Attempting to lose weight can be seriously stressful when you feel like you have to follow a laundry list of rules—don’t eat after 7 pm, banish white flour, etc., etc.—in addition to hitting the dreaded treadmill and the stinky weight-room. According to Women’s Health magazine, however, it’s possible to shed pounds successfully without listening to every piece of diet advice that gets thrown around (or, you know, printed in Women’s Health).

What are the diet rules you can break?

Eat many small meals a day instead of three big meals:

Many people insist that eating small portions throughout the day instead of stuffing your face with three big meals will lead to weight-loss by revving your metabolism and keeping it going from morning until night. But Women’s Health points out that if you’re eating multiple times a day, you’re running the risk of consuming more calories than you might if you stuck to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack. Instead, make sure that mealtimes are defined by fiber-rich foods and lean proteins (those will fill you up without packing in the calorie), and leave the daylong grazing to the farm animals.

Brown rice and whole wheat breads and pastas are better than their evil white flour twins:

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if your pasta is white as long as you’re consuming the recommended six ounces of carbohydrates each day. Women’s Health says that a study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports that people on high-carb diets were slimmer than their carb-banning counterparts even when they consumed “bad carbs.” While you should make sure that half of your daily carbohydrate intake comes from whole grains, white bread isn’t going to lead to weight gain any more than whole-wheat bread if you keep your portion sizes small.

Don’t eat after dark:

Women’s Health quotes doctor Ann G. Kulze, who explains that the body handles calories in the same exact way no matter what time they’re consumed. Figure out how many calories you should be consuming each day – this number depends on your age, height and activity level – and stick to it. To make sure that you have enough energy to fuel your daily activities, you should spread out caloric intake throughout the day. But if you eat two cookies at 9 p.m., you’re not going to gain any more weight than you would if you ate them at 6.

Ban desserts:

Putting foods on the do-not-touch list only makes you want them more and can lead to binges. Eating dessert is okay as long as you tweak your diet accordingly, which means eating less for dinner and picking desserts like chocolate-dipped fruit and sorbets instead of ice-cream sundaes. Women’s Health points out that restaurant dessert portions are often ridiculously large and high in calories—an Applebee’s chocolate chip cookie sundae, for example, contains 1,620 calories, more than many people should be consuming all day long! The magazine also suggests re-thinking the traditional idea of dessert when you want to indulge. Your after dinner treat doesn’t need to be chocolate; a craving for something sweet can be met in the form of a yogurt and cereal parfait.

A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine yesterday confirms what we’ve known for awhile now: Fad diets just don’t work. In the study, participants were split into three separate groups who all ate the same reduced amount of calories. However, each group’s eating plan was slightly different and loosely based on popular fad diets. One group at a low-fat diet (similar to the popular Dean Ornish diet), another focused on consuming less carbohydrates (like the Atkins and South Beach diets), and the other ate less protein (like the low-animal protien Mediterranean diet).

Instead of showing which of the diets works the best (and what foods we should stop eating immediately), the results showed that after two years, all the participants lost around the same amount of weight, if anything. Most of the participants had a large initial weight loss, but gained much of the weight back over the course of the two-year study, because they returned to their former eating habits.

The results came as no surprise to most of us, who already know that fad diets are hard to stick to. No carbs? Yeah right! No meat? Not gonna happen. Read More »

I’m not a good baker, but since I’ve been home for a few days (perks of surgery!), my mom’s giant kitchen has got me thinking that all my past transgressions weren’t really true and I’m actually a fabulous cook. So the other day when I got a craving for pumpkin pie, I decided I would totally make one.

Then of course I looked in the pantry and saw we had nothing in terms of pie crust ingredients. Could I make a crust-less pumpkin pie? I asked myself. Yes you can, the Internet answered, and in fact many people prefer crust-less pies because there’s way less carbs.

Part of the reason I’m not the best baker is because I don’t measure things real well and if I don’t have the right ingredients I substitute. This recipe is no different. I didn’t measure things perfectly and I made random substitutions. But guess what? It freaking tasted like pumpkin pie. Without the crust. Nice.

What You Need: Read More »

I like to eat healthy whenever possible, and I’ve been trying to lose these last 5 pounds forever, but I wouldn’t say that I’m the type of girl who’s constantly on a diet. That being said, when my pro-dieter friend (I mean, she’d been on every single diet that was ever invented, and some she invented herself) emailed me this recipe for low carb fudge, I knew I had to try it.

Because fudge, my friends, is absolutely delicious, and reminds me of summers in Cape Cod; flocking around the beach and inside an unbelievable candy shop they’ve got there. When I was little, I could put away fudge like Michael Phelps apparently puts away anything, but along with boobs came a metabolism that’s slower than a turtle stuck in gum. These days, I don’t eat a lot of fudge, even though I’d like to, so when I got that email, I knew I had to try and make it.

The final verdict? Not bad. It certainly doesn’t taste as perfect as Cape Cod Candy Shoppe fudge, but it will certainly do for a small after dinner treat.

Read More »

Most of us drag ourselves to the gym every other day or so not because we like it, but because we’re determined to keep extra pounds away and stay healthy.

Hell, I don’t wake up in the early morning, walk four avenues, and make myself sweaty on the elliptical because it’s fun—I do it because I have to.

Which is why I was super pissed (I mean, honestly, pissed) to read an article that was originally published in New York Magazine.

Why am I so mad? Because the article insinuated working out does nothing but make us hungry.

Without denying that 30 minutes a day on the Stairmaster is good for our health, journalist Gary Taubes recently explained that “most studies on the link between swimming laps and losing weight demonstrate little beyond one widely accepted fact: “exercising makes us hungry.”” Even more annoying, Taubes points out “exercise may even lead to a weight gain.”

According to Taubes, Jean Mayer, a nutritionist and “physiological chemist”, invented the “myth” of exercise being directly related to weight loss.

Taubes claims Mayer’s facts were “often contradictory”, but somehow his words caught fire with the American public and have stayed with us ever since. Read More »

Health food is health food.

Health food is good for you. Health food will keep you slim. Right?

Well, not if you eat twice as much.

The Journal of Consumer Research recently released a study about the “obesity paradox”; a trend that shows the rise of both obesity and health food popularity in America.

Basically, the trend goes like this: when people see something that says ‘low fat’, they eat twice as much of it—or—they allow themselves higher calorie deserts or snacks after eating a ‘healthy’ meal.

This development makes perfect sense to me. Whenever I force myself to eat a salad for dinner (I mean, how are lettuce and tomatoes supposed to fill you up?), I’ll go straight for the ice cream afterwards. I’ll tell myself, “I ate real healthy for dinner! I can eat more of this than usual! And I won’t gain weight!”

Which is, of course, total bullsh*t.

Especially when most ‘low fat’, ‘low calorie’, and ‘low carb’ products aren’t always as ‘low’ as they claim to be, and often times have unhealthy hidden components.

Now, I’m no doctor, but I’ve read enough of these America is so freaking chubtastic! studies to hypothesize that our major issue as a nation is our tendency to over-eat. Gorging ourselves on bran muffins is still gorging ourselves. Read More »