is yourself. Accept any slight or not so slight imperfections like knock-knees, facial hairs or going bald. Relax. Put down that mirror, and smile that gorgeous smile for the world to enjoy.

Virgo: Your positive body image will blossom when you’re less anxious and that only happens when a Virgo learns to stop worrying and relax. Don’t be frightened of aging, or putting on a few pounds. You will survive and so will your body. Put down that perfectionism inner dragon that is either keeping you from the gym or not doing anything else but going to the gym. See the beauty of your own virgin self, before all the cross talk got in the way. Get a worry stone - rub it endlessly.

Libra: Your positive body image can be discovered in finding balance. Your assignment is to accept your body exactly the way it is - just give up trying to change it. There is a desire in the Libran to be all things to all people, including themselves. Know that, like everything else, your stomach in a bikini has its ups and downs. Emotions are naturally fluid - judgment really only last seconds if you acknowledge the thought or feeling, then let it go! Do not physically compare yourself to models in magazines or any of the cast members of Grey’s Anatomy.

Scorpio: Your positive body image can be found in the expression of your sensuality. Try combining lavender with vanilla and rub it behind your knees and ears. Like Aries, make your body feel good and you will feel better about it - even if you don’t look like Brad or Angelina. Languish in a Jacuzzi with floating, glowing flower lights (available at Target) or get a full body massage. If that doesn’t work, try noticing when you are comparing your backside to others and experiencing jealousy. Thank yourself for sharing and shake it off with a little polka dance. Find a sensual partner who doesn’t having hang-ups about their own bodies that they could project on you. (Cuz that’s a bummer.)

Sagittarius: Negative body image, self absorption and wishing you had the waistline of Jennifer Aniston can be tamed by studying the cultural and philosophical insanity behind today’s obsession in the media with the skinny babes. Know that this obsession is a mere societal trend and remember that back in the fifties Marilyn Monroe (a perfect size 14/16) was considered perfect. Share with others your insights into the Sophia Loren era vs. the Olson Twins era, and you will have others also laughing so hard that they too, forget to obsess about their reflection in the mirror or their BFAs (Big Fat Asses).

Capricorn: When you are not completely lost in your world of work, you may find yourself hating your thighs. Get over it. There are lots of other people that got over it on the Internet. It’s called the “Fatosphere.” Check it out. Get out amongst friends or go online and socialize. Have some fun. You can have a positive body image by starting to notice when you do feel good about your body, which is probably when you are remembering to breathe deep. (Stress is a major contributor to the blues and deep breathing is a great cure.). Love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). It wants to be loved just like the rest of you.

Aquarius: Accepting yourself and your body type exactly the way they are is something that comes natural to you. Of all the signs in the zodiac, you are the least pre-occupied by the size and shape of your body parts. If you do need a body image boost, go remind a sister or a brother what you already know - that physical looks and beauty are not based on what you see on TV or on the cover of Vogue. Explain to your poor, lost friends how you have embraced your own eccentric wardrobe, hair and possible quirky thinness. You know that the first step of change is acceptance. Go to the local mall and put up a banner which reads, “Love Your BFA (Big Fat Ass) and It Will Love You Back for a Lifetime.”

Pisces: Give, give, give, then give some more then stop. Your key to positive body image is to have healthy boundaries when it comes to your compassion for others. If it goes too far and you are taken advantage of then you will get down on yourself and mope about. Then you will pick on your butt in a pair of undersized jeans. Also, take care of your somewhat delicate health because you are not happy when you don’t feel well. Work out. Realize that we are all in this together, that most women would give up ten years of their life to be another body type - yes, that is a recent statistic from Fitness Magazine. Go out and turn your negative obsession about your looks into a positive celebration. That may mean finding some new friends who love your BFA (big fat ass) with all its luscious dimensions.

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com. Embracing Your Big Fat Ass.

Beautiful Fat Ass Babe Society: Unite With Laughter

Laughter. What a cause. What a cure. We had to do it – create an empowering society of B-FABs (Beautiful Fat Ass Babes) that are fully committed to huge amounts of fun. The B-FAB movement has begun, and big fat belly laughs for one and all are our goal.

