Congrats to FatFighterTV members – Marie and Joyann – for winning last week’s giveaway for The Denim Diet books. Enjoy!

Related posts

• The Denim Diet giveaway
• “Eat-Clean Diet” book winners!
• Your Big Fat Boyfriend winners!
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Jennette Fulda (author of “Half-Assed”)
• Want 101 fat-burning steps?

[Disclosure: I received a complimentary sample of this product. I only post giveaways about products I honestly like, or those I think FatFighterTV members would enjoy.]

She says a dream pair of jeans can be a great motivator for losing weight and keeping it off. Kami Gray went down six sizes in her jeans and shares her blueprint for reaching and staying at a healthy body weight in The Denim Diet – 16 Simple Habits to Get You Into Your Dream Pair of Jeans – The No-Nonsense Guide to a Smaller You and a Healthier Planet.

Kami says it’s about being lean and green and getting into your dream pair of jeans… by making healthy choices that are also earth-friendly. See more about Kami and the book here.

Up for grabs this week – 2 copies of The Denim Diet. Just head down to the comments and tell me something you do that is good for both you and the environment. Me – I try to walk my errands whenever I can to give my body exercise and save fuel!

A few contest details – it runs through midnight EST this Friday, July 31, you have to have a U.S. mailing address to enter… and we will use random.org to pick the winners.

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• Your Big Fat Boyfriend winners!
• The Hot Mommy Next Door giveaway
• The Denim Diet winners!
• “Eat-Clean Diet” book winners!
• Winter Workouts (indoors) giveaway #1: ExerciseTV DVDs

Congrats to FatFighterTV member - Jennifer – for winning last week’s giveaway for The Hot Mommy Next Door. Enjoy!

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• The Hot Mommy Next Door giveaway
• News Nugget: Overweight moms more likely to have kids with asthma
• News Nugget: Mom’s obesity increases risk of birth defects
• News Nugget: Too little exercise during pregnancy could mean big babies
• Your Big Fat Boyfriend winners!

Since it’s hot outside, I thought it would be a good time to give away a hot book!  The Hot Mommy Next Door: A Quick, Easy, and Effective Way to Drop Your Baby Weight and Achieve Your Personal Best After Pregnancy is written for moms by Alison M. Fadoul – a certified SPINNING® instructor and mom herself. After her second pregnancy, Alison says she quickly got back in shape and wanted to share how she did it with other moms wanting to do the same. “I’m not a celebrity. I’m just the mom next door with a story to tell,” she writes.

The book is “designed to be a quick read that you could get through in one or two sittings after putting your kids down for a nap or bed, a manual you may continually reference during your journey to lose your ‘baby weight’ and get back into shape.” It includes Alison’s Smart Choices Eating Guidelines, recipes, and tools to help you meet your goals.

We have one copy of The Hot Mommy Next Door up for grabs this week, compliments of Alison Fadoul. To enter for a chance to win, head down to the comments and tell me why you think this book would help you.

You can also sign up for Alison’s weekly ezine, “Tips from the Hot Mommy Next Door” here.

A few contest details – it runs through midnight EST this Friday, June 26, you have to have a U.S. mailing address to enter… and we will use random.org to pick the winner.

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• The Hot Mommy Next Door winner!
• Your Big Fat Boyfriend winners!
• The Denim Diet giveaway
• News Nugget: Overweight moms more likely to have kids with asthma
• News Nugget: Mom’s obesity increases risk of birth defects

Congrats to FatFighterTV members – Azar and This Mama Cooks! On a Diet - for winning last week’s giveaway for the new book, Your Big Fat Boyfriend – How to Stay Thin When Dating a Diet Disaster. Enjoy! Oh, and if you haven’t already checked out the hilarious comments about how boyfriends/husbands/etc. make us fat, read them here!

