Christmas is a little over a week away and I have just received the best gift I could ever ask for!! According to an article by The Associated Press, "being [up to] 25 pounds overweight doesn't appear to raise your risk of dying from cancer or heart disease, says a new government study that seems to vindicate Grandma's claim that a few extra pounds won't kill you."

Now before I give more details from the article I want to say that I would love to lose the extra 10-15 pounds that I have been carrying around the last few years. I eat an almost perfect diet (really!), I try to exercise as much as my physical limitations will allow (well, most of the time I do!), but the pounds just don't seem to want to come off. I've blamed my metabolism slowing down, menopause, age...just about anything I can think of, but the fact remains that no matter what I seem to do, those 10+ pounds don't seem to be going anywhere!! As a person who is very invested in doing all I can to be healthy, this has been very frustrating as everything I have read suggests that to be healthy you have to be thin.

What great news to hear that if you do all the right things and can't get those extra pounds off, it's OK!! Now the caveat to this study is that although it suggests you can be "fit and fat", it did indicate that people who are overweight have a greater risk of death from diabetes and kidney disease. And people who are more than 30 pounds overweight are considered to be "obese" and are at higher risk for cancer and heart disease.

But right now I am going to concentrate on the GOOD NEWS! I will continue to eat the right foods, exercise as much as possible, and do all I can to be as healthy and fit as possible...and then I am going to stop worrying about those extra pounds, and give great thanks to the folks who did this study and gave me a wonderful Christmas gift - the gift of being able to completely and totally love myself, just the way I am!! ~ Andrea :-)