With summer coming soon, I’m sure I’m not the only one looking to lose a few pounds. Unfortunately, accomplishing such a task is never easy. It requires choosing healthy food options, cutting calories and increasing exercise. With a 24-hour 7-11 around the corner from my dorm, my hope of being bikini-ready for summer seems only a far-fetched dream.

The difficulty of losing weight makes me, like others, want to cut corners and find a cure-all supplement so my late night munchies don’t hinder my efforts. Last week, Dr. Oz endorsed the answer to my prayers: Raspberry Ketone, the “miracle fat burner.” According to Dr. Oz, Raspberry Ketone aids weight loss by shrinking fat cells. I don’t quite understand the way the supplement works, but Dr. Oz swears by it.

As much as I would like to go to CVS and buy ten bottles of Raspberry Ketone, it’s hard to believe Dr. Oz when it seems like every month he endorses a new “miracle” supplement. While I’m sure there are some supplements out there that can increase metabolism a bit, the truth is nothing drops the pounds like cutting calories and increasing exercise. That’s it.

I do believe Dr. Oz knows how to help people lose weight, but I wish he would stop trying to sell us on supplements that won’t get us the perfectly toned bodies we’re looking for. He’s always suggesting new supplements to aid weight loss, but how are we supposed to keep track and reap the benefits of all of them?

Here are some of the other weight loss “miracle foods”: Read More »

Brown fat – everybody’s talking about it. You’ve probably seen it floating around in the headlines, because it’s been a major part of a lot of the latest health research. But what exactly is it?

Simply put, brown fat is fat that is, well, brown. And it does things that sound almost too good to be true – it actually burns calories. And a new study shows that exercise can convert regular white fat into calorie-burning brown fat. Which means that the more you exercise, the more calories your body will be able to burn at all times. Brown fat is also triggered by cold temperatures. When your body is cold, brown fat starts burning calories to warm you up. And it actually uses white fat from other parts of the body to fuel itself. Read More »

No, I’m not talking about a new diet from the Kardashian Klan (God, can you even imagine what that would entail?). This DASH Diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, was named the number one diet for the second year in a row by U.S. News. Though it was designed for individuals suffering from hypertension — not those specifically looking to lose weight — the diet is one of the most nutritious and most-well rounded out there.

If you’re looking to kick off 2012 by revamping your healthy eating habits, check and see if the DASH Diet works for your lifestyle.

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Women. Weight. And the media.

Three words that are thrown together more often than we realize in today’s society. Whether it be a news story about an anorexic woman, a magazine ad telling readers how to go about getting a bikini body, or a blog post about the double standard that exists for women, it’s safe to say that our culture covers women and their weight pretty heavily. (No pun intended.) But has anyone ever actually bothered to question why exactly society is so concerned not just with “fat people” but “fat women”?

Kim Brittingham, author of Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large has. And what she realized upon further exploration was so troubling that she wrote a memoir about it, chronicling not only her own struggles with her weight, and accepting herself for who she is, but also an exploration of the reasons why she, and so many other women, have these troubles. The result? An inspiration and heartfelt memoir so worthwhile that we just had to share it with our readers. So keep reading to find out why she is against the idea of dieting and how she learned to love her body as it is.

What gave you the inspiration to write Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large?
I feel like I wasted a lot of precious time as a younger person worrying about the size, shape and texture of my body.  It makes me sad to remember how passionately I used to plot these physical overhauls for myself.  So much energy and planning went into these self-transformation campaigns – and they were motivated by stupid things, like a desire to lessen the curve of my hips, or eliminate that little nugget of chub where my armpit meets my upper arm.  You know that chub?  I used to want a smooth line there so badly!  None of those grand makeovers had anything to do with health, strength or longevity.  It was about whittling and sculpting myself into somebody else’s image. And the things I did to change those physical details – like dieting, for example – were the very things that made me fatter in the long run.  I wish I’d invested that energy in discovering more about myself and the world.  My life could’ve been a REAL dream come true, much sooner.

Why do you think plus-sized women are treated differently than model-sized women in society?
Americans love to pick on fat people – and what qualifies as “fat” seems to get smaller every year.  All this fat stigmatization might have something to do with the fact that our culture tolerates fewer and fewer prejudices as time goes on.  It’s not nearly as socially acceptable today to spout ignorance about blacks or gays, for example, as it might have been even just 25 years ago. And people are no more secure today than they’ve ever been – maybe even less so.  So they’re looking around for somebody to dump on, and fat people are a favorite target. Read More »

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How many times have you said that? Or has your roommate, or your best friend, or pretty much any female in college for that matter? I know I’m guilty of starting my “Super Healthy Diet And Exercise Regime” only to be thwarted a week later when my pants don’t feel any looser and the small shirt I bought (you know, to give me inspiration) still isn’t fitting quite right.

By the end of the week I can never figure out where I went wrong. I mean I’m putting in at least a solid hour at the gym every day (well except for Wednesdays, because they’re my long days..and Fridays…oh and the weekend because who is exercising then anyway!) And I’m eating so healthy (when I’m sober….)

But in general, it seems it is impossible to lose weight in college. Why? Well, here are the biggest offenders: Read More »

It’s hard to believe when you’ve got snow melting into your Uggs, but Spring Break is just around the corner. For me, a girl who has a countdown to the next Spring Break starting the day Spring Break ends, that news couldn’t be better. But for those of you who are having that “OMG I HAVE TO BE IN A SWIMSUIT IN 6 WEEKS?!” meltdown, this is less than a pleasant realization.

If you fall into the latter category, you’ve probably gone into workout/diet overload.

“I’m going to exercise every day and eat salad for breakfast/lunch/dinner so I can look like a Vicky Secret model in Cancun!!”

Optimistic? Yes.
Realistic? Uh, are you kidding?

Our society has always had this huge obsession with quick fix diets and weight loss plans. Unfortunately, they don’t work. The truth is, there’s no one thing to eat or one exercise to do in order to get your dream body. And all those plans that promise you to “lose 10 pounds in 10 days!” might work, but they’re not permanent and they’re definitely not healthy. So if you’re trying to get 6-pack abs and thighs that don’t touch by the time you’ve got to wiggle into that bikini in March, stop. It’s not gonna happen.

Instead, let’s work together to set some more realistic fitness goals that you can actually attain between now and the 24/7 happy hour we like to call Spring Break. Read More »