Laughter is critical to well being for a number of reasons. Without humor what would we do when we see big clown feet, squirting flower lapels, and big fat asses? Yes, BFAs (Big Fat Asses) are meant to be laughed at, especially when you are the owner and operator of that fine piece of equipment. If you let yourself think about it, isn’t it funny that for years the size of your ass in a pair of jeans has been running your life? Isn’t it funny in an airplane seat how you have to flap like a goose to get up out of your tiny coach seat from hell? Can we get a big guffaw for all the times you looked for just the perfect sweater to luxuriously drape over your bountiful backside only to find out that you may have just hidden your ass under so much fabric that you now resemble Omar the Tentmaker.

This is not a mixed message. This is our way of pushing home the fat point that being serious, sad and mad at the state of affairs in the rear is a gosh darn waste of time. Not only that, depression and misery over your beefy bod’ will only make you eat even more and be even less healthy. Let’s look at the facts; laughter actually does heal. Did you know, according to WebMD, that laughing heartily 100 times a day gives the same cardio results as working out for 20 minutes? Buy a joke book and ditch the treadmill for god sakes!

Here’s the deal - you can’t think and laugh at the same time. It’s like trying to keep your eyes open when you sneeze. The more you laugh, the more you want to. And if you are around other people laughing – it LL just keeps multiplying upon itself. (Sound contagious? It is.) When we laugh we give up our egos and see our own humanity and the humanity of others. Did you know there is even such a thing as laughter clubs?

What, you ask, is a laughter club? It’s a group of people who meet to laugh together, every week, in a public place. There is no formal structure - just an anchor laugher who orchestrates the event. A session might include simulated laughter and techniques mixed in with stretching and breathing. You can simulate laughter and still get the same good results in the body like a real laugh. (Great, now there’s something else we can fake.) Laughter Yoga is now a worldwide movement, bringing about attitudinal changes to help us all live in peace and harmony. There are now more than 1,300 laughter clubs in India, USA, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, Malaysia and Dubai.

Hey, B-FAB’s, let’s unite! While the B-FAB Society isn’t exactly a laughter club we do think that there will be a heck of a lot of healthy laughter going on. What we are creating with the B-FAB Society is a self acceptance and self celebration society. Let’s laugh at our predicament and then let’s reinforce for each other how wonderful we are just exactly as we are – fat asses and all!

Let’s try this self-acceptance thing – self loathing didn’t work…what if this does? How about letting a big fat laugh rip about our wretched pasts? If you laugh, your ass will not blow away, we promise you. The news all around the world really sucks these days and it’s as if we’re afraid to be jovial selves. Hey, what if the cure for a new future could be found in giving up dieting and stopping all the complaining about our weight and the weight of the world for just a bit? Try it on. You don’t have to have a great sense of humor. Borrow your great aunt Sadie’s cacophonous laugh for the night, find some friends, BREATHE, laugh and call a B-FAB girlfriend to tell her how great she is.

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com. Embracing Your Big Fat Ass.

Fashion – Not Just For Skinny Bitches

“I’m tired of thin people telling me what to do,” is Janette’s new motto. Have you noticed how the thin people always have an opinion on what you should wear and whether you should feel comfortable in a locker room or at the beach? Our B-FAB (Beautiful Fat Ass Babe) friends don’t do that to us. They know that we will wear what we’re comfortable in and that it’s none of their business. Our B-FAB friends trust that we have a mirror and that we know what we look like. Dressing the B-FAB butt can be a fabulous experience if you can just stop criticizing yourself long enough to notice how good you can look.

Plus size clothing is now so much more available that it was back when we were little. There was a time when you could maybe catalogue order from Lane Bryant or Newport News but you couldn’t walk into a nice shop and find a gorgeously styled outfit that was cut for your body type. Now you can. There are chain stores galore – Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug Plus, Catherine’s, Chico’s. It is so much more comfortable for a B-FAB (Beautiful Fat Ass Babe) to go to a store where there is an abundance of things that will fit her. It’s wonderful to go into a store filled with women who look like she does instead of being the one lone fat girl hoping to find something in the Junior department at Macy’s.

