Column Facts are facts.

It’s Groundhog Day, which, if nothing else, means you have a legitimate excuse to watch what is inarguably the last great film Harold Ramis ever directed. It also provides a thin and tired narrative frame for us to hang an assortment of sex facts from, and for that, we can all be grateful. Congratulations! It’s almost spring. (Oh god, spring is still so far away. There are at least five more weeks of nothing but apple pyramids and Brussels sprouts at the farmers’ markets.)

20%: increase in vitamin D and fertility-related hormones for women after prolonged exposure to sunlight

States that recognize same-sex marriage as of February 2nd: 7 (welcome to the party, Washington!)

35: median male age at first marriage in Sweden, the world’s oldest

$140: amount the average Swede spends in a given year in the pursuit of romance

$94: amount spent by the average Dutch citizen, the lowest rate in Europe

$815: going rate among the Irish

1924: Year the term “sexpert” was coined (yet another thing to blame the Jazz Age for. Thanks a lot, Fitzgerald).

Number of days Phil Connors spent trapped inside of the Groundhog Day loop, according to best estimates: 12,403

2 to 4: Factor by which most men over-report their number of lifetime sexual partners

Image: qmnonic

Column Facts are facts.

It’s almost the end of January, which means that for at least the last 3 weeks your life has been a gray, dull, hopeless blur of days in which you’ve almost certainly been forced to listen to your co-worker’s latest cleanse. Nobody’s drinking, nobody’s going out, and it’s probably raining. Wouldn’t it make you feel better to read a string of sex-related facts?

Number of years since the last time Tim Gunn had sex: 29

$1.30: the price of a gallon of gas in the last year that Tim Gunn had sex

Number of unique combinations of sex acts the average sexually active adult has recently performed, as reported by a recent American study: 40

3 years: Length of time a male lobster’s sperm can survive inside of a female

What happens to the genitals of male honeybees after having sex: they explode

What happens to the genitals of banana slugs after having sex: they are chewed off and eaten

10%: Percentage of office workers who claim to have slept with a co-worker in their building

14: Factor by which having an abortion is safer than giving birth

Reported increase in sexual dysfunction, as related to the use of intravenous drugs: 800%

Separate your real friends from your frenemies.

Your friends are your support system, your partners-in-crime. They’ll laugh over stupid reality shows with you, protect you from creepsters at the bar, bring you soup when you’re sick and tell you the truth when you need to hear it. They’re like family, except you can control who they are. So exercise that right. If your friends don’t give you that warm and fuzzy feeling, maybe you aren’t surrounding yourself with the right people.

Everything is a competition.  No matter what you say, your friend feels the need to one-up you. Mention that you had a bad day, and she’ll say, “Mine was even worse!” Tell a funny story and her response is, “Oh, but wait until you hear this!” She always has to have the more expensive shoes, the bigger diamond ring and the cuter boyfriend, but if you mention that you don’t care about those things, she’ll have an anecdote about how she cares even less. Some people are innately competitive, and that can be a positive thing, but there’s a big difference between showing off Scrabble skills and constantly belittling your accomplishments.

You’re only friends out of nostalgia. You lead totally different lives, you find very little to talk about when you’re together and you disagree on most of the big issues. But, you think, we’ve known each other forever! If you met today, you probably wouldn’t be friends at all, but you like being able to say that you’ve been BFFs for decades. On its own, this may not be a good reason to dump a friend, but it’s definitely a reason to downgrade her status in your life. You might want to focus your attention on friends that you can really click with instead.

They talk, but don’t listen. Everyone has experienced this at least once: sitting silent for thirty minutes or more while a clueless friend yaps on and on, never letting you get a word in edgewise. We all have our chatty moods, and sometimes, your friends really do just need you to sit there and listen while they vent. That’s cool, but when it happens on a daily basis, it can start to wear on your patience. If your friend asks how you’ve been doing and then immediately cuts you off with a story of her own, she’s probably got chronic self-absorption syndrome.

They ask for lots of favors, but never give back. Just like the friend who can’t shut up about herself, the flaky favor-asker seems to think her time is worth a lot more than yours. You’re the one who has to pick up the pizza, act as designated driver, help her move across town and pick her up from the airport. She calls you when her washing machine breaks or she needs to bake a cake for an office party, “because you’re better at this stuff than I am.” But when the tables are turned, your friend is AWOL. Don’t be a doormat.

