Mark this down as a VERY happy *f.a.t. day for me!! Why? Because one of my favorite *f.a.t. topics is finally being addressed by Oprah! I’ve talked before about bio-identical hormones and in my mind, they are the key to the locked door of all health mysteries for both men and women! They are also the key to women staying horny, vibrant, healthy, sexy, and happy, after the age of 30!!

I have been hoping with all of Oprah’s talk of recent thyroid issues, that bio-identical hormones would be on her radar so she would spread the word, and it looks like my wish is coming true in a big way!

The reason I’m so excited, is because when Oprah lights a match, the fire spreads fast and furiously, which means a lot more women will be exposed to, and educated about, the influence that bio-identical hormones can have on their health!

She introduced the topic on Thursday’s show with the promise to continue discussing it on future episodes, which I am over the moon about, because it is far too important a topic to cover in just an hour. During the show, she interviewed Robin McGraw (Dr. Phil’s wife), and two OBG docs who specialize in keeping women hormonally balanced.

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King Nut Companies recalled its peanut butter due to  potential salmonella contamination. If you have kids and PB&J sandwiches are a staple in your household, you may want to read this article at CNN.com!

Peanut Butter happens to be one of the most allergenic foods anyone can eat, and this isn’t the first salmonella threat to the peanut butter industry. Peanut butter is also known for being containing alfatoxins, which are metabolites of certain fungus found in peanuts. These alfatoxins are carcinogenic to humans.

In my opinion, no one should eat peanut butter due to the alfatoxic threat, so why not take this opportunity to explore the other nut butters at your health food grocery stores? 

Since almonds and Soybeans have been shown to have so many more health benefits than peanuts, I’d say that would be a great place to start! 

Here is a good almond butter from MaraNatha. Peanut Free Planet sells a soynut butter that I’ve heard great things about. Be careful when buying almond or cashew butter to read the small print, as some facilities do not separate the machinery that they process peanuts on, from the rest of the foods. I find Trader Joe’s products to be a big offender in this regard!

Okay everybody, I found a great article for you gals that attempts to straighten out some of the diet myths that we all have heard or keep hearing. Check out this article from Edinburgh News!

I have a confession to make. I’m not always great at taking my own eating advice, and I am a slave to my own cravings, especially when it comes to snacking.

Eating healthfully is not hard for me, because I happen to love the taste of healthy foods, but eliminating some of the bad foods on top of it, is where I could do better.

For example, I can go an entire day eating a healthy breakfast, the salad for lunch, fish and spinach for dinner, nutty snacks in between, and never once feel deprived that I didn’t have a bagel and cream cheese, or burger and fries. But when and if the craving hits to devour a bowl of Fruit Loops at 10 p.m., I cave. 

But I find that sometimes what I crave is a food texture as much as the flavor. There are great cereal substitutions for the junky types, whether you are eating cereal for a snack, or for breakfast, that might satisfy the craving while still being fairly healthy! I’ll give you my picks, along with a great list of top 10 overall healthy cereals:

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I know I’m reaching with this post, because I’m mostly writing this to gush about two of my all time Hotty men and one my humor heroes, but I’m going to tie in the Fit After Thirty theme by recognizing that all of these people are over 30 and look damn good for their age! There. Now back to gushing.

A big *f.a.t. Yeah and Congratulations to:

*One of my favorite *f.a.t.ty’s, Alec Baldwin!

*My all time favorite musician, songwriter, superb human being, hottest man for his age on earth, Bruce Springsteen! 

*My humor hero, brilliant writer and actress Tina Fey.

So this is a lesson to all of you. Follow your passion and it has an anti-aging effect! It has worked well for the three of them!

One thing about writers is that we have immense fascination with the meaning behind words. And it is especially exciting for someone who operates a health and fitness blog, to learn that the meaning behind the name of a fitness company that we all know and love, actually stands for one of the same principles that Fit After Thirty was founded on! Fit After Thirty is not only the redefining of fat, but our asterisk graphic logo embodies the idea that the body, mind, and spirit are interconnected, and to be truly fit and healthy, you have to be healthy on all three of those levels!!

ASICS is an acronym for the latin phrase: Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, which means, “a sound mind in a sound body.” And since we at *f.a.t. talk so much about  mind and body, I thought it would be appropriate to suggest two ASICS apparel items that will help you start checking off items on your *f.a.t. Fitness Resolutions list! 

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Football viewing isn’t just for cheering, it’s also for eating! But if you want to help us redefine “fat” to mean Fit After Thirty, then you may have to modify some of your game-viewing snack choices. If you are watching the playoff games this weekend, and need a healthier cheat food, try the new Baked Kettle Chips! Though not super low calorie, they are healthier than the fried variety, and taste just as good! They are made with all healthy oils, and actually taste like potatoes, unlike other versions of baked chips! It’s not always practical or enjoyable to munch on carrot sticks in the company of other football viewing fans who are eating typical snack food fare, so if you want something more flavorful, try one of Kettle Chips’ many flavors!

For all of you moms who got your kids video games for Christmas, I’m curious to know if your kids look like these kids in this New York Times Magazine video. 

Can anyone say, creepy? 

My video game experience is limited to Donkey Kong and Pac Man, neither of which became addictive for me. I could take them or leave them, and most of the time, preferred sport recreation to most other forms of recreation. So, I have never really understood the video game craze, and kids’ complete obsession with them. I suppose the level of realism and interactivity in today’s games, ups the fun factor for kids, but how much is too much?

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Awhile back I asked the question about where our minds had gone, relative to a story about moms turning babies into living Barbies, but I think I now have the answer! Our minds have joined our periods in the world of non-existent. Yup. Our brains apparently joined the normal menstrual cycle on the oversized jetliner called the feminine pad (with the sticky wings) never to return.