We do, however, hold many plus size fashion manufactures criminally liable for some of the fabrics they try to foist on us. We’d like to be crystal clear here. Double-knit polyester doesn’t look good on anyone not even a S-FAB (Skinny Fat Ass Babe). There are size 8’s out there whose cellulite would defy the doubleknits they try to force us B-FABs into. Is this a conspiracy? Have the hard-body young-ones decided to flush the adipose carriers out in the open with this flammable synthetic we call “double-knit turquoise pants”. Don’t do this to yourself. There is no reason to look or feel that way. In summer, for god’s sake, try linen. It’s loose, light, cool and shows it’s own wrinkles instead of your dimples. Linen wrinkles in a way that works (unless you’re on Daytime TV wearing the horrifying outfit with the linen jacket that Janette chose when we taped the Tyra Banks show… sometimes we all make mistakes. There was a reason why that happened and if you come to our website and ask, we’ll tell you.)

If you happen to have a stomach that is kind of like a big jiggly bowling ball beneath your belt, it might not be the best choice to wear knit pants and a stretchy little t-shirt with a bare mid-riff. Since Janette won’t wear a bathing suit or form fitting clothes she has been questioned about whether or not she does, in truth, embrace her BFA (Big Fat Ass). If that’s what you think you may be missing the point of embracing your big fat ass. Embracing your BFA doesn’t mean that you convince yourself that you look like Jessica Simpson. It means that you recognize that there is a bias in this country that only calls thin beautiful. It means you find the beauty and the gifts in who you are as you are. Embracing your ass when it comes to fashion means that instead of wearing the fashions that look best on Paris Hilton that we choose things that are the most comfortable and flattering for us. It means choosing outfits that boost our confidence and remind us that we are actually NOT operating with a handicap. We can be as hot as anyone else. (Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, That girl America who is Ugly Betty. Lots of B-FAB are infiltrating the pop culture making more and more room for the rest of us.)

B-FAB’s look best in natural fabrics. Let’s face it – anyone looks best in natural fabrics. If you can afford to go up a notch from the chain stores to boutiques there are finally fashion lines that create gorgeous clothes with great styling and fabrics. FLAX, Cut Loose and Cynthia Ashby to name just a few. Luna Luz has a tie skirt that would make any B-FAB feel like a million bucks.

Do you know what clothing is for? It’s to make you feel good about yourself. It’s not about conforming your tastes to what the media has created. It’s about inhabiting our bodies with pride and finding the look that makes us feel like who we want to be. Let’s make it our mission to stand up and show that B-FABs are quite stunning just as we are. B-FAB power rules. Come join us.

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com. Embracing Your Big Fat Ass.

On Being Naked and Other Dreaded Nightmares

Most of us, B-FAB or not, would be horrified at having to be naked in public. (A B-FAB is a Beautiful Fat Ass Babe and at this point with over 65% of Americans being overweight or obese, we now outnumber the Skinny Bitches.) There is something extremely primitive about that feeling of exposure. Who hasn’t had the nightmare where you are about to go on stage and suddenly you notice that you’re naked? Who hasn’t walked down the street for six blocks only to discover her skirt is tucked up in her panty hose on a day when she’s wearing her oldest and most horrifying underwear? These aren’t nice moments.

But as much as anyone has a horror of having to parade naked (except for those of you who love it who, in our opinion, are just plain odd. Nice, lovely people. But odd.), we think B-FABs have it worse. We have to live in our pop-culture dominated society that has chosen a bean pole to model acceptance and beauty while at the same time marketing us into being fat by way of fast food and very highly processed sugars and flours. And god only knows what the government is releasing into the air to make us fat to make us sick so the drug companies can make more money. (That came from Janette and no, she’s not mentally unstable.)

We often think it would be nicer to have been born, for example, as a cat. They sashay around with their tails up not giving a hoot who see’s what. Can you imagine a chimpanzee being embarrassed about their big red butts? Or a Doberman too delicate to lick the equipment? No, of course not. They go under the assumption that if it’s natural it’s alright. We go under the assumption that if we can’t reach the ideal body type – something similar to that of an 18 year old stripper - then we should hang our heads in shame.

Janette started doing a naked blog in protest. I bet you wonder how much she shows. Does she show you her dimpled thighs and her spillage? (Spillage is a classic BFA (Big Fat Ass) sign. If you sit down in your underwear and a generous amount of flab drapes over the side of the seat – you’re in the club.) Does Janette show off her back fat? Well for that you’d have to come to our website and see.

