Today’s guest author is Heba Salama. You’ll remember Heba, and her husband Ed Brantley, from Biggest Loser season six, during which they lost a combined total of 277 pounds. Heba became the first woman to win the at-home prize for the highest percentage of weight lost amongst all contestants eliminated during the game; Ed finished in second place. In addition to continuing to lead as examples in the fitness realm, the couple has been busily working on a new healthy cookbook due to release spring 2010 and has embarked on a fitness campaign for 2010. Learn more at EdAndHeba.com.

Let’s face it: any celebration is cause to hit the “diet pause button.” The simple word “celebration” usually denotes lots of calories just by reading it. But a celebration with the actual title “Fat Tuesday” must mean double trouble, or double chin. If I have learned one thing since being in the real world after The Biggest Loser, it’s definitely that none of these things have to be the case. I started to think about healthier ways to eat a King Cake. I turned to my husband, the chef, and his suggestion: make sure you run for 18 hours, and then you have earned yourself a piece. Thanks, honey. But for those of us looking for more realistic options, here are my top five tips for turning this into a great holiday you won’t feel guilty about!

1. Pick your Poison. Before you go out for your celebration, make a conscious decision and choose to either indulge by having a few cocktails OR having a few higher calorie food items. The combination of choosing both will be what gets you into “trouble.” A great low calorie “mocktail” option is club soda, lime and a splash of cranberry juice- you will never even miss the booze!

2. Make it a Progressive Dinner. Invite your neighborhood friends to join you in the celebrations by organizing a Mardi Gras-themed progressive dinner. Each house has a different dish with Cajun roots, and the group travels by foot from house to house to enjoy the food and festivities. Who says you can’t get a little exercise while at a dinner party?

3. Clean-up the Street Fair Foods. Always popular around Mardi Gras are the street vendors with their fried, sugary and high calorie treats. Our favorite remake? The healthy moon pie:

• 1 Low Calorie Graham Cracker (chocolate or regular flavor)
• ½ sliced banana
• 2 tbsp Low Calorie Whipped Topping

Break graham cracker in half and spread whipped topping. Cover with sliced bananas and top with other half of cracker.  Wrap in festive colored plastic wrap and leave in freezer 2-4 hours…enjoy with out the guilt!

4. Run a Race.  This may be leaning towards Ed’s suggestion of running for 18 hours to earn some authentic King Cake, but my first official trip NOLA will be to run my very first (of many) half marathons! Check out the site and get going!

5. Make Healthy Swaps.  These are some of our favorite healthy takes on or swaps for traditional Fat Tuesday fare:

• Jambalaya made with skinless chicken breast, turkey sausage and shrimp- all the flavor and a lot less of the fat!
• Seafood Etoufee sans roux. Sounds fancy, right? Roux is a French word and is a flour mixture used to thicken dishes.  You can make a traditional seafood etoufee without the roux by serving the crawfish, shrimp and crab broiled or boiled over brown rice, but with all of the spice!
• The Ultimate King Cake Swap: Angel food cake with frozen whipped topping made in all the right colors! To make it a layered cake simply slice the cake in half, spread whipped topping down the middle, restack and keep cool until ready to serve. Then allow your guests to decorate…don’t forget to hide the traditional “baby” in the cake!
• Good old seafood boil. Fill up your pot with clams, turkey sausage, shrimp, crawfish, corn and all the spices you can handle for the best and healthiest broil you have ever tasted…so much fun too!

This year, Mardi Gras takes place on February 16.

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Not-So-Fat-Tuesday: Healthy Mardi Gras Tips from Biggest Loser’s Heba

That’s why this year you’ll find Heba and Ed participating in half-marathons, triathlons, and other various foot races throughout the country. They’re committed to doing 10 of these races in 2010 – and they want to see you there, too!

“Racing gives us the opportunity to stay fit and healthy, as well as meet and inspire people on their own weight loss journeys. We prove that if we can do it, anyone can,” said Heba.

The race schedule for Heba and Ed is as follows. You’ll find that they’re already exceeding their own expectations with 14 scheduled events!

