DIET COLUMN

People magazine is reporting that country music star Wynonna Judd has a New Year’s resolution: to tell the world about Alli. She’s signed on to act as a representative for the super-popular weight loss supplement.

Unlike her half-sister Ashley Judd, Wynonna wasn’t blessed with a Hollywood leading lady figure. Which, in this case, gives her more appeal, since regular folks can relate to her.

“People can see themselves in me and say ‘You know what? If she can do it, I can do it,’” says Judd.

The courtship between yoga and Hollywood stars doesn’t show any signs of losing steam. Recently, actress and mother Reese Witherspoon revealed to Shape magazine that in order to stay in shape, she is a regular at YogaHop classes. In addition to her usual jogging and hiking routines, Witherspoon finds time to sneak in these 90-minute action-powered classes that set yoga postures to hip hop, rock and pop music for an invigorating workout.

While many yoga practitioners prefer to down-dog in silence, YogaHop classes provide the same stress reducing and calming effects of traditional yoga classes but to music.

Recently I wrote a post on some of history’s most extreme actor weight gains (or losses). I had a few too many, so here are five honorable mentions:

1. Following in Christian Bale’s footsteps, Jeremy Davies (right) co-starred with him in Rescue Dawn, and also lost weight to the point of dramatic effect portraying a war prisoner. The already thin actor only had to lose 33 pounds to have the same near-death look.

I’ve always admired Jennifer Connelly as an actress, and well, a stunningly beautiful woman. Her latest film is the big budget sci-fi remake, The Day the Earth Stood Still. And it nearly did just that when I saw her make her entrance for an interview with David Letterman.

I’ve discussed actors and their obsessive dedication to gaining or losing weight for roles before. But a cursory look at her future roles doesn’t seem to call for an emaciated look.

If she is battling anorexia, it initially took me by surprise, because I thought that it usually afflicts people at a much younger age, even if it is an ongoing battle through a person’s life. It is most common in young women, health experts say, but it’s not impossible that it can happen with older people as well. Jennifer Connelly just turned 38 this month.

I’m obviously not making a diagnosis, but she certainly doesn’t look healthy.

Subway sandwiches, Kellogg’s cereal, Speedo swimsuits and now its special post-workout drinks. Michael Phelps endorsements continue to grow.  Phelps has just put his stamp of approval on PureSport, a kind of drink that packs a protein punch and a slow-energy release fuel that keeps you from sugar-crashing like so many other sports drinks do.

Phelps swears by them as a way to refuel before, during and after the five hours he clocks in the training pool. Each drink features a 2.67:1 Carb to Whey Protein ratio and comes in four flavors: grape, banana berry, lemon lime and fruit punch. Eight 16-ounce bottles cost about $25.

But Phelps isn’t the only PureSport enthusiast, fellow 2008 Olympians, gymnast Nastia Liukin and swimmers Aaron Peirsol, Ian Crocker and Brendan Hansen and have been training with PureSport Workout and Recovery nutritional performance sports drinks with protein as part of the nutritional preparations before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Pickles and ice cream? Green olives and cupcakes? Even though Tinsletown A-list moms-to-be may wear couture maternity wear, when it comes to food cravings they are just as bizarre as the rest of us regular moms.

US magazine polled some of Hollywood’s most famous moms for which foods they couldn’t eat enough during their nine months of pregnancy. The cravings seem to fall into two categories: sweet or salty. Here’s a look at who fell into which category.

Pass the Salt!

New mom Ashley Simpson confessed to eating green olives with everything as did Minnie Driver, while Jessica Alba ate ham and cheese sandwiches almost every day of her pregnancy. Halle Berry noshed on bread, salt and pickles while she was pregnant with daughter, Nahla.

Saturday Night Live alum Horatio Sanz was never my bag. Sure, he could be funny on occasion. But, the incessant cracking up during his skits got tiresome. What is he doing these days? I’m not entirely sure, but one thing can be said - he’s half the man he used to be.

Literally.

The once portly comedian is now 100 pounds lighter. Here’s a report from the blog at New York magazine’s website:

When we ran into Saturday Night Live alum Horatio Sanz at the Montblanc-sponsored “24-Hour Plays” last week, we couldn’t help but notice how trim he looked! We asked him if he’d lost weight.

Umm, you think? What gave it away?

“I’ve been eating better,” he admitted. “I’ve been trying to come up with a joke about how I’ve lost weight and I was going to say, ‘I stopped putting nuts in my sundaes.’”

Sanz continued the SNL tradition of heavyweight funny men. Here’s to the unlikelihood that he’ll follow in the tragic footsteps of Chris Farley and John Belushi… as long as he’s steering clear of drugs, of course!

Jennifer Lopez, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Jessica Alba - the list goes on of A-list moms-to-be who immediately transform their post-baby bodies into their pre-pregnant shapes. How do they do it so quick?

The overwhelming pressure to be thin in Hollywood is a massive driving impetus for these new moms to whip their bodies back into svelte shape. But all of them work hard to do it. They may have the money for personal trainers, baby-sitters and personal chefs but when it comes down to it, each of these new moms have to put in the work.

Health experts recommend pregnant women gain anywhere between 20 to 40 pounds for a single pregnancy. For those moms-to-be who are underweight to begin with, they are encouraged to fall on the weightier end of this spectrum. For those ladies carrying multiples like Jennifer Lopez and Angelina Jolie, the weight recommendations are a bit more generous.

A few weeks after Jolie gave birth to twins, Vivienne and Knox, it didn’t even look like she had ever been pregnant: Her slender physique showed very little, if any, hint of her pregnant self.

madonna yoga

Whether you’ve performed a few rounds of sun salutations or been twisted into Triangle pose, chances are you’ve done Ashtanga yoga. Ashtanga yoga is one of the oldest forms of yoga. Its series of postures has its origins in the Yoga Korunta, an ancient Indian manuscript. It is technically referred to as Ashtanga Vinyassa yoga, “vinyassa” referring to a dynamic system of breathing and movement.

History

The postures included in the six series of the Ashtanga yoga practice are presumed to be a few thousand years old. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that guru Sri Krishnamacharya and his student, Sri K. Patthabhi Jois took the postures outlined in the Yoga Korunta and devised a system of yoga that was initially taught to children and adolescents.

I can’t get enough “Love”…

Over the summer, I commented on the fake outrage over Jennifer Love Hewitt’s fake weight issues. Well, I guess the outrage isn’t fake, but the whole ordeal is certainly much ado about nothing. Hewitt hopes to put it to rest once and for all.

If you don’t know about this trivial nonsense, Hewitt was made fun of for beach pictures that revealed that, gasp, she was a human being with real life un-airbrushed blemishes. She attacked the tabloid onslaught by defending womanhood, warts and all.

So when she subsequently lost weight and it was spotlighted in US magazine, she was promptly attacked again for supposedly being a hypocrite. Point being, if it didn’t matter, then why would she lose the weight? The people of course missed the point, which was that it’s mean spirited to attack anyone who doesn’t look like a cartoon character of the female figure.