Bummed out about the birth control recall? Worried about the safety and effectiveness of your pill? Welcome to the I-hate-dealing-with-birth-control club. There were plenty of reasons not to love the pill even before this latest debacle. There's the hormones, the puffiness, the mood swings, the cancer risk, the forgetting to take it. Ugh!

It's enough to make you just want to give up on birth control altogether -- almost. Except that there's that whole getting pregnant thing. Which most of us don't want to do every nine months. But here's a radical idea: How's about the guys worry about the birth control a little? Time for us to remind the men of the world about what a huge favor they'd do us if they'd just get a freakin' vasectomy.

You can feel the "get fit!" spirit everywhere you look -- from the mall to TV commercials and Facebook. People are getting back on treadmills, buying workout gear, swapping eggnog for protein shakes. After a season of stuffing ourselves with holiday cookies, the season of resolutions is here. For most of us, that means resolving (or re-resolving) to lose weight this year. 

Maybe it's 10 pounds or 100, but either way, we all need a game plan to make our resolution a reality. As someone who has made the resolution to either lose weight or maintain weight loss pretty much every year of my life, it's empowering to know there are several simple lifestyle tweaks anyone can do to help you shape up.

Oh no, it's officially December! That means if you haven't already slipped into party mode over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, you'll surely be tempted to over the next four or five weeks. There's no time like this time of year for eating, drinking, and being merry, but of course, those behaviors never seem to go hand-in-hand with a rigorous weight-loss program. Until now!

Cara Alwill Leyba, a writer who works for MTV, has come up with a plan that's perfect for the holiday season called The Champagne Diet. And for some time, she's been documenting her experience with it on a blog, soon to be a book, called The Champagne Diaries. The philosophy that helped her pare pounds: Eating nutrient-dense, tasty foods -- anything you want, as long as it's in the range of 1,200-1,400 calories a day. Oh yeah, and having a glass or two of champagne. That's all there is to it!

Ok, admittedly, the photos look bad. The name, Miss Bum Bum Brazil, is worse. And the promo photo of all the contestants posed together as if they are the apostles in Da Vinci's "Last Supper" is really on the wrong side of the line. The concept is completely gratuitous and degrading. While scrolling through the photos, I was wondering, why on earth am I not completely offended? And then it hit me. I'm Latina and, generally speaking, we are a little obsessed with our butts. Jennifer Lopez anyone? Shakira? These are women who are proud to be round.

Get past the boobs and the high heels in these photos and what you will see is a culture of people celebrating some big ol' butt!

We often think about breast cancer screenings as a women's health issue. After all, it's usually our bodies in which the cancer grows -- it's our health and our lives that are at risk. Recently, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care published new breast cancer screening guidelines recommending that early detection methods like routine mammograms for women in their 40s and breast self-exams and clinical exams for women with no symptoms be dropped, as well as that older women undergo mammograms less frequently. It's not surprising Canadian women were as upset as we American women were two years ago when a U.S. task force made similar recommendations.

You know that look that people give new moms who are clearly having a hard time? That tilted head with the poor you pout. After I gave birth, I got that look -- a lot. People lowered their tone when speaking to me and asked me if I was OK -- a lot. Looking back, I was a mess. But what working-mother-of-a-newborn-colic-baby-with-reflux-who-doesn't-sleep-ever isn't, right? I was tired, I was angry, I was gaining weight, I was crying, I was forgetting everything. People started asking me do you think maybe, maybe you have postpartum depression. Even the OB was suggesting I should just talk to someone. What was actually happening to me is that my thyroid levels were dropping, causing symptoms like depression (as well as a whole host of other physical things like constipation and hair loss, fun!).

Typically, I'm of the anything-that-works mentality when it comes to weight loss -- anything healthy, that is. But as long as you're ridding your body of dangerous fat, I don't think it matters if it's by acupuncture, diet, exercise, or wearing weight-loss underwear -- different strokes for different folks, and all of that. However, when it comes to plying people with cold, hard cash to shed the pounds, that just seems mean, especially in this economy.

HealthyWage is a weight loss company that essentially lets dieters gamble that they'll lose the weight. "Win money for losing weight" is their slogan. "I've got my life back ... and $1,000!" one user claims. "I'm in the best shape of my life ... and won $10,000," states another testimonial on the site.

Oh my gawd, sign me up!!! What's there to lose but weight, right? Not quite ...

Does egg donation exploit women and put their health in danger? That's what a new documentary film, Eggsploitation, claims.

I just watched a trailer, and it has left me feeling a little queasy. The melodramatic horror-movie music may have had something to do with my reaction, or it may have been the grainy images of hypodermic needles poking through skin or into some cells I can't totally identify (an ovary? an egg?), but it's also probably more than that.

The movie, subtitled ominously "The Infertility Industry Has a Dirty Little Secret," is now being screened around the country and is stirring up debate.