Related posts

• Is your boyfriend making you fat? (+ this week’s giveaway!)
• The Hot Mommy Next Door giveaway
• The Denim Diet giveaway
• “Eat-Clean Diet” book winners!
• Winter Workouts (indoors) giveaway #1: ExerciseTV DVDs

[Disclosure: I received a complimentary sample of this product. I only post giveaways about products I honestly like, or those I think FatFighterTV members would enjoy.]

Does this sound familiar?

My mind flashes to nights of us sitting side by side on the couch as I happily neglect my chicken and string beans and share his sesame chicken straight from the box; forgoing my light beer for a full-bodied brew he wants me to try; sharing not just popcorn, but popcorn, candy and soda at the movies; matching him bite for bite on the calamari or baskets of nacho chips he talked me into ordering; allowing him to pull me back under the covers instead of making it to my yoga class.

That’s an excerpt from Jenna Bergen’s new book, Your Big Fat Boyfriend – How to Stay Thin When Dating a Diet Disaster. When I read those words, I had flashbacks – I’ve totally been there! Before you know it, his terrible eating habits are making you gain weight. Not fair. But after reading Bergen’s book, no worries. You’ll be ready to “avoid the downward spiral into fat pants” and hang out with your BF.

Your Big Fat Boyfriend is funny, honest, and filled with tips and tricks Bergen herself has used as she has dated “her very own big fat boyfriend” for nearly four years.

The book will show you things like:

• How to make healthy choices when dining out, in, or on-the-run (Includes quick picks by restaurant type)

• The differences in male and female metabolisms – and why you can’t eat like he does

• Creative ideas for active dates to keep you both moving

• Easy-to-make healthy recipes you’ll both love – like this one for Forget Fried Chicken Fingers

So how’s Bergen doing now after dating her BFBF for four years? She tells FatFighterTV, “I am at a healthy weight and don’t yo-yo back and forth. But of course there are times when I’m tempted—it doesn’t go away entirely! But being aware is the most important thing, and following some of the tips/tricks I outline in the book, like remembering swaps, so if you have a cookie you can forgo the bread on your sandwich, etc., is so important.”

BTW, her boyfriend thought it was funny she was writing this book – good sport, huh?

For all you gals who somehow eat way more ‘za and down a few more brews when you’re with your BF, Your Big Fat Boyfriend will be your new best friend. And the publisher is giving away two copies of it this week!

Just tell me in the comments below what bad eating habits you’ve ever picked up from your boyfriend or husband (and to be fair – guys, if you’ve picked up any from your girlfriend/wife).

Me – I’ve definitely eaten more wings since I met my husband. And now he eats more chocolate.

A few contest details: It ends at midnight EST this Friday, January 23… you have to have a U.S. mailing address to enter… and a random number generator will pick the winner.

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• Your Big Fat Boyfriend winners!
• Weight Watchers Double Chocolate Mousse chocolates winners!
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Jennette Fulda (author of “Half-Assed”)
• Want 101 fat-burning steps?
• Tough economic times mean… more free stuff for you!

Meet: Jennette Fulda, aka PastaQueen, author of Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir

Age: 28

Occupation: Web designer/developer

Where she lives: Indiana

Pounds Lost: 200

How long it took to lose the weight: 2 years

How long she has kept it off: 4 years

She’s funny, inspirational, and oh yeah – she lost 200 pounds – more than half her weight! Jennette Fulda blogged about her weight loss journey here. Then she wrote a book about it all, appropriately called, Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir. I missed meeting her at BlogHer this year, but always wanted to connect. So, when one of her readers wrote me about how incredible she thought Jennette was, I knew it was time to get in touch. After all, someone with Jennette’s sense of humor just had to get a kick out of getting a Weight Loss WooHoo! right? – It’s FatFighterTV’s fun way of celebrating healthy weight.

How Jennette gained the weight:
“I’d always been overweight as a child and I just kind of slowly kept gaining weight year after year after year. I never yo-yo dieted, but I yo-yo exercised. Freshman year of high school, I joined the marching band and I probably lost some weight there. Between high school and college, I started walking a lot and I probably dropped about 40 pounds. But then I went to college and I started eating a lot and I didn’t keep up with my exercise. So I kept gaining and gaining and gaining and it got to a point where I didn’t want to step on a scale because I didn’t want to know how much I weighed. Eventually I was 372 pounds.”