They can’t keep secrets. You confided to a friend about something very personal, with the understanding that she wouldn’t tell anyone else. But she just can’t seem to keep things to herself, no matter how touchy the subject may be, and soon you’ve got mutual friends expressing their condolences, offering advice or just giving you knowing looks. Whatever her reason for gossiping, betraying your trust isn’t cool. You should be able to count on your friends not to broadcast your business.

In your time of need, they’re nowhere to be found. It happened – that big emergency that you hoped would never come up. This moment, whether it’s an accident, your house burning down, a death in the family or the breakdown of your relationship, is when you need the support of your friends the most. Instead of being there to help you get back on your feet, she’s giving you excuses about how busy she is. This might just be the ultimate friendship test.

When you talk to them about it, they’re not contrite. Okay, so you’ve decided you’re going to confront your friend directly about the issues that have been bothering you. You think, maybe she just doesn’t realize how she’s been acting, and she’ll stop. But instead of apologizing or saying she’ll try to do better, she offers up denials or rationalizes her behavior. She’s not willing to work on the friendship, so it must not mean much to her.

You have to psyche yourself up to see them. Maybe you avoid answering her calls because you have to be in a particular kind of mood to deal with her. Maybe you put off hanging out because you realize that every time you see her, you come home feeling like shit. Listen to yourself. These are not-so-subtle clues that this relationship isn’t doing anything for you.

You can’t just be yourself. When you’re around this particular person or group of friends, you feel like you have to do certain things or act a certain way to fit in. You might find yourself wearing clothes that you wouldn’t wear otherwise. You might even feel a need to self-censor, because you know they look down on some of your views or interests.  Maybe they even bully you a little bit. You shouldn’t have to try this hard.

You don’t like who you are around them. If you’re trying so hard to make your friendships work that you’re changing who you are to please them, and finding yourself more than a little disgusted with your own behavior, stop it right now. You should never compromise who you are to please other people, especially if those people actually kind of suck. There are plenty of potential friends out there who will love you for exactly who you are.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

10 Signs It’s Time To Leave Your Town

10 Signs It’s Time To Leave Your Relationship

10 Signs It’s Time To Leave Your Job

Photos:  dovima_is_devine_II, ohai_spackwood, whatmegsaid

ColumnInternet dating for the food loving crowd.

It was the usual, Friday afternoon internet surf: half an hour spent scouring blogs, trying to track down some new recipes. As I scrolled down the Eater page a banner ad on the right side caught my attention – impressive, given my usual blindness to anything that looks like advertising – “Eater Dating.”

A site completely devoted to online dating for foodies?

Yes.

I cringe and marvel at the idea all at once. As it turns out, Eater Dating is the brainchild of bar and restaurant site Eater and the online dating site How About We. The difference from regular online matchmaking services? How About We is all based on suggesting an intriguing first date, which fits well if you’re trying to find someone that’s just as food obsessed as you are. Imagine the possibilities:

“How about we try the new food cart?”

“How about we drink bourbon out of mason jars?”

“How about we get wheatgrass smoothies and then hit up the tempeh reuben joint?”

“How about we buy some fennel and make our own sea salt shortbread?”

“How about we cure our own pork in our kitchen pantry and live happily ever after?”

I’ll stop there, since “Pick up Lines for Foodies” is a whole other column waiting to happen.

The crossover between food and love isn’t new. Jamie Oliver has his own dating site, in collaboration with Match.com. Even OkCupid has a foodie test, because god forbid you put “foodie” on your online profile and don’t actually fit the correct description. (The fact that you actually have never purchased artisan cheese at the market would be so disappointing to your future beau.)

A good friend of mine immediately insisted that I join Eater Dating, just so that I could report from the trenches; turn Foodie Underground into Foodie Love Underground. No, thank you. Online dating mixed with self-professed food snobs? That sounds almost worse than cupcakes.

Ultimately, food can be sexy, but dating the foodie crowd? You can only take so many discussions about the merits of sparkling water and urban wineries. As Felicity Cloake of The Guardian put it, “does a foodie really need another foodie to be happy?”

