Photo of Dr. Oz and Oprah via Oprah.com

Even though this episode has previously aired, you are sure to learn something new about how to eat your way to a healthier and slimmer life.

Check with your local listings for Oprah show times.

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Tune In to Dr. Oz and Bob Greene on Oprah

This past year, Jillian Michaels’ released her own Fitness Ultimatum for the Wii to lack-luster reviews, and there are rumors that the Biggest Loser will release its own game. But before that, the show’s host Alison Sweeney is giving EA Sports Active Personal Trainer a try.

“When do I have time to go to the gym? It really is like a personal trainer in a box. It’s perfect. I recommend it to all mothers!”, raves the new mom about the game that releases May 19. Alison is also joining 11 others in a 30-Day Challenge, to be the first to try the new game and report their progress. The challenge begins with a spa retreat hosted by Bob Greene, and it’s no surprise that his involvement earned the product a Best Life seal of approval. Other participants include web celebs, mommy bloggers, gamers and daddy bloggers.

EA Sports Active works with the Wii to give you a stimulating workout in the privacy of your own home. With 25 exercises and activities that burn calories and tone muscles, you’ll be able to get gym-like results from your living room, den or game room. Virtual personal trainers will guide you through your Bob Greene-approved workouts, and daily progress reports will keep you motivated to stay on track. Other features you’ll enjoy:

• Multi-player mode lets you workout with a friend, spouse or even the kids!
• Includes a resistance band for more intense workouts.
• Use the included leg strap to have your movements replicated on-screen, and receive feedback to improve your technique.
• Use in conjunction with Wii Balance Board.
• Virtual trainer offers instruction, feedback, motivation and tips.
• Activities includes tennis, dancing, inline skating, boxing, volleyball and 20 others.
• Log foods you eat and activity outside of EA Sports Active.

Pre-order your EA Sports Active Personal Trainer for the Wii now.

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EA Sports Active Personal Trainer for the Wii

Oprah reluctantly sings "Proud Mary" with Cher and Tina. (Oprah.com)

Oprah really connected with her viewers by discussing in detail the personal anguish and feelings she’s experienced during the past two years, and said she “feels like anybody else – when you wake up and your clothes don’t fit.” One of the first real turning points for her was the episode last year with Cher and Tina Turner. She was worried about standing on stage with 61- and 68-year-old women and at 53 she’d be the older woman, because of her health and size. She explained she did not want to go on stage and perform “Proud Mary” with her friends, instead she wanted to hide herself.

And hide herself she did. She showed all of her O Magazine covers from 2008 and explained that the year of head-shot covers was intentional as she didn’t want to show her body. Not being one for excuses, Oprah says when the weight started sneaking back on, she was also experiencing a bout with severe insomnia. Four doctors misdiagnosed what she credits her viewing audience with identifying – a thyroid condition. She says it’s cured now, but the condition that slowed her metabolism and caused her doctor to tell her to “embrace hunger” was something Oprah and Bob Greene both admit she used as a crutch and a target for blame. She now accepts that she didn’t have the healthiest relationship with food, using it to patch an emotional void.

“I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching, and that was a great disappointment,” admitted Oprah. So to make it right, she decided to start with herself. She discovered that she’d removed herself from her to-do list, and to start living the healthy life she desired again, it had to go back. A meeting with her personal assistant meant she now includes more personal time for Oprah – for eating healthy meals, hitting the gym, or even a manicure.

Oprah shares her meal plan in the Harpo kitchen. (Oprah.com)

She also advises that you plan meals. Oprah showed a calendar with the meals for each day outlined. It keeps her organized, and less likely to chow through an entire bag of her food vice, organic blue corn tortilla chips. Oprah’s meals might include her Green Drink, Turkey Meatballs that she makes every Sunday, egg whites, tuna, grilled chicken, or steel-cut oatmeal. She also says as much as she dislikes exercise, she now knows for sure it’s a must. She’s found a balance of moderate cardio (work until you can talk, but don’t want to) and resistance training (which she actually enjoys).

Oprah admits that part of her falling off the wagon this time was that she thought she had it, had figured out the key to losing weight and keeping it off. Bob reminded that it requires daily effort. For all her weight ups and downs, Oprah is nearly brought to tears when she declares that she’s grateful for her body, and that the journey is never ending.

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Oprah’s Best Life Week Kicks off with Bob Greene

1. The Structure House Weight Loss Plan

This is structured after Gerard J. Musante’s (the author of the diet) work at the actual Structure House, a Durham, North Carolina-based residential treatment center for obese adults. This book/diet offers a holistic approach to weight loss with motivational components. This diet helps followers understand the ‘why’ behind overeating and helps them to put their lives in balance. This book wants you to find other things than food, i.e. time with friends, outdoor activities, etc., and includes many recipes!

2. The Step Diet

This diet really focuses on walking to help motivate you to lose weight and slim down your waist, and it even comes with a pedometer. It incorporates easy things for losing weight from intentionally going for a walk or making small changes in your life like parking farther away from the store and in turn burning more calories. The plan puts emphasis on calories burned rather then cutting calories, while nutritionally this diet asks you to “Cut food intake to 75 percent of what you currently eat.”