But our real point here is that, even if you don’t want to flap it out in the produce section of the Stop and Shop, we B-FABs shouldn’t have to be any more ashamed of our bodies than the thin people should be of theirs. When you think about it, there is probably less than 5% of the population that actually looks good naked. Most of us just look like headcheese or else we’re pale and goose bumpy like chicken skin. Sound like your legs when it’s cold? (We’re raising our hands and nodding.) So what. Does that make us any less wonderful than we are? Does that make us any less attractive to our boyfriends? No it does not.

We’re thinking of getting naked and running down the driveway. Janette has tried it before and estimates that her ass and thigh flab billow back about 4 feet behind her. It’s cool. She looks like a lava lamp. The bottom line is that, while you don’t have to flap out the cellulite and show the world, we really recommend getting to a place where we’re okay looking at ourselves. Stop comparing yourself to 22 year olds who have been professionally made-up and lit and air brushed and start being okay with just being human. Beauty comes in many shapes and sizes and has dimples in many more places than just the face.

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com. Embracing Your Big Fat Ass.

Single in the City With a BFA

Finding yourself single (again) sucks. We’ve all been there – thinking that things are going really, really well with someone, only to find out he’s had a crush on your closest male friend for quite some time. Darn. Add the complication that you can’t stand what you look like from behind and it’s enough to make you never want to leave the house again – because you think you look like a house. So we here at B-FAB (Beautiful Fat Ass Babe) Society central offer up our top five fabulous secrets on how to get over your broken heart and off your broken bathroom scale and get on with your life. So here we go - our observations and solutions to the mystery of life with a fat ass without a man.

Be Happy Living Alone: Your big fat home may appear much larger and lonelier when you are now living alone again. Add lots of living things like plants, a cute dog and maybe a roommate that does not wet on the floor. Re-arrange the furniture. Add bright new colors. Get Feng Shui services. Move to a new country. Just don’t keep your house the way it looked when he lived in it. Get lots of comfy pillows and maybe a new couch to accommodate your expanding BFA (big fat ass). If you are a member of the B-FAB Society, we are confident that there is enough of you to go around – we have big butts but we have big hearts, too. Find new things and people to nurture other than that last guy who didn’t appreciate your bundt cakes, your bad jokes or your one piece bathing suit. It’s over dude. He’s the loser, not you.

Avoid the Boyfriend Break-Up Diet: When a B-FAB first notices that her boyfriend is no longer calling, nor can he be found in any room in the house, she may also notice one of two things; an immediate increase or decrease in appetite. If you can’t eat after a break up, bully for you. We tend to eat like pigs. If you find yourself eating for two at a table for one, you may be more in the norm. This is called stress induced overeating and we recommend trying something called Relora to calm you down. (It’s a supplement that can be found online at many of the better online vitamin shops.)

Work on Your Poor Self Image: How you see yourself after you or your man has left you for another man, another woman or turned into a frog can go downhill fast. You say to yourself, “It’s me, I just can’t’ be in a successful relationship.” No! Stop it. Maybe he just wasn’t the right guy for you and you’re saving yourself both time and food in the fridge – cuz he won’t be around to eat any. Practice some of the work of John Bradshaw (Going Home) to learn about your childhood and where in your past you triggered this miss-match. Is this last guy like your dad? You last dog? Whatever you do, do NOT take it out on yourself. It just didn’t work. A bad boyfriend is like pants that are many sizes too small. Don’t break your butt trying to squeeze into them - go find a pair that fits.

Get Spiritual: Yes, it’s time. Check out your Crown Chakra for a tune-up from a chakra therapist. (Yes, they really exist.) Know that you are not your body and you are whole and complete in the universe without a boyfriend. (Wow…really?) Study astrology or any of the other ancient practices of the spirit, alcohol maybe? No, really, go within, meditate and make peace with your piece (of ass). Go to church, synagogue or local comedy club. Any of those will do the trick. B-FABs have been known to seek peace with a piece of cake, too. It works. Try other things, too. Maybe volunteer yourself at a local soup kitchen. Save a whale. Get the bigger picture of life so you can stop worrying about being so god-awful alone with a big, fat ass.

Multiply Your Friend Base: Get lots and lots of new friends by becoming a member of the B-FAB Society. Friends who understand your plight will lighten your load and can come up with fabulous things to do together. Create a fondue party. Go to events together and celebrate the fact that you are still upright and breathing.

