Andrea Beaman is one of the most sensible and kind voices out there on the topic of feeding and treating yourself right. What other health and nutrition guru would admit to smoking the occasional cigarette (but only after a couple of drinks!), and explain it in a way that shows us how to quit all our unhealthy addictions?

Andrea was FitFam's guest on the December Member Call. Listen online (60 min) or download the mp3 below to discover:

• several healthy holiday treats
• whether short fasts during the holiday season will make things better or worse
• the mindset shift that allows anyone to "find the time" to prepare healthy food every day
• three convenience foods that can turn anyone into a healthy short-order cook on a moment's notice
• how to quit smoking by not quitting smoking
• the secret to breaking food addictions without struggling or feeling deprived

Q: I want to get my boys off the fast foods, but I'm not ready to start learning how to cook. What ingredients should I definitely stay away from  And are there any ingredients that sound bad but are OK?  Keep Reading…

Julie's Health Club blog shared an article questioning whether Whole Foods is selling out by offering products from Coke and Pepsi (Odwalla and Fuelosophy, respectively). The post sparked a spirited discussion, and as offen happens, I found myself sort of agreeing with everyone, despite the fact that they were disagreeing with each other.

So I called my dear friend Danny Warshay, who has as good a pedigree in the natural foods business world as anyone I know. He's a serial entrepreneur, has an MBA from Harvard, years in brand management at Procter & Gamble, and five years as a founding partner of Health Business Partners, a natural foods investment and mergers and acquisions consultancy. He's now the managing director of DEW Ventures, whose portfolio includes Culinova, a "functional foods" company that seeks to put healthy and tasty in the same foods. He's met the CEOs and founders of many of the companies that product the "health foods" we see on our supermarket shelves, and helped to midwife dozens of acquisitions of these little "mission-driven" companies by much larger ones.

I recorded the call, which you can listen to online or right-click the "Download mp3" link to download to your computer or iPod: Keep Reading…

Peter Bregman and I spent 3 days last week working on the premise of our diet book. As eagle-eyed, elephant-memoried FitFam blog readers will recall, the title changes almost daily (I wish the blog changed daily!).

The concept we (well, all right, mostly Peter) came up with was the idea of "Eating Against the Odds." There's a giant system out there that makes it easy and OK for us to eat junk, and feed junk to our kids.  Keep Reading…

Every so often I see a news report about the "Negative Calorie Foods" diet. Basically, it suggests, certain foods take more calories to chew and digest than they provide. Celery is often given as an example. After eating a few sticks of celery - plain, of course, not slathered in mayonnaise or peanut butter or whatever else - you're thinner than you were before, or so the theory goes.

Keep Reading…

Q: Why is it so expensive to eat healthy, compared to the standard diet? And do you have any tricks for eating healthy on a budget? There are several reasons that healthy food costs more. Some are acceptable, and some make my blood boil.  Keep Reading…