• 2/28 – Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon, New Orleans, LA
• 3/13 – Leprechaun 8k Nags Head, NC
• 3/27 – Cooper River Bridge Run10k, Charleston, SC
• 4/10 – Tarheel 10 Miler, Chapel Hill, NC
• 5/23 – Ramblin’ Rose Triathlon, Chapel Hill, NC
• 5/29 – Doughman Race, Durham, NC
• 6/12 – Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, Raleigh, NC
• 6/19 – Smithfield Sprint, Smithfield, VA
• 7/10-11 – Triangle Triathlon, Raleigh, NC
• 9/5 – Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon, Virginia Beach, VA
• 9/19 – Angels Race Triathlon, Clemmons, NC
• 10/2 – Lake Royale Triathlon, Louisburg, NC
• 11/6 – City of Oaks, Raleigh, NC
• 12/6 – Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon, Las Vegas, NV

“Our race selection is very much a reflection of who we are, where we’ve been and how far we’ve come in our journey to get healthy,” said Heba. “We’re excited to be racing in both our hometowns, and to participate in such important races such as the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and Angels Race Triathlon. We hope that our efforts inspire people to get active and get involved!”

You may even see a few other members of the Biggest Loser alumni at these events, partnering with Heba and Ed to continuing spreading the word about overcoming obesity and committing to wellness.

You’ll remember Heba and Ed from Biggest Loser season six, during which they lost a combined total of 277 pounds. Heba became the first woman to win the at-home prize for the highest percentage of weight lost amongst all contestants eliminated during the game; Ed finished in second place. In addition to continuing to lead as examples in the fitness realm, the couple has been busily working on a new healthy cookbook due to release spring 2010.

Learn more at EdAndHeba.com.

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Biggest Losers Heba and Ed Launch 10 in 2010 Campaign for Fitness

Biggest Loser: Families went to the girls. Heba Salama walked away as Biggest Loser’s first female at-home prize winner, and $100,000 richer! Heba lost an astonishing 138 pounds. Had America voted for her to move on to the final three, rather than husband Ed, she would have been the Biggest Loser winner. But Heba’s quite gracious about her win either way, saying it was never about the money.

We congratulate Heba on completing such an amazing journey, and for such a tremendous transformation!

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Heba Salama, Biggest Loser 6 At-Home Winner

Phil and Amy are college sweethearts, they met at their freshman orientation and she says after the second date she was in love. Their devotion for one another was quite clear on the show, and the love pours over into their three boys. Upon arriving home, Amy says her kids have embraced the new lifestyle. Her middle son is 11 years old, and the only one she says has had trouble with his weight, even saying kids at school have made fun of him. Since she has returned home he’s lost 10 pounds, two pant sizes and even goes to the gym with Amy and Phil.

One of Amy’s favorite activities at the ranch was getting to hang like “Cirque du Soleil people” in the fabric, a field trip arranged by trainer Bob, who she says is the “greatest thing that ever happened.” Her only regret is not having filled Phil’s mouth with peanut butter cups, or even her own. Amy regrets not hitting the higher calorie bagel table to beat Heba’s calorie count, and gain control of the game in week 5.

Heba’s control of the game separated Amy and Phil on to opposing teams. “I’m a half-full person stuck on a half-empty team,” were Amy’s sentiments last night in response to all the negative attitudes being exuded by her teammates. Amy says she was thankful to have been chosen to be at the ranch and have her life changed for the better. She credits the other 300,000 Biggest Loser entrants with reminding her how important her opportunity to be on the show was.

A lot of discussion was had about the dramatic triangle between herself and Phil, Heba and Vicky and Brady. She says the comments by Phil to Brady, asking them to save Amy and eliminate Heba, were not true. Going into the elimination, she knew her time had to come. She thinks Heba is fun and under different circumstances they could have really liked one another.

Amy was able to lose 38 pounds during her six weeks at the ranch. Since going home, and even since her reveal last night, she’s down to 145 pounds and wears a size six in everything “except tight jeans.” Her goal is to reach 120 pounds by finale, making her 5′4″ frame teeny tiny. She learned that she wasn’t eating enough, by skipping food throughout the day and filling up at night. Amy now eats every four hours and works with a trainer. She stocks up on bulk food at the beginning of each week, things like chicken and broccoli, prepares “a whole pile of meals,” and then they store individual servings to grab-and-go for work.

Watch Amy’s Reveal video.

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Interview with Amy Parham, Eliminated Biggest Loser Week 6

Since leaving the ranch in mid-May, Ed has lost 90 pounds, and currently weighs 245 pounds (down from his starting weight of 335). He had set a goal for a 32″ pant size, and he is currently wearing a 34″ in shorts. Speaking with Ed, there is no doubt that he’s as dedicated to his weight loss as much as he was during his time on Biggest Loser, if not more so. “I had to bring the ranch home,” Ed explained about instilling the mindsite of complete discipline at home that he had at the ranch. He often remembers “what would Bob think,” or that Heba would remind him not to stop.