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com. Embracing Your Big Fat Ass.

The Massively Popular Art of Self-Loathing With a Big Fat Ass

If you’re like most of us, you hate yourself. Maybe you don’t dislike you in any kind of obvious way; you don’t break mirrors with a hair brush upon seeing your reflection or whip yourself with a cat-o-nine-tails before bedtime. No, this itchy I-really-think-I-suck feeling is buried in a deep, dark, hidden place. (Maybe you are sitting on it - covering it up with your big fat ass.) Most likely part of your problem is that you hate yourself over the girth of that big beefy butt.

It is our humble opinion that how your ass looks in a pair of jeans has become the collect-all - the place where your focus goes for that juicy feeling of self-loathing often experienced in the privacy of a Wal-Mart dressing room trying to squeeze into a size 10 and discovering that you’d have to actually cut your ass off to get into them. Maybe you feel that self-hatred while lying in the bath starring at your big ol’ dimply self, or maybe it tends to happen that first time you get naked with your new boyfriend. (Okay, he’s really not a boyfriend, you slept with him that one night then he never called again…. whatever.)

Never before in history has it been so fashionable to hate yourself. The average woman is a size 14. She’s 5’4”, weighs 140 lbs. According to Fitness Magazine, this typical B-FAB (Beautiful Fat Ass Babe) has said that she would give up ten years of her life to be a body type she admired! We would die to look more like Barbie (a perfect size 8). We say, STOP THE INSANITY! Stop believing a media gone crazy that says we should all look like Nicole Kidman. When Nicole Kidman was pregnant, she didn’t even look pregnant. That’s how thin she is! Nobody looks like her. She doesn’t even look like her. (Most photos are air-brushed.)

Let’s love ourselves exactly the way we are and bury our poor body image concepts along with our last copy of the Cayenne Pepper Diet and Suzanne Somer’s Thighmaster. Let’s accept our bodies, flaws, rolls and all. Only then we will be more likely to start eating in healthier ways.

Yes that’s true according to new research, and who are we to quibble with the experts. Since one out of three of us are a size fourteen or larger, it would make sense that we must all start forgiving ourselves and our fat asses. If not, who is going to love your children? Not you. You’re too busy showing your kids how self-loathing actually works rather than getting on with the business of living and loving your family. (You may not come out and say to your kids that you hate your body, but that little litter you spawned is intuitive and knows deep down how you feel about yourself.)

We hope we’ve snapped some love-thyself common sense into your BFM (Big Fat Mind). Maybe we could simply create a miracle and say, “Yes, today is the day I am going to embrace my body exactly the way it is.” Then, just get on with it. Go walk your dog. Take a lie down. Eat cake. We don’t care. But if you really accept our weighty challenge, to honor thyself, thy ass and thy thighs as beautiful God-given evidence that you are alive, and yes that you EAT and that you are healthy(ish), the first thing you will notice is that suddenly you are happy. Remember this always: The struggling is optional.

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com. Embracing Your Big Fat Ass.

The Quandary of Eating With a Big Fat Ass

In our new book, Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria), we say what everybody knows by now: Diets don’t work. Ouch, in fact they hurt. They cause you to end up losing lean muscle mass and increasing fat in the muscle/fat ratio thing that causes you to burn fewer and few calories – because muscle burns more calories than fat you can eat more. So if we have more fat then we burn fewer calories doing exactly the same thing as the annoying thin people. Hrmph.

While we do think restrictive diets don’t work, we do think that everybody – even the skinniest of Minnie’s have to try to eat in a healthier way. Fruit and vegetables have been proven in all kinds of studies to make a significant impact on diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. So…yeah. We don’t believe in going on all the tormentuous, restrictive, often expensive diets out there; we do believe in making a daily effort to live healthier lives regardless of the size, shape or rubbery-ness of our hind quarters.

We’re saying: Live life. Love yourself. And do the darn best you can with the eating thing. We’re not going any further than that and don’t push us or Janette will bite back. Speaking of…Janette is an actual, real-life expert in cooking. She had her own cooking show on the TV Food Network for crackers sake. (Clever, huh? Crackers…cooking…get it??!) Okay. She really can cook, look her up, she’s a Celebrity Chef! So there. If you want dessert come to our website and go In the Kitchen at Janette’s Blog. She posted her newest invention Peanut Butter Makeover Cookies. She’s replaced all the fat with a secret ingredient. And there’s lots more fiber. Yum. But for now we leave you with one of her favorite recipes to prove that eating your vegetables isn’t so hard after all.