“I was afraid I was going to be over 400 pounds, so I was actually kind of relieved (laughs) it was only 372. It was like I’d lost 30 pounds already! You gotta think positive.”

Wake-up Call:
“About a year before I started (losing weight) I had a gall bladder attack, which was extremely painful. I had to have my gall bladder removed – that was kind of scary. I was like, I’m pretty young to be having surgery. This is only a harbinger of things to come. My health is definitely starting to decline and I’m only in my 20’s.’  So I said, ‘Okay I’m going to lose the weight this time. Then three days after surgery I kind of forgot about my promise.”

“In the next year, my younger brother started to lose weight. He was eating pretty normal food and just exercising more, so he kind of made it seem like something I could do.”

How she shed the pounds:
“The first week, I just started walking. The week after that, I started making dietary changes. I started experimenting with recipes. Once I got to a point where I had six or seven recipes that I knew were good for me and I liked, it started to get a little bit easier. I basically followed the South Beach Diet.”

“There were some days where I was like, I’ve lost 50 pounds but I still have to lose another 150. There were times where I just wanted to fast forward to the endpoint.”

Weekly workouts:
“In the summer, I’m usually running. There’s this nature trail near my apartment that’s really nice so I’ll usually run on that. Now it’s gotten kind of colder so I’m using the workout room in my apartment complex – it has an elliptical trainer and a treadmill. I own dumbbells so I can do weight training. And I also do Pilates.”

Diet Philosophy:
“I try to make more healthy choices than not. If it’s my birthday, I’m going to eat cake! I have pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. I just try not to binge or get into a pattern where I’m making a lot of unhealthy choices.”

Daily challenge:
“I got a new job in January and I’m working in a bigger department with more people, so there’s definitely a bigger temptation to eat out, just to be social and hang out with people. Eating out and eating healthy can be really difficult, particularly because I work with a lot of guys.”

“If I’m having problems at work or in relationships or if I’m feeling really down, it can be harder to stick to the diet because coping with food is kind of my drug of choice. I find that when my life is going well, my diet tends to go better too.”

Tips from Jennette:
“Everyone needs to find what works for them. And don’t be too hard on yourself. If you’re succeeding 80-90 percent of the time, you’ll start to make progress.”

Favorite healthy recipe:
Peanut Butter Crepes

Jennette’s Weight Loss WooHoo!:
“I would have to say it’s basically my mobility. I can walk from the far end of the mall and I can walk all around the mall then come back and I’m not totally out of breath – I’m not exhausted; my knees don’t hurt. It’s really just a sense of freedom that I get because when I was that heavy, it really constricted how far I could go. It made my world smaller because I couldn’t go as far without hurting myself. So the freedom physically that comes with weight loss really makes me go, WooHoo!”

###

Freedom. Wow, that’s powerful, isn’t it? Glad we finally connected, Jennette. And I can’t wait to try those Peanut Butter Crepes – yum!

Want to see who else got a Weight Loss WooHoo!? Check out the Wall of Fame!

If you know of someone who deserves this honor, just let me know – send me an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot] com

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• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Roni (Roni’s Weigh)

Congrats to FFTV member- John Rasmussen – for winning Janice Taylor’s new book, All is Forgiven, Move On – Our Lady of Weight Loss’s 101 Fat-Burning Steps on Your Journey to Sveltsville. Enjoy!

See my review of this book here.

Related posts

• Want 101 fat-burning steps?
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• The Shoe Diet
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• Weight Loss WooHoo! to The Biggest Loser’s Ali Vincent

[Disclosure: I received a complimentary sample of this product. I only post giveaways about products I honestly like, or those I think FatFighterTV members would enjoy.]

