7 Desserts that Fight Fat

What do Darth Vader, King Kong, and an ice cream sundae all have in common? They’re all destructive, havoc-wreaking villains. But if you look deeper, you discover that they all have a good side, as well. Kong may have made a mess of Midtown Manhattan, but his animal rage was driven by his love for Fay Wray. Sure, Lord Vader wanted to destroy the Jedi, but when push came to shove, he put Skywalker first. And, well, the same is true of the ice cream sundae sitting in your dish. It might have a bit more sugar than your body needs (technically your body doesn’t need any sugar), but ice cream also delivers calcium, which binds to fatty acids in the digestive tract and blocks their absorption. And ½ cup gives you 17 milligrams of choline, which can lower homocysteine. What’s homocysteine? An amino...

Read more »

Posted in: Burn Fat,Diet

6 Foods That Weaken Bones

SaltSalt saps calcium from the bones, weakening them over time. For every 2,300 milligrams of sodium you take in, you lose about 40 milligrams of calcium, dietitians say. One study compared postmenopausal women who ate a high-salt diet with those who didn't, and the ones who ate a lot of salt lost more bone minerals. Our American diet is unusually salt-heavy; most of us ingest double the 2,300 milligrams of salt we should get in a day, according to the 2005 federal dietary guidelines.What to do: The quickest, most efficient way to cut salt intake is to avoid processed foods. Research shows that most Americans get 75 percent of their sodium not from table salt but from processed food. Key foods to avoid include processed and deli meats, frozen...

Read more »

Posted in: Diet,Health News

How to Break a Bad Habit

Who needs willpower? You can ditch any undesirable behavior with these easy mental tricks.From SELFI’m addicted to the tubeThe quit tipConsider what you're sacrificing. My impulse to stare at the screen feels as natural to me as breathing, as many habits do. Although this type of reflexive action can be crucial when you need to make a lightning—fast judgment call (friend or foe?), it can backfire when it leads to a less beneficial choice (my watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey). It's essentially a default behavior, a rut I've fallen into that has persisted because it takes too much energy to change, explains Wray Herbert, author of On Second Thought. To stop, he suggests that I consciously think about what valuable resource the behavior is costing me. "We're naturally inclined to value...

Read more »

Posted in: Health News

11 Indian beauty secrets

These ancient tried-and-tested rituals use Ayurvedic expertise, oils and herbs for gorgeous hair, skin, and body: Monisha Bharadwaj div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited { color:#06c; } The one thing that is common to the whole of India is that the beauty culture is based on age-old secrets and the ancient wisdom of past experience. These secrets are a legacy passed down the generations from mother to daughter. Yet the beauty secrets of India are for women everywhere. They respond to a universal concept of pure, natural beauty and are easy to follow. The secrets rely on the expertise of Ayurveda and ancient India herbal beauty lore to restore, maintain and improve on what nature has given us. 1. Do yogic exercises to intensify the gaze...

Read more »

Posted in: Beauty

How to Lose 5 Pounds by Valentine's Day

Look Good for the One You LoveEverybody needs a deadline. They motivate you to act, as the IRS knows all too well. (Only 70 days until April 18, people!) But they don’t have to be a negative thing. Sometimes your anticipation of a holiday can be best way to enjoy it, especially if you’re making positive changes that will help you enjoy that holiday even more. Take Valentine’s Day, for instance. It’s the national holiday of love, not love handles. So who wouldn’t like to trim a few pounds, to fit into your sexiest clothes, or to look even better when you wriggle out of them? That’s where the Lean Belly Prescription comes in. We wrote the book because we’ve found in our own lives, and among our friends who’ve succeeded on the plan, that feeling...

Read more »

Posted in: Fitness,Weight loss

Stop Eating Breakfast?

New study suggests that starting your day with a big breakfast doesn't help with weight loss.By Karen Springen, Men’s HealthCould everything you’ve heard about breakfast be wrong?“Eating breakfast is just added calories. You’ll never compensate for them at subsequent meals,” Volker Schusdziarra, M.D., professor of internal medicine at the Technical University of Munich, told The New York Times.What?! Has this guy had one too many Spaten’s, or did he just say that we shouldn’t eat breakfast?Dr. Schusdziarra hasn’t yet returned our e-mails, so we don’t know if he was taken out of context. But here’s what his study, published in Nutrition Journal, found: Eating a big breakfast doesn’t actually make you eat less later.In the experiment, the German researchers analyzed 10 days worth of food journals...

Read more »

Posted in: Diet

Beauty Tips From The Late Audrey Hepburn

Recently while cleaning out my desk I came across an article with Audrey Hepburn’s list of beauty tips. Ms. Hepburn, an internationally acclaimed beauty, was allegedly a carrier for the Belgian Underground Anti-Nazi Movement in WW II as a teen. She learned the importance of a good heart as well as good character early. Here is her list: 1. For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. 2 For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. 3. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. 4. For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day. 5. For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone. 6. People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anybody. Remember, if you ever...

Read more »

Posted in: Beauty

How to Lose Weight as a Couple

Double TroubleYou put on that marital-bliss belly together, and now it’s time to take it off as a team. Though the science seems stacked against you—a 2009 study published in the journal Obesity found that just living with a romantic partner for more than 2 years correlated with obesity, inactivity, and sedentary behavior—you can still lose weight with your better half if you take the right steps.“Couples have so many opportunities to help each other—more than they would have if they were trying to lose weight alone,” says Jason Bazilian, a doctor of acupuncture and oriental medicine, who shares a practice that focuses on nutrition, exercise, and healthy living with his wife Wendy Bazilian, DrPH, RD in San Diego, California. In fact, a 2008...

Read more »

Posted in: Fitness,Weight loss

Why Cardio Alone Doesn’t Cut Fat

I wrote this article in order to educate women and some men who believe that doing cardio and abs will help them shed pounds on their midsection. I also think it will help out trainers who have a hard time getting clients to understand the benefits of lifting moderately heavy weights, which is the best thing for them to do to lose weight. Everyone knows that cardio is the best thing for you when looking to burn extra calories. Or is it? What most people don’t know is cardio can be the worst thing for cutting fat when it isn’t paired with weight training. If you ask the girl (or even the guy) on the ab machine what she’s trying to do, nine times out of ten she will reply with “lose my stomach fat.” Ten times out of ten, she won’t loss...

Read more »

Posted in: Diet,Fitness