I am not so sure.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” If there are two of you with a love for food, there may not be so much room for the actual love part. And by that same token, if you’re in the business of dating, and you’re schmoozing foodies, you better know what you’re getting yourself into.

There is also the Swedish site Restdejting, which launched last year, that not only aims to find people true love, but ensure that food doesn’t go to waste. An initiative of farmers’ cooperative Lantmännen, it brings together eco-conscious singles who want to share their leftovers, or whatever ingredients they just can’t seem to put in their dish of the night. You enter what five ingredients you have laying around, and with the help of social media, hope some other food lover in the near vicinity is in the mood for the same thing.

Genius, considering the fact that anyone who has pickled herring, lingonberry jam, and an extra bundle of dill and hardtack on hand and ready to offer up is probably soulmate material. Scandinavian food is in, after all. Plus, if you’re breaking it down to simple ingredients, there’s not really any room for food pretentiousness; you just want to make sure that cute guy down the street doesn’t have to eat a fillet of wild-caught salmon alone.

The results speak for themselves:

“I never thought I would find love in the refrigerator. But there it was, hidden all the way in the back behind an egg carton…”

Maybe love is as easy as your favorite ingredient. If it doesn’t lead to love, at least you have delicious food to show for it.

After all, isn’t it better to eat good food alone than bad food together? That may depend on who you’re talking to, but much like Harriet Van Horne wrote in an issue of Vogue in 1956, “cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”

Which means no matter where your love life is at, the least you can do is commit to making excellent food.

Maybe then you can at least avoid internet.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Image: decafeined, Alexis Soon

ColumnA behind-the-screen look at the consistently ridiculous inbox of a writer.

At EcoSalon, we receive our fair share of email pitches, and we’ve decided to give you a weekly peek at this valuable information inside our inboxes. These products, people, and services are 100 percent real, although we’re not always sure that they should be.

One very smug Andy Masters has written the definitive book on romance, I mean dating, I mean sales.

His new book, Kiss Your Customer: 77 Reasons Why Sales & Service Are Just Like Dating & Relationships, takes a “creative look at the eerie similarities between business success and relationship success.” What we can learn from business that we can apply to relationships? That it’s good to get a sale? That it’s going, going, gone unless you buy now?

“It’s about the process:  Find ‘em, and then keep ‘em happy!” Masters says. “There is a great irony between the sales process and romantic courtship. There is also a great irony between keeping your customer happy, and keeping your significant other happy.”

Nothing says romance like relentlessly convincing your customer/wife that she needs you.

Says our pitching publicist: “There probably isn’t a groom on the planet who hasn’t felt completely overwhelmed by all of the major decisions (and costs) associated with his wedding day. While most brides revel in the planning process, most men want to run and hide until they find out how much they’re paying. It’s not just the bride’s special day, but the groom’s too, so why not get involved?”

Looks like 1960 just called! Along with every gender stereotype out there! And why are you marrying the jerk who wants to run and hide from his own wedding, anyway?

Be the Man: The Man Registry® Guide for Grooms is supposed to be a humorous guide to navigating “the wedding minefield” giving grooms a “play-by-play of the wedding planning months, answer lingering questions and debunk age-old myths.”

Except all the myths it perpetuates.

Thanks to Napoleon Fireplaces and Grills from Crittenden, Kentucky for sending an over 85%-women-read conscious publication a pitch about how dumb we are at grilling meat.

According to the Bluegrass State based BBQ shop, “males continue to reign in the fiery realm of the grill.”

In fact, according to a 2011 consumer research study, put together for the international Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, the male head of the household “is more often the one who makes the decision to use a grill, prepares the food and actually does the work on the grill.”

“Grilling has traditionally been a guy thing, and this research confirms the anecdotal evidence many of us have seen in our own homes for years,” said David Coulson, national advertising manager for Barrie, Ont.-based Napoleon Fireplaces and Grills.