Janette’s Spinach Baseballs in a Whole Wheat Mitt

Ingredients

BASEBALL “GLOVES”:

4 whole wheat pocket-less pitas

Vegetable cooking spray

Salt and pepper

What’s in a Word? Well Apparently Everything!

As it turns out we have a title that we have to preface with “pardon my language, but I wrote a book…” We thought we had a strong word in our title perhaps even a powerful word, but mostly…we thought we had a funny word. Pretty much if you tag our word-we-can’t-say onto anything it becomes a punch line. We can’t tell you what that word is though for goodness sake because someone, somewhere on the continental world might be having a bad hair day and get miffed by what we say and then all H will break out.

So, here’s the deal…we have this certain word in the title of our book but you will have to come to our website to see it since we dasn’t say it here. The title of this book, published by Atria a division of Simon and Schuster, has a word that starts with an A. It’s the A-word. Have you noticed we now have words that we have to speak of in code? Life is becoming EXACTLY like a Harry Potter story speaking of He Who Must Not Be Named. This concerns us. We think he should be named whoever he is. Lord Voldermort or not, he’s a big bully and we shouldn’t have to put up with it. Freedom of speech, George Washington, Ben Franklin and Paul Revere for god sakes. Hrmph.

On various shows – including INTERNET radio - we’ve had to promote our book without actually mentioning the title. How’s this? “We wrote a book called Embracing Your Big Fat A-word which another word for butt which is actually a donkey.” We’d like to see the face of the trainee at the information desk at Barnes and Noble when somebody comes in asking for that title. We have a B-FAB society that is beginning to form but we can’t actually tell you what it stands for because it has that dastardly, dangerous A-word in it. D-word, D-word, double D-word.

Now, it’s clearly not against FCC rules to say this insidious word that apparently has a corrosive effect on anyone hearing it. On Two and a Half Men, for example, they spout the dire, dangerous A-word on almost every episode. I guess prime time decent is different than Today Show decent (one of the outlets we horrified with our title WHICH MUST NOT BE NAMED.) So we don’t want any S and we D-word well won’t be using any F-wording language that will gum up our efforts.

How on earth can a word as non-offensive as A-word become demonized? And more importantly when did we have to be guarded in our languaging so as not to cross some new social boundary that so far isn’t even consistent. Whew! You’re S-ing us. (Scaring.) At what point did we, as a society, collectively return to kindergarten? We’re just askin’…cuz we didn’t notice it happening. Did we miss something – like possibly an alien takeover of the world we grew up with and no one is even noticing it? Or are a lot of you out there already Aliens? Oh this is getting alarming. We made you mad enough by using the A-word. If we finger you as aliens we’ll probably be goners.

Embracing Your BFA. That’s close to the title. Just come to our website and see the book cover. Download a free chapter. Have fun. Just be very careful of the strange, and secretly powerful…

A-word!

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com. Embracing Your Big Fat Ass.

Dealing With People Who Don’t Want You to Change

It’s hard for us to change our ways. Even when we know exactly what changes would make our life happier, it takes planning, practice and persistence to successfully break old habits. Having supportive people in our corner to encourage us along the way makes the job much easier. Unfortunately, not everyone we hope will be in our corner always is.

Sometimes the very people we’re closest to are the ones who don’t want us to change, no matter how much better off we’d be if we did. Let’s say you’re a person who has always catered to everyone else’s needs and ignored your own. You volunteer to run errands, you go where others want to go, you do what they want to do. Only you’ve come to a point where you’re tired of turning yourself into a pretzel to please other people and decided it’s time to start pleasing yourself. It’s a great idea — just what take-charge living is all about—changing in ways that empower you and make your life richer and more satisfying.

Only guess what. Some of those people who benefited from you being subservient might feel quite inconvenienced to they discover you’re not at their beck and call any more. They don’t see your newfound independence as a great idea at all. Understandably, people may miss the things you used to do for them. Hopefully, most of them will encourage what’s best for you anyway. But there’s always the possibility of holdouts, people who resent you for daring to play by a new set of rules. You’ll hear about it too. “You used to be so thoughtful. What’s come over you?” Worse, “I can’t believe what a selfish bitch/bastard you turned into. Try thinking of someone besides yourself for a change!”

