Got the cooler? Bug spray?
We're all trying to squeeze in one more picnic before summer packs up. But it's hard to stay nutritionally mindful as you share the bucolic scenery with ribs, potato salad, homemade brownies, and a few cold beers. Without the handy calorie counts posted like they are at the Starbucks counter, your plastic fork is left to go tub-diving blind.

For those who would like a little guidance, here are tips for eyeballing the calories and fat grams of common picnic foods, courtesy The Nutrition Twins, Tammy Lakatos Shames and Lyssie Lakatos, authors of The Secret to Skinny and Fire Up Your Metabolism. To make things easy, they chose all the equivalents from items you probably have in your purse.

Print this out and pack it with the folding bubba chair:


Spare rib = 2 thin combs stacked on top of each other 220 calories, 17 grams of fat (6 grams of it saturated)


Corn on the cob = round hair brush (the bristle part) 60 to 70 calories, 1 gram of fat
Add butter (=

My first heartbreak and first bikini wax had a lot in common. For one, they both occurred when I was 17. Secondly, they both left me in tears. And third of all, they both scarred me for life.

I lost my waxing virginity to a friend who was studying for her esthetician license. She'd never waxed someone before and I'd never been waxed. There was no testing on areas of skin and no temperature check. There was only pain-pain of hair being ripped off my lady parts.

I cried. She cried. I left feeling like a damaged woman. I couldn't walk right for a week, and bought up nearly all the hydrocortisone cream CVS had in stock.

It took me a couple years to get over that experience. I told myself later: that was a total amateur waxing me-and I was so young. I was sure professional waxes would be quick and clean and over before I knew it.

So, in my early 20s, I made an appointment at a professional facility-which will remain nameless-and showed up with renewed confidence. But the

There's a whole lot of misinformation floating around these days, especially when it comes to exercise and working out. How do you tell fact from fiction? We sat down with Shape Magazine editor Jeanine Detz to bust five of the most common exercise myths.

One of Shine's most entertaining fitness posts ever was fired off as a letter to Gwyneth Paltrow's trainer about how much weight women should lift. "Wow, I just saw the quote of yours: No woman should lift more than 3 pounds," Fitness Fixation blogged. "That has to be a joke, right? ...Somebody please tell me I'm just having a bad dream."

FF, you are having a bad dream. And I'm having a great one, according to a study that came out this week from McMaster University in Ontario. Not that we're arguing; just continuing the debate about how much a woman must lift to get fit.

For years, it's true, the gym gospel has been: Lift heavy or you might as well be painting your nails. So the new findings are making news. In short, researchers showed that you can, indeed, build muscle by using light weights, as long as you do enough reps. Measuring muscle protein synthesis, they conclude that "low-load contractions peformed with numerous repetitions or high-load contractions performed

We're bringing this article back by popular demand to show you how to keep looking just as fabulous in the fall.

- Debbie Emery, BettyConfidential.com

Just because bikini season is over, don't slack off on your healthy eating habits and switch to comfort food, or skip the gym because of the shorter, darker days. Holiday season will be here before you know it, and you want to look hot for all the Christmas parties!

Read How to Lose the First Five-and the Last Five-Pounds

New York-based celebrity trainer Thelonious 'T.J.' Johnson (below, right), who keeps CNN host Anderson Cooper in muscle-rippling shape, shares his top tips for getting - and maintaining - a great body.

• Timing is everything. While people generally fit workouts into their schedule whenever they can, T.J. says doing cardio in the evening is most efficient because it burns off the calories that you ate during the day.

• Go beyond the treadmill. A sexy body isn't just skinny, it's toned. T.J.

Soon, doctors will have a pill you can take for bikini-phobia. In the meantime, there's shopping.

Kidding, of course. But outside 90265, the zip code for Malibu, wearing less string than it takes to tie up a bakery package strikes alarm in most women. In fact, for a good portion of America, a bikini falls somewhere between wishful thinking and lycra terrorism.

The great news is, with all the new sexy bathing wear, it's easy to flirt with a bikini, without getting fully involved.

MJ Day, a senior associate editor at Sports Illustrated, who works year round on their Swimsuit Issue ("I know nothing about sports"), tells Shine how to gradually go from comfy coverage to bare minimum. You might take heart at the fact that when Day goes on a photo shoot with four girls, she brings more than 500 suits. "You'd be surprised at how many of them don't work, even on a model," she says. "So if you like something, try it on. The suit that scares you most, is often the one you look best

Who says being over 40 means you're over the hill? Not these women! As the saying goes, they're not getting older- they're getting better! And it really doesn't get much better than our list of top celebrity bodies over 40!

For more of your favorite celebs on Bikini 101, check out:

"That is chunky good."

I'm walking down a swanky New York street, totally invisible, as one tends to be when they're with Maiysha Kai. And suddenly, a black, knit-chunky good-shrug in a Daffy's window, makes her do a sharp runway pivot straight into the store. I gather we're going in.

It's true, that sweaterette would kick it on her unruly and highly-paid bosom, which has decorated everything from billboards to bra boxes to album covers.

The modeling: It happened a little like the shrug, on the fly, for Simpson, who goes solely by Maiysha (and she's definitely a chick who can sling a uniname over her shoulder and carry it off like a slouchy hobo bag.) She never dreamed of doing it; wasn't discovered as a child. In fact, she was teaching drama after graduating from Sarah Lawrence-unhappy and barely scraping by-when a woman at the school suggested she model. "I'm too heavy," Maiysha told her flatly. She'd never heard of "plus."

The conversation led to a casting call