3. Weight Watchers

The plan is flexible, provides generous support and teaches you how to live life during and after this not-diet. Learn more about this 45-year old weight loss plan, and why its revolutionary Points system works so well.

4. The EatingWell Diet

Released in 2007 by author Jean Harvey-Berino, PhD, RD, to help dieters focus on behavioral changes – including finding and facing eating triggers, eating and shopping mindfully, etc. This behavior modification is combined with a 28-day mix-and-match menus to maximize lower calorie intake while maintaining weight-loss-rate criteria.

5. The Volumetrics Eating Plan

This diet is based on the idea that when we eat we like to feel full. This diet promises weigth loss based of focusing on the energy density of foods. Author, Nutritionist Barbara Rolls, PhD, uses her Volumetrics plan to explain how low-density foods like fruits and vegetables, as well as soups and stews, fill you up without overloading you with calories. The diet also focuses on exercise a second, but key component in the Volumetrics plan encouraging the dieters to log a guide for their 30 to 60 minutes of daily activity claiming that this will help provide motivation.

6. The Best Life Diet

Bob Greene is forever linked with superstar/dieter Oprah Winfrey, and that’s exactly where this diet came from. It’s a balanced and moderate approach to changing your lifestyle for the better.

7. The Solution

This program helps people figure out why they’re overeating. Author/Dietitian Laurel Mellin’s developed this method which is based on The Shapedown Program, a successful weight-management plan she created for overweight children and adolescents in the late 1970s. The focus of obesity is not so much in terms of diet and exercise, but as another expression of the interaction of mind, body, and lifestyle.

8. You: On a Diet

From the famous Dr. Oz on Oprah, this diet teaches and motivates you about weight (and waist) loss with a sense of good humor and fun, as well as trusted expertise about health. This book includes recipes, easy-to-understand nutrition, teaches you how the body works, and helps the reader calculate how many calories they need each day.

9. The Sonoma Diet

Based on Mediterranean eating: consuming plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, olive oil, fish, and nuts while incorporating different phases of weight loss.

10. The Spectrum

Dr. Dean Ornish, MD, offers a program that moves you along four separate paths to health – nutrition, exercise, stress management, and personal relationships. This plan provides a holistic approach (including how to reduce stress and includes a meditation DVD). This whole-body approach, includes a vegetarian lifestyle, stress management, and exercise, is on target in terms of health, disease prevention, and reaching a healthy weight.

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America’s Healthiest 10 Diets

One of the most recognizable doctors, Dr. Mehmet Oz will be sharing practical and effective tips and information for you to improve your health. He’ll tell you how to take the best care of your body in 2009 whether it’s eating the right foods or reducing your risk of heart disease.

Oprah’s spiritual experts like Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute, will be on hand with other spiritual counselors to help you find more enrichment in your life. Whether you have low self-esteem, work in a dead-end job or covet a creative outlet, you’ll get the guidance and support you need to deepen the meaning in your life this year and beyond.

Financial coach Suze Orman will help you sort through your financial woes and incorporate money-saving values so that you can be on your way to discovering financial freedom this year, despite the dismal economy.

Each day of Oprah’s Best Life Series will feature one of these topics so be sure you catch the ones that you have a real interest in.

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Oprah Launches Her Best Life Week

She’s one of the most powerful and successful women on the planet. But if there’s one thing that Oprah has had trouble with in her life, it’s her weight. She’s notoriously yo-yoed over the years, and now she’s actually being very candid in saying that she is tipping the scales at 200 pounds again.

She slimmed down to 160 pounds in 2006. But in the upcoming January issue of O magazine, Oprah is spilling the beans on her recent 40-pound weight gain: “Yes, you’re adding correctly. That means the dreaded 2-0-0,” Oprah admits.

“I’m mad at myself… I’m embarrassed,” she writes. “I can’t believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I’m still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, ‘How did I let this happen again?’”

In 1988, Oprah famously wheeled a wagon loaded with fat onto her talk show set to represent a 67-pound weight loss while wearing a pair of size 10 Calvin Klein jeans.

She lost the weight with a liquid protein diet… which may help explain why she has yo-yoed over the years. Fad, short-term fixes will only disappoint.

And if I can take the liberty of playing amateur psychologist, maybe there are some deep-seated emotional issues that have been unresolved. If anyone has the ability to surround herself with healthy support – and has with the likes of fitness guru Bob Greene and Dr. Oz at the ready – it’s Oprah Winfrey. So, why does she struggle with her weight unless there are some powerful “demons” she’s dealing with. When she says “I felt like a fat cow,” and “I wanted to disappear,” you can’t help but think maybe the problem isn’t in her stomach, but above the shoulders.

At least she seems to be aware of this possibility.

“My greatest failure was in believing that the weight issue was just about the weight,” Winfrey told People Magazine in 1991. “It’s about not handling stress properly.”

Being a billionaire doesn’t erase all of life’s problems.

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Oprah Tips Scales at 200 Pounds, Again