The situation gets even more complicated when your changed behavior is experienced not just as an inconvenience, but as a threat. If control and superiority are part of the other person’s self-image, they take it as a major loss when you no longer put them and their needs ahead of your own. Feeling that way, the person may do more than complain and actively try to sabotage the changes you are making.

To take a concrete example, suppose your spouse is a control freak who is accustomed to dictating how every little thing is done around the house. You finally decide you’ve had enough and begin doing some things your way. That attacks your spouse’s belief in her/his superiority, the legitimate top dog of the household who has every right to expect your conformity. A person invested in that kind of self -image will not give up easily, so expect criticism and resistance.

I’m sure you can think of examples, perhaps from your own immediate circle of friends and family, in which one person’s changes threaten someone else with loss. That happens when a couple abuses alcohol together, but one decides to quit. It happens when a meek person finally stands up to a bully, or walks out on an abusive relationship, or challenges a boss, or takes action against an intrusive neighbor, or question a doctor’s decisions. The possible scenarios are endless.

Resistance to your changes can take many forms, from subtle to direct and even aggressive. For Anne, a college senior working hard to try to lose weight, resistance came from her mother pushing food during her weekend visits home. The mother, a fabulous cook whose own weight is testimony to how much she enjoys her creations, pushes food on anyone who sets foot in her house. Any refusal is a blow to her ego. Anne’s refusals — and it takes willpower to refuse a second helping of her mother’s beef bourguignon or pass on luscious banana cream pie — are met with, “Just a taste. Try it. It’s delicious. You’re thin enough, Annie. The obsession with weight in this country is ridiculous. Here, have a small piece,” her mother says, pushing a huge slice Anne’s way.If Anne pushes it back, her mother acts crushed. Tired of the struggle and determined to stick with her diet, Anne makes excuses and quits coming home weekends.

Much nastier is the resistance a woman named Shannon ran into after she checked herself into an inpatient drug treatment program. Having abused both drugs and alcohol for years and recently attempting suicide, eighteen-year-old Shannon was desperate. The treatment program, which incorporated the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-step approach, was wonderful for her. A fundamental of such programs is asserting that alcoholism is a disease and total abstinence is the only way to deal with it. Shannon’s rehabilitation program also requested that families attend certain group therapy sessions. Shannon’s parents were divorced, and her mother was out of the country. Her father Amos, a clinical psychologist and flaming alcoholic himself, agreed to come. In flagrant disregard of his daughter, the other patients, and the treatment staff, Amos used his considerable verbal skills and clinical knowledge to pontificate to the patients about how alcoholism is not a disease and how controlled drinking is completely realistic for them. Why would a father do this to a daughter in such desperate need of help? Amos’s resistance and his attempt to smear the program that was helping Shannon was a self-centered effort to rationalize his own excesses with alcohol. By attacking the program, he could justify his own drinking and not admit to himself that he needed help as much as any patient in the room.

Whatever its form, resistance from others complicates your task. You sure don’t need this kind of discouragement when you’re trying to break old patterns of behavior. Here are some things to help you deal with it and move ahead anyway.

Only One Life to Live

Let’s start with the most basic and most obvious point. You only get one life to live. You have a perfect right to take charge of that life. It is you, not others, who need to determine how you want to be and what would make you happiest. Then you pursue being that way. When that means transforming some things about yourself, you do it with or without other people’s blessing. Improving yourself by changing your ways does not mean ignoring other people or being insensitive or inconsiderate of them. It also does not mean bowing to their whims and wishes instead of pursing your own goals. Your job, when you sense resistance from others, is to stay on your chosen course of change. Try to deal as directly and constructively as you can with anyone trying to stop you. Whatever you do, do not let them stop you and keep you stuck in your old ways.

If such thinking represents a radical shift of perspective for you, part of your job is to work at opening yourself up to new ideas. Changing your thinking most definitely helps you change how you act.