Among the details provided by survey respondents, researchers found such valuable insights as:

- Males handle the majority of the grilling duty.
- The male head of the household cooks about 73% of the meals on gas grills, 72% on charcoal grills and 66% on electric grills.
- Men prepare the food 58% of the time for gas grilling, 55% for charcoal grills and 50% for electric grills.
- Those stats compare to women who handle food prep 39% of the time for gas grilling, 40% for charcoal grills and 49% for meals made on electric grills.
- Men generally make the final call when it comes to whether or not to grill a meal. The survey indicates men typically make the decision 60% of the time for gas grilling, 63% of the time for charcoal grilling and 56% of the time for electric grills.
- Women make the call 36% of the time for gas grilling, 33% of the time for charcoal grilling and 43% of the time for electric grilling.

Where’s the fire?

No matter who actually exercises their grill skills to cook the meal, the job of firing up the equipment usually falls to the man of the house, the survey found.

“It’s extremely important for us to know how people typically use their grills and barbecues so we can tailor our products and services to our customers habits,” Coulson said. “At Napoleon, we have a full line of gourmet gas and charcoal grills to suit any household, no matter who’s at the helm.”

Thanks, David. The next thing we want to know is, if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound? How much sound? What percentage of deer hear it? Does? Rabbits?

Image: Adactio, Quapan

The top stories of the week at EcoSalon.

We looked at 40 inspirational quotes on new beginnings…

…which you might need if you’re seeing any of these 10 signs a relationship is faltering.

A new year, a new food obsession – and Anna Brones suggests it should be tacos.

When the winter weather is playing havoc with your tresses, here’s how to fight back.

Finally, if you’re looking for a new green habit for the year, how about taking someone else’s trash in?

Don’t stay for the wrong reasons.

Sometimes, relationships are like ugly old sweaters: they’re not flattering, they don’t make you feel good, and they’re actually kind of scratchy, now that you think about it. But they’re so familiar, you just can’t bear to get rid of them. Consider giving yourself room for something better – or just have fun being single for a while. Here are signs it may be time to part with the familiar.

You barely spend any time together.

It’s no surprise that, with both partners often working full-time jobs, modern couples may spend less time together than ever. Some couples juggle a lot of responsibilities and strain to see each other on a regular basis – that’s fairly normal. However, a big red flag should pop up when you find that you just aren’t mustering the effort to make it work. If you’d rather stay home and watch movies alone than go out on a romantic date or even just a casual get-together with your boyfriend or girlfriend, something is not right.

Your partner makes you feel bad about yourself.

You should never find yourself believing that you’re not good enough due to your partner’s words or actions. Even if it’s said in a joking way, a jibe about your looks, your job, your intelligence or any matter that relates to self-esteem can really hurt. Don’t just sit back and take it when the “jokes” keep adding up, or your partner doesn’t even bother to cloak his or her constant criticism. There’s a difference between constructive feedback or advice and comments that are meant to tear you down.

You can’t stop fighting.

He doesn’t help out around the house. You nitpick the way he drives. He ate the last cookie that your mom made for you. You made a funny face that could be interpreted as eye rolling. The sky is blue. If you find yourself getting into arguments over nothing and everything, there’s trouble brewing. Constant fighting is a sign of high tension, and while stress can certainly be a big factor in this, there are often underlying relationship issues causing your conflicts. When you can’t work them out – or simply don’t care to – say goodbye.

Your goals in life don’t mesh.

You’re on a quest for self-improvement, or at least a better life, and he’s content to sit in that armchair playing the latest XBox game until the end of his days. You’re growing as a human being, thinking about getting a better job or moving to a new place or having children, and she’s thinking about doing the same old thing she has done virtually every day for the past five years. Don’t sit around waiting for your partner to change. Unless you settle for less than what you truly want in your life, or your partner has some kind of epiphany, things aren’t looking good.

You try to justify repeated wrongs.

Making excuses for your partner’s ill deeds is not doing anyone any favors, least of all yourself. You tell yourself that he’s cold because of his relationship with his mother, that she doesn’t comfort you in your time of need because she’s distracted, that he cheated those three times because he was drunk and you were working late. If even after discussing these issues, they continue to recur, don’t keep justifying them; it just gives your partner permission to continue hurting you indefinitely.

You daydream about leaving.