So, everybody, it’s time to break out your journals. No, not your food diaries or exercise log; I’m talking about your Pure Insanity Journals in which you track all things that make you say, “has everyone gone certifiably mad?”

Okay, fine; you can start your journal today if you don’t already have one. And in it, you can add today’s post for your first entry. Write this down: Many women comply willingly to scientific community urging them to give up periods. 

No, not the punctuation marks. You can still use a dot at the end of your sentences. I’m talking about periods as in those biologically natural monthly occurrences that make a woman a woman. Calm down, Monopausal Molly, I’m not spitting in the face of your femininity, I am merely making the point that the menstruation factor is a key component of being chromosomally XX rather than XY. And apparently, there are enough menstruating women who are tired of being XX and fed up with wearing period panties, that they’re ready to kiss their “monthly visitor” goodbye.

It’s kind of a chicken and egg thing. Did the loss of our brains cause us to be okay with letting science turn us into human lab rats, or is it the lack of our normal hormonal functions what caused our brains to go haywire enough to want to dress our babies like Carrie Bradshaw? 

I don’t know which it is, but apparently, society hates women being women so much, that it wasn’t enough to give us options of two pills that can reduce periods to three days, and a third that can limit them to four times per year. They had to introduce a fourth that can delete them as easily as if they were just typos on your computer screen of life. One day it’s wings and torpedoes with strings, and the next it’s the ability to go commando 24/7, 30 days per month.

My God, didn’t we learn anything from the 2008 study that showed pill use in women undermines our ability to sniff out the right male pheromone match for ourselves? (Based on some of the men I chose to date while I was on it, I can vouch for the study’s accuracy!) So, if we tinker with nature anymore, are we all just going to turn into lesbians?

Have we become so tired of anything we label as an inconvenience that we demand it be erased from our lives, even if it is nature’s way of letting us know we’re the healthy, fertile beings we were meant to be? I’m not trying to go Ezekiel on you gals, but what are we going to let them do, turn us all into space aliens by the time it’s all said and done? Yes, I know, some of you  bleed like stuck pigs every 28 days, and want out of your confining pens, called menstruation, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. (High Heels and all!) 

Ladies, I implore you not to do this. In addition to this flying in the face of good sense and not passing my “caveman test”, think of all you’ll be giving up:

Unacceptable Effects Of Eliminating Periods:

 1. You will remove your free pass to be a bitch once a month due to PMS, which pretty much takes away your right to go ballistic on all the people you can’t stand.

2. You will no longer be able to blame having a puffy face in photos on “being bloated” because it’s  “that time of the month”, which means you really WILL have to start doing my list of 10 Diet Resolutions.

3. You will forfeit the opportunity to truly know the depth of your boyfriend’s love for you, when he sees you in your period panties for the first time and still stays with you.

4. You will miss out on the creative fun of making up cool code phrases that substitute for “I’m on the rag”, like The Crimson Tide floweth, and Aunt Flo is visiting this week.

5. Tampax and Kotex will lose a ton of business, which will cause them to seek a Feminine Product Industry Government Bailout along with the car industry, which will fall to you, the taxpayer.

6. Advil and Motrin will lose a ton of business from fewer cramp-suffering women, which will cause them to seek an Anti-inflammatory Industry Government Bailout along with the Feminine Product Industry, which will fall to…….you get it.

7. You will lose the opportunity to call in sick to your male boss with no questions asked, when you say the phrase, “I can’t come in because I’m having “female issues.”

8. You will miss out on the chance to tell the annoying girl from work that you can’t go to her Pampered Chef party because your period just has you exhausted.

9. You will no longer get the sympathetic back and foot rub from your significant other who hates to see you in such discomfort.

10. You will completely abolish your right to dump the kid in your husband’s arms at a moment’s notice, and prance off to the bathtub for “me time”, with no rebuttal.

Bonus Reason Not To Wear The Pure Insanity Badge:

11.  You’ll lose the “toiletries rule” as a gauge for whether your boyfriend is serious about you. (This is the rule that says if he lets you keep a  box of tampons under his sink, he’s into you.)

Is there anyone on earth who does more to help us improve our health than Oprah? I say no! And she’s starting off 2009 with a new commitment to getting and being healthy while helping all of us do the same!

For those of you who missed Dr. Oz on Oprah yesterday, I’ve got your recap for you right here! He talked about eliminating from your diet the things I talked about on my Resolutions list last week, and then gave four things to add to your diet if they aren’t already in it. Some of these things are also discussed in other previous Fit After Thirty posts, but it can’t hurt to be reminded of all of the things you can do to redefine “fat” in 2009!

Get on a path to being *f.a.t. by incorporating the following things into your daily diet:

1. Antioxidants - He suggests these foods: tomatoes, blueberries, broccoli, kidney beans, artichokes, and dried prunes.

2. Omega 3 oils - 3g daily- He suggests: flaxseeds (ground), walnuts (12 per day), salmon, scallops, soybeans, squash, and olive oil

3.  Fiber - 25g/day - He suggests: 100% whole grain oatmeal, lentils, black beans, peas, raspberries, pine nuts.

4. Multivitamin - If you are pre-menopausal, it should include iron and 5,000 units or less of Vitamin A, and for men and post-menopausal women, it should not include ironand only 2,500 units of Vitamin A.

Check Oprah.com to sign up for next week’s webcasts with Dr. Oz and her trainer, Bob Greene. I think it could be a great way to get you educated, motivated and inspired to get Fit After Thirty this year!