If you run into resistance, assess its significance. How important is this person to you? How big is their issue? Are you merely inconveniencing their life a little, or truly threatening them by doing things differently? If this relationship truly matters to you, I urge you to seriously consider talking frankly with the person. Do it in a considerate way, but speak candidly about the resistance you are experiencing. Be sure to specifically request that the person stop whatever it is they are doing that undermines your efforts to change. Make it clear that you intend to go forward with your new ways of doing things. Then, stick with your plan.

I’m not saying that sticking with it is easy. People trying to prevent you from changing feel threatened that your growth means their loss. Some of those people can be extremely difficult to deal with. But this is your life we’re talking about. Your one and only life. Unless you are willing to remain stuck and condemned to a way of a life you do not like, it is imperative you stick to your plan once you have decided that it is best for you to change. Trust your decision, and continue forging ahead. You have a perfect right to forge ahead and transform yourself into the person you want to be.

Forging ahead gets lots easier when you have some people who are supporting what you are trying to do. In the face of someone who wants to stop you from changing, encouragement from supportive people is invaluable for staying with your program and moving forward. I strongly urge you to contact those friends and family you know would be in your corner. Tell them about the changes you’re trying to make. Don’t be shy or indirect. Line up people to be there for you when your spirits sag and you need a pep talk and openly ask for their support.

Do you normally wait for others to reach out to you? Please don’t do that this time. Take the lead. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Pay a visit. As The Beatles famously sang many years ago, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Take that to heart and get a little — or a lot — of help from your friends. Being able to call on supportive people can be the difference between success and failure. And stay sharp as to who your real friends are. A dear friend wisely counseled me many years ago, “Don’t look for comfort from the source of your oppression.”

I’ll close by noting the benefits of social support and positive relationships go beyond dealing with people who don’t want you to change. Scientists have shown that supportive friends and family, in addition to feeling good and helping us to stay motivated, promote mental and physical health and sometimes actually prolong life. So don’t be the Lone Ranger. Support from your friends is free. It feels good, and it is accessible. Let them help you work your way towards your goals.

Marion K. Jacobs, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in Laguna Beach, California, Adjunct Professor at UCLA and self-help expert. Her book and CD, Take-Charge Living: How to Recast Your Role in Life

EFT for Depression and Other Illnes EFT

It is a fact that people cannot escape form any problems which are causing people to feel negatively. Problems that arises as time passes by can be very hard to face and since those difficulties were very hard to solved, people will tend to think about it more often and after some time of thinking about it that person will start to feel unease and would then on affect his/her body’s energies – this would result to sickness.

There is a possibility that emotional breakdown like depression can happen anytime and with this we may think that we don’t have a control so that’s the reason why people let themselves to suffer from depression or general stress.

Depression is a mood that people tend to feel whenever there is a big problem that arises; with this he or she may be able to continuously think about it that results to this negative feeling or depression. You may think that there is no way for healing depression or any other negative emotions that would result to negative effects on the body but as Gary Craig founded the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT, now there is a remedy for most illness or any negative emotions.

This technique’s foundation is the theory which stated that a personal psychology is affected by the body’s energy imbalances and with this, the technique will serve as a treatment to the body’s negative state and will help vanish the pain or anything that you feel in just a few minutes. This technique requires tapping on some parts of the body that would result to positive effects that would help a person feel well, this would result to remedy of the illness.

The process of Emotional Freedom Technique is just very easy to follow and you can do it either just by yourself or with a specialist over the phone or face to face; the only difference is that if you will ask a help from a specialist they will be able to help you out regarding the process of healing. If you will ask the difference on its effect between doing it by yourself or with a specialist over the phone or in person, the answer would be “the effects would all be the same” (this is if you follow what has been told you to do or what is indicated on the manual as how it was described to do. You should follow every step from one to the end so that you can make sure that you will get the expected result that was being said by the manual or the specialist.

If you want to know whether this would only be effective as a remedy for depression well it is for you to know that this would be used also as a remedy for different sickness or illness like pain, allergies, blood pressure, anxiety, trauma, weight loss, addiction, or even women’s issues, relationship issues and the likes. This would help a person be free from almost 85% of sickness that is caused by emotional disturbances.

In order to know more on eft and about eft emotional freedom do meet your eft practitioner to get rid of hopeless situations and to become prudent in overcoming depressions and thereby ultimately to have a sound and robust peace of mind to move forward.

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