You used to get lost in visions of cozy domestic life with your love, and now you’re longing to pack your bags and live like a bohemian artist in Paris. Everyone thinks about these things every now and then, but the danger comes when such thoughts become almost like an obsession. When you’re soothing yourself to bed at night with fantasies about starting fresh, you’re looking for a way out.

You’re staying out of self-sacrifice.

When it comes down to it, you realize that you’re no longer in love, but how can you leave? He just wouldn’t be able to get by without you. Maybe you’ve got children, and you worry about how the dissolution of your relationship will affect them. That’s totally understandable, but you’ve got to give yourself more value. Are you really helping your partner by staying with him or her at this point? Is your unhappiness affecting your kids anyway? Don’t waste what little time you have. Give yourself a chance at something real.

You keep secrets.

Once, there was nothing you kept from each other. You confessed all of your deepest secrets and told each other about virtually every aspect of your day, from the antics of an annoying co-worker to worries about your health. But now, things have changed. You conveniently forgot to mention that you’re back in touch with your college sweetheart, or that you’ve been putting money into a secret savings account that’s just for you. Being in a healthy relationship doesn’t have to mean giving over every little detail of yourself, but there definitely shouldn’t be any deception involved.

You’re not having sex.

Libidos change, and sometimes medical issues can cause serious shifts in sexual desire. If your sex life has gone off a cliff, eliminate any physical causes first. Then examine the state of your relationship. If either you or your partner just aren’t interested anymore, it may be a sign that your relationship changed from romantic to platonic when you weren’t looking. It’s not the end-all be-all issue for every relationship, but for most of us, sex is an integral part of a healthy union. When the spark fizzles out despite all efforts to revive it, you may be better off as friends.

The thrill is gone.

A big part of graduating to the real world of adult relationships is realizing that the early butterflies-in-your-stomach phase is supposed to blossom into something more stable and, perhaps, less exciting. Chances are, even if you’re with your “soul mate,” you don’t feel quite the same way about him as you did when you first met. But what if seeing your partner after an extended absence stirs no strong emotions whatsoever? Stop accepting mediocrity and meting it out in return. It’s time to move on.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

10 Signs It’s Time To Leave Your Town

10 Signs It’s Time To Leave Your Friends

10 Signs It’s Time To Leave Your Job

Photo: illusive photography

ColumnWhat defines the new chic? Grit and glimmer in conscious measure.

Over dinner recently, a colleague and I abandoned a hot and heavy discussion about the political zeitgeist for something decidedly more dessert-appropriate: women. The End of Men, the death of the the Death of Marriage myth, Lady Gaga, gay marriage, the endless debates about women getting funded in Silicon Valley – XX as cultural object is too hot to handle right now, but it’s less What Women Want and more What Women Are (and fools who confuse the two shall soon be parted from their money). If Superwoman is mercifully out, so is Single Girl. Women no longer fit into neat boxes, if they ever did: Wife. Mother. Career Woman. Bohemian. Twentysomething. Fortysomething. Old. Nope. Not your .xls, not your funnel, not your category. An extremely palpable swirl of chutzpah and quirk, charm and cojones, rock solid and rock star? Yep. And just in time. “It’s like there’s a new chic going on,” started my creme brulee compadre.

“She’s cool like confident.”

“She’s not afraid to say she wants a relationship.”

“But only if she wants one. Which she might not.” This, with a wink.

“She thinks ‘feminist’ is a pretty word.”

“Aw. Because it is.”

How to spot The New Chic? It’s motorcycle boots in your minivan. It’s courage, it’s eschewing Christmas if you feel like it, it’s not being afraid to be less liked and more respected, it’s borrowing the best traits from the boys and making us all more human in the process.

The New Chic means dropping the fear of fat. Bring on the butter. It’s good for your brain.

The New Chic likes girls, or boys, or both, and sometimes out of order, and don’t worry so much about it.

It’s breaking rules in accordance with her limits, which she knows intimately.

It’s leading the conversation in mixed company; something that can still stun a man. Try it, it’s fun!

Also? The New Chic doesn’t consider singledom a thorny brambles of broken GPS on the proper path to the soul’s completion, formerly known as a wedding day.

“This could go on all night!”

The New Chic often does.

The New Chic doesn’t go gaga over babies by default; in fact, she may not even notice them.

Did you hear? She brags and delivers.