One thing he has stopped is sampling all of his delicious menu items. As a professional chef, Ed says one of his biggest problems was always tasting everything he cooked. He’d eat meals thoughout the day, with no regard for how many extra calories he was consuming. Now, he says when he needs to taste, he simply spits it back out into a napkin to avoid those calories.

While Vicky and Brady of the brown team seemed to stand-out as Ed’s and Heba’s closest friends on the ranch, it seems the grey team left with a bad taste in their mouths. Ed said that they could have been good “southern gentlemen” and voted to keep grey team on, but at that point, their vote wouldn’t have swayed the elimination at all.

He blames his own elimination on coming up one pound short in the weigh-in. Ed’s final trip to the Biggest Loser scale produced a zero-pound weight loss for the week, making Heba’s remarkable eight pound loss bittersweet. Ed suggests that it was likely a fat loss and muscle gain canceling one another out. Heba was reluctant to send Ed home because she felt he’d have a major weight loss the next week, and Ed said a week after returning home, he dropped another 10 pounds.

Up next, Ed is just concentrating on losing the weight for the finale, where he stands to win the at-home prize of $100,000. To do that, he enjoys spinning and the stair climber at the gym. If he wins, he suggested that he and Heba might turn the Jayco RV they won in week 3 into an RV Gym. When this all settles down, “the sky is the limit,” says Ed, in regards to working with initiatives that support healthier school lunches for children.

Don’t miss any of the Biggest Loser interviews, recaps, or weekly weigh-ins. Sign-up today for the Biggest Loser Updates Newsletter, and we’ll donate $1 to Susan G. Komen for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Then, find out how you can win a prize pack worth $185!

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Interview with Ed Brantley, Eliminated Biggest Loser Week 4

Due to the presidential debate last night, episode 4 of the Biggest Loser was cut short, however tonight the wonderful folks over at NBC aired the second hour of the show. The second half of the show proved to be worth the wait! In the second part of episode 4, we saw Jillian really get tough and rightfully so, her teams weren’t doing the homework that she was assigning, which on the Biggest Loser is just as bad as sneaking snack cakes in the middle of the night!

We also saw Bob take his team to SUBWAY for a quick bite to eat, which is good because trying to find a place to eat on the go in the “real world” isn’t easy. I love the fact that the show is sharing information with viewers about how to make smart choices when eating out.

At the weigh-in, we saw the orange team Ed and Heba fall below the dreaded yellow line. The orange team was then forced to decide who was going home amongst themselves. In the end, Ed wound up going home leaving Heba to continue on her own.

During his at home follow-up, Ed looked Great! I wish him continued success at home and consider him a real contender for this year’s At-Home prize.

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Bernie’s Biggest Loser Episode 4 Recap Part II

Heba Salama represents the orange team on Biggest Loser: Families, with her husband Ed Brantley.

WINNER – SEASON SIX AT-HOME BIGGEST LOSER!

Hear Heba’s and Ed’s very first interview.

Age 30

Hometown Raleigh, NC

Occupation Pharmaceutical Sales Representative

Biggest Loser: Families teammate Ed Brantley, Husband

Team Color Orange

Trainer Bob Harper

Starting Weight 294

Final Weight 156

Total Loss -138

Percent Lost 46.94

Quotes

• “There’s no epidural for exercise… that’s really unfortunate.” – Episode 1
• “It’s hotter than 50 hells outside.” – Episode 5
• “This is one temptation I don’t think we’ll be able to avoid.” – Episode 10

Factoids

• Starts out as heaviest woman in the house
• Won Week 2 Competition, shared phone call home prize with Red Team
• Won Week 3 Competition; Won Week 3 Temptation for a Jayco RV
• Competing alone after husband Ed eliminated Week 4
• During Week 5 temptation she won control of game and split the teams – black for Jillian and blue for Bob
• Will Heba get your vote to be a finalist? (Husband Ed was chosen)
  

Videos

• Ed’s Departure
• Week 3 Bonus Footage
• Meet Heba and Ed
• Heba and Ed Casting Video

Other spellings: Heeba, Hebaa, Hebba, Heva, Sallama, Salamaa, Salamma, Slama, Saloma

Don’t miss any of the news, interviews or recaps from Biggest Loser: Families. Sign-up for the Biggest Loser Updates Newsletter today!

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Biggest Loser 6: Heba Salama