While browsing the news web sites this morning, I saw the following headline on MSNBC.com:

France may ban promoting extreme thinness

Bill would make it illegal to encourage ultra-skinny models

Here is an excerpt from the story:

PARIS - The French parliament’s lower house adopted a groundbreaking bill Tuesday that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite extreme thinness.

The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes Tuesday, after the legislation won unanimous support from the ruling conservative UMP party. It goes to the Senate in the coming weeks.

Fashion industry experts said that, if passed, the law would be the strongest of its kind anywhere. Leaders in French couture are opposed to the idea of legal boundaries on beauty standards.

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Sarah Wassner Flynn has an article on SheKnows.com entitled Get Motivated to Exercise with Mental Fitness: Mental and Physical Fitness.  In the article, she offers up several ideas to keep mentally fit while you work on getting physically fit.

• Positive Fitness Affirmations
• Avoid Destructive Distractions
• Visualize Victory

Those three steps help ensure that you are getting the most out of your workout.  It is amazing that one’s frame of mind can have such an impact on one’s physical fitness level.  In today’s world with books like “The Secret” becoming more popular, people are starting to realize the link between our personal mental world and our personal physical world. 

Here is an excerpt from Flynn’s article:

Exercise just isn’t exercise without a little bit of agony and hard work – otherwise, it wouldn’t be called a “work” out. But these discomforts can also stir up a truckload of negative energy that may foil your attempts at fitness, says Bobby McGee, a sports psychologist and running coach to winning Olympians and author of Magical Running. To stay mentally tough, try a little optimism. “The right mind frame can get you through many rough patches during exercise,” says McGee. And here are his tips on getting past those tough times while staying mentally and physically strong during your next big workout.

Johns Hopkins Health Alerts reviews the latest research on weight loss and whether or not commercial weight loss programs actually work.

New York, NY ( PRWEB ) March 11, 2008 — Johns Hopkins Health Alerts has just released a review of the latest research on weight loss, which shows that the longer you stay in a commercial weight-loss program, the more likely you are to achieve weight loss, and the greater weight loss you will achieve overall.

Successful Weight Loss Approaches
Successful weight loss requires a three-pronged approach: changing your behavior, altering your diet, and increasing your physical activity.

Making The Changes And Sticking To Them
Permanent alterations in your lifelong attitudes toward diet and exercise are the keys to successful weight management. You must be motivated enough to change habits not for a few weeks or months, but for a lifetime. The importance of this cannot be underestimated. The desire to lose weight must come from within.

The Benefits Of Commercial Weight Loss Programs
Commercial weight-loss programs can be effective tools for weight loss, but you do need to stick with the program for at least three months to see benefits. That was the conclusion of a one-year study of men and women enrolled in the Jenny Craig Platinum program.

The study results
After a month, 73% of the 60,164 people who joined the program were still enrolled. The number dropped to 42% at three months and 22% at six months. Only 7% remained at one year.

For those who stuck it out, the weight loss achieved was substantially greater. Men and women who lasted a year lost 13-16% of their initial body weight, compared with only a 1% loss in those who dropped out in the first month.

The men and women who stayed in the program for at least three months lost about 8% of their baseline weight.

The Substantial Health Benefits Of Weight Loss
Any weight loss is beneficial if you are overweight, but a loss of 5-10% of body weight can lead to significant reductions in blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other conditions associated with overweight or obesity.

But there’s a good chance that the three-month dropouts gained back the lost weight by the end of the year.

Nonetheless, the longer you can stay in a commercial weight-loss program, the more weight loss you’re likely to achieve.

For a free copy of the Johns Hopkins Guide to Lifestyle Changes for Weight Loss, please visit:
Johns Hopkins Guide to Lifestyle Changes for Weight Loss

For the latest Johns Hopkins Nutrition and Weight Control Health Alerts, please visit the Johns Hopkins Nutrition and Weight Control Topic Page:
Nutrition and Weight Control Health Alerts

This article was adapted from the Johns Hopkins White Paper: Nutrition and Weight Control
Johns Hopkins White Paper: Nutrition and Weight Control

The study cited in this article was funded by an unrestricted research grant from Jenny Craig, and reported in the International Journal of Obesity.

Welcome to my newest endeavor, ThinBy35.com.  Prior to having children I was always thin and while I wasn’t a fanatic about working out, I watched what I ate.  After I had my son in 2001, I quickly lost the weight.  As he got older, however, I started to put on a few pounds here and there.  When my husband and I decided that we wanted to add another child to the mix, we had no clue how difficult it would be.  In the end, I ended up taking a fertility medicine called Clomid which quickly packed on about 15 lbs.  I was able to keep my weight gain with my second pregnancy to 19 lbs but unfortunately, it didn’t come off as quickly as I’d like.
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