She tells The Nagging Voice to fuck off so fast it scurries.

You’ll never catch her judging another woman with her eyes in group company.

She hasn’t done it all. She hasn’t seen it all. She isn’t everything and everyone.

She might have a hot pink stripe in her hair. Over 40? She still wears it long.

The New Chic is a forever fan of chivalry and that means: she extends it to others including and especially men.

Fact: a good thick moisturizer beats caking on the foundation any day.

The New Chic means walking out the door looking good; not made up, good.

She wouldn’t be caught dead in fast fashion.

She can drive a stick shift but prefers to bike in her heels instead. Because she wears heels. Sneakers. Are. For. Running.

She doesn’t prefer to text with the men she sees.

She is scrupulously honest because it just feels wonderful.

She is on time, every time.

She blurs the lines and doesn’t look back because she has nothing to hide on Facebook.

Two words: black coffee.

The New Chic does not drink Diet Coke. Does not diet (exception: the three hours before a date).

You can spot her because she stands up straight, sucks in her tummy tight, squares her shoulders and doesn’t pad the living daylights out of her nipples.

To err is human, to never brush your teeth in front of him, divine.

The New Chic is loving what you own to the greatest degree but letting it all go just as readily. Think of it as If the Buddha Consumed (and hey, he did). Example: A friend’s grandmother, who is something like a bonus grandma to me, has built a vast fortune in her life, and she has the personal drapery of diamonds to prove it. I’m talking the kind so big, they slide to the sides of her fingers whether she wants them to or not. Not bad for a girl from Oklahoma whose first crib was a drawer. “We never have insured these old things,” she drawled to me over brunch one cold Dallas day. “If a piece gets lost or stolen: eh, so what? I’ve enjoyed it.”

On that note: celebrates old people.

It’s being inspired by men rather than finding them merely useful. (We are all going to be better off for that one.)

It’s having the courage to build towards the best.

The New Chic has better things to do and hires people to help.

The most timely thing about The New Chic, though, is the sheer fun of it.

Your turn.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life.

Image: Whatshername?

ColumnJane Austen’s tomes on relationships are revisited with 21st century reading glasses.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

These words mark the opening passage of British author Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, Pride & Prejudice. Although the conclusions she draws about love and intimacy are starkly insufficient for contemporary audiences, Austen continues to be fiercely relevant because of her lightning-hot investigative process and sharp social commentary. With a forked tongue pointed directly at the landed English gentry, it’s not so much her what, but rather the derring-do of her how.

For post-modern women, Austen’s world view – with its codified rules and wax seal of matrimony – isn’t so much suspect, but simply quaint. We welcome and also balk at today’s ever changing guard, asking what will become of us in an era defined by what sociologists herald as the End of Masculinity. Boys and girls both are bereft of a compass for navigating the variegated topography of gender, pair bonding, and progeny.

In our era, plurality reigns – rendering outcomes open-ended and unhinged, rather than foregone.

For Jane Austen, the terrain of dating and desire was not simple. Austen, for instance, spurned a suitor once marriage became the relationship’s only inevitability; consequently, she spent the rest of her life alone, but transformed her solitude into a gift – harnessing her time to author Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Emma. The socially-sanctioned options at her disposal were few, but she certainly gave the finger.

For many women, it’s the sheer abundance of choices that threatens to paralyze momentum; porous lives with few boundaries have their own attendant shortcomings. The introductory statement to a current-day Pride & Prejudice would require radical revision, not least because the very concept of a “universal truth” is an untenable antiquation. Instead of staking out a man of means in want of a wife, I might re-write the text to read as follows:

“That you are wholly and utterly alone is unavoidable; that everything is causal and that we’re all in this together is also inescapable; the rub, whether it be between boys and girls or whatever relationship between two humans, is to harmonize your ultimately abject triviality with your responsibility to change the world, in ways big and small, on a daily basis.”

Berlin-based Abigail Wick is a New York Times and NPR contributor. From an Ex-Pat…with Love is her weekly EcoSalon column about cultural dislocation, romantic relationships and lifestyle choices – filtered through the lens of an American woman living and working abroad.

Image by Kameron Elisabeth

ColumnSkip the weight loss centers and the elliptical machines, there are other fun ways to drop unwanted pounds.