These are no ordinary same ol’ same ol’ fat-burning steps – trust me. When I picked up weight-loss coach, Janice Taylor’s new book, All is Forgiven, Move On – Our Lady of Weight Loss’s 101 Fat-Burning Steps on Your Journey to Sveltsville, I found myself marking page after page of funny, off-beat, and unique tips, recipes, and wacky things like Get out of Jail Free cards – just in case you get off track from time to time during your journey.

Oh, and did I mention Janice is also a weight-loss artist? This is one of her pieces – they are digitally enhanced collages printed throughout the book. They are brilliant. More on this later…

But first I had to  know, “Just who is this Our Lady of Weight Loss?” Apparently, Our Lady spoke to Janice when she was at her wit’s end – after years of yo-yo dieting, she had reached her highest weight ever.

“I had tears in my eyes,” Janice recalls. “I was like, I’m never going to make it. I was defeated, depressed and feeling deprived before I even began. In that moment I heard a voice – which I maintain to this day was outside of me and was Our Lady of Weight Loss – because I was way too mired in self pity to think of anything positive. And the voice said, ‘If you think you’re never going to make it, you never will.’ In that moment, I really got it.”

From the book:

“When the Cheeto calls out to you, if all else fails, change your name.” -Our Lady of Weight Loss

So Janice lost it – the weight, that is. 50 pounds gone. Only she says she didn’t really lose those 50 pounds because “if you lose it, you will find it.” And that wasn’t the case. No, this time Janice says she “permanently removed” the weight.

She used her talent to help her, making art about food instead of eating it.

“I said, I’ll make sexy vegetable collages,” says Janice. “They say whatever you focus on is what you manifest. So, what was I focusing on? Sexy vegetables with long, skinny legs.”

From the book:

“Our Lady of Weight Loss promised me that as I filled my heart with joy, explored happiness, and put some energy into doing the things that I’ve always wanted to do but never seemed to have the time to do, the excess weight would mysteriously melt off, leaving a fat trail behind me.”

Janice’s art went from being a permanent fat removal tool to being a hit at art shows… then to her website… and books. She says she has the secret to being slim forever – forgiveness. All is Forgiven, Move On shows you how to forgive yourself and instead focus on what you want in life and use the weight loss to fuel it.

“For every ounce I removed and for every ounce of fat that melted away, I exchanged the fat for something more meaningful in my life,” Janice explains. “As I let go of the extra weight, I let go of a lot of mental clutter, environmental clutter, and I left a job I didn’t like. I freed myself. I freed myself of weight. I freed myself to do what I wanted to do. I freed myself of every should, every can’t, every I wish I could.”

From the book – an excerpt from Sveltsville’s National Anthem: Amazing Weight

‘Twas weight that was a-holding me back
And weight coverin’ my fears
How precious when weight disappeared
The hour I first believed

I love this book – it’s just so creative, unique, and inspiring. And you can have one of your very own! Just Sign up for FFTV’s weekly newsletter to get entered to win – if you’re already signed up, you’re automatically entered.

A few contest details: It ends at midnight EST this Sunday, November 2… you have to have a U.S. mailing address to enter… and a random number generator will pick the winner.

And don’t forget to stop by Our Lady of Weight Loss to get lots more motivational and fun tips from Janice.

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• 101 Fat-Burning Steps winner!
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Jennette Fulda (author of “Half-Assed”)
• The Shoe Diet
• Weight Watchers winners!
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Tony (The Anti-Jared)

Congrats to FFTV members – Tamara, monicay, and feather28 – for winning last week’s giveaway! They each get a copy of Tosca Reno’s new book, The Eat-Clean Diet for Family & Kids. Thanks, everyone, for playing! And if you haven’t already done so, check out some of the healthy substitutions FFTV members are making in their diets… in the comments over here.

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• Free “The Eat-Clean Diet for Family & Kids” books
• Your Big Fat Boyfriend winners!
• Weight Loss WooHoo! to Jennette Fulda (author of “Half-Assed”)
• Want 101 fat-burning steps?
• The Shoe Diet