Last spring, I set sail from the States to Europe, where I’m now a legal resident. In the intervening months since my arrival, I’ve shed a handy ten pounds – without even realizing it was happening. In fact, it didn’t occur to me that I was slowly slimming down; I only noticed that my energy levels were wicked high, that I loved shopping for new clothes because I liked how I looked in the dressing room mirrors, and that I felt infinitely sexier than before I came to Berlin. What happened?

I definitely don’t hail from one of America’s Fat Capitals; my former home of San Francisco is one of the healthiest, most physically fit populations in all of the U.S., and my long-preferred, mostly active lifestyle seemed to have all the right cards in place for an optimal waistline: I’ve always walked and biked everywhere (I don’t even have a driver’s license), and as a yoga teacher and (mostly) vegan, it seemed I could do no wrong. And yet, some key ingredient kept me hovering at a Marilyn Monroe body type. These days, I’m certainly no buff beauty queen, but I have definitely stopped thinking and caring about my weight. Who needs to worry when you can just have fun?

This week’s Sex by Numbers provides a little toolbox of four incredibly accessible, easily applicable tips for whittling down your frame – European style – with nary a lick of dreadful dieting or fretting about what the scale reads.

Walk It & Work It

Maintaining fitness isn’t some codified, separate activity from the rest of your daily activities, but rather an integrated aspect of life. In the morning, I walk to the market for breakfast ingredients and mosey on over to the office. On my lunch break, I stroll along the canal that cuts through the city or explore nearby graveyards and parks – it refreshes me and keeps me from going mad from sitting at a desk and in front of a computer all day. In the evening, I use my own two legs to get to yoga class and back home again, and instead of taking the subway to meet up with friends later at night, I walk to whatever bar, club, or restaurant where we’ll be hanging out. By incorporating regular bipedal motion into my everyday life, I get to enjoy the city sights, bump into friends on the sidewalk, window shop, and generally approach each day with appreciation and ease. Sure, it might require more time than driving a car, but it endows routine experiences with increased richness and joy. Plus, there’s no better time for strapping on my headphones and listening to music.

DIY Dinner

Nothing is sexier than knowing how to hold your own in the kitchen, and a woman who can whip-up a mean meal at a moment’s notice is a hot commodity in the dating market. (Because, let’s face it, relationships are a cultural and social marketplace.) I’m a proponent of intuitive eating and cooking in conjunction with seasonal, regional foods. As such, I advocate stocking up monthly on staples like legumes, lentils, and nut butters, while making frequent trips to the market several times a week for fresh vegetables, fruits, fresh-baked breads, and ethically-produced dairy products. Culinary art is one of life’s most sensual pleasures and is not only an opportunity to nourish your body but delight in a full-fledged orgy of lush colors, scents, tactile exploration, and even the roundly satisfying thwack of a butcher knife against the chopping block. When you enshrine a daily habit of cooking into your routine, you deepen an appreciation for food and can savor it more richly. And there’s the added benefit of the pounds simply melting away.

Have Sex

You can even have lots of it, if you want. It’s an obviously inventive, expressive workout that provides an endorphine rush in equal measure to running a marathon or getting a promotion, except rather than being an exceptional affair, it’s a sustainable activity in which to engage on a daily basis. Further, a healthy sex life results in a healthier physique. We all want to feel completely free of body-consciousness when we’re with our lovers; it allows us to more deeply engage in intimacy and focus purely on the pleasures of sharing ourselves with another person. Having regular sex is rad, and provides constant incentive to keep your body feeling beautiful and strong to share your best self with a lover (or several).

Balance, not Boundaries

Wine with dinner, nice cocktails as nightcaps, a croissant for breakfast, convivial meals and drinks with friends that span for hours and hours – I could go on. Beauty, at its core, is about savoir faire. It’s vital to celebrate life with other people by coming around the table and enjoying its bounty – and this isn’t just about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here in Europe, every meal is occasion for festivity and joy, and people are willing to unplug from their laptops and iPhones to come together on a quotidian basis. Indulgence – in sweets, spirits, and fine company – is perhaps the single most important component of creating balance and joy.

Image: Jamie Neely