6 Foods That Weaken Bones

Salt

Salt 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 meals, canned soup, pizza, fast food such as burgers and fries, and canned vegetables.

Soft Drinks

Soft drinks pose a double-whammy danger to bones. The fizziness in carbonated drinks often comes from phosphoric acid, which ups the rate at which calcium is excreted in the urine. Meanwhile, of course, soft drinks fill you up and satisfy your thirst without providing any of the nutrients you might get from milk or juice.
What to do: When you're tempted to reach for a cola, instead try milk, calcium- and vitamin D-fortified orange juice, or a fruit smoothie made with yogurt. Or just drink water when you're thirsty, and eat a diet high in bone-building nutrients.

Caffeine

The numbers for caffeine aren't as bad as for salt, but caffeine's action is similar, leaching calcium from bones. For every 100 milligrams of caffeine (the amount in a small to medium-sized cup of coffee), you lose 6 milligrams of calcium. That's not a lot, but it can become a problem if you tend to substitute caffeine-containing drinks like iced tea and coffee for beverages that are healthy for bones, like milk and fortified juice.

What to do: Limit yourself to one or two cups of coffee in the morning, then switch to other drinks that don't have caffeine's bone-sapping action. Adding milk to your coffee helps to offset the problem, of course.

Vitamin A

In the case of vitamin A, recent research is proving that you really can get too much of a good thing. Found in eggs, full-fat dairy, liver, and vitamin-fortified foods, vitamin A is important for vision and the immune system. But the American diet is naturally high in vitamin A, and most multivitamins also contain vitamin A. So it's possible to get much more than the recommended allotment of 5,000 IUs (international units) a day—which many experts think is too high anyway.

Postmenopausal women, in particular, seem to be susceptible to vitamin A overload. Studies show that women whose intake was higher than 5,000 IUs had more than double the fracture rate of women whose intake was less than 1,600 IUs a day.

What to do: Switch to low-fat or nonfat dairy products only, and eat egg whites rather than whole eggs (all the vitamin A is in the yolk). Also check your multivitamin, and if it's high in vitamin A, switch to one that isn't.

Alcohol

Think of alcohol as a calcium-blocker; it prevents the bone-building minerals you eat from being absorbed. And heavy drinking disrupts the bone remodeling process by preventing osteoblasts, the bone-building cells, from doing their job. So not only do bones become weaker, but when you do suffer a fracture, alcohol can interfere with healing.

What to do: Limit your drinking to one drink a day, whether that's wine, beer, or hard alcohol.

Hydrogenated Oils

Recent studies have found that the process of hydrogenation, which turns liquid vegetable oil into the solid oils used in commercial baking, destroys the vitamin K naturally found in the oils. Vitamin K is essential for strong bones, and vegetable oils such as canola and olive oil are the second-best dietary source of this key nutrient, after green leafy vegetables. However, the amounts of vitamin K we're talking about are tiny here—one tablespoon of canola oil has 20 micrograms of K, and one tablespoon of olive oil has 6 micrograms, as compared with 120 micrograms in a serving of spinach.

What to do: If you're eating your greens, you don't need to worry about this too much. If you're a big lover of baked goods like muffins and cookies, bake at home using canola oil when possible, and read labels to avoid hydrogenated oils

source:health.msn.com

How to Break a Bad Habit

Who needs willpower? You can ditch any undesirable behavior with these easy mental tricks.

From SELF

I’m addicted to the tube

The quit tip

Consider 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 what's scarce," he says. That's easy—with two young sons in the mix, it's my free time.

Did it work?

Like a charm! Whenever I had an urge to channel—surf, I pondered whether random flipping was truly how I wanted to spend my spare minutes. After three days, I was ticked off at myself for giving up the chance to do something I loved (lose myself in a good book) for something I didn't care about (watching a show for the fifth time). Midway through the week, after zoning in front of Real Housewives, I powered off and picked up a novel I'd long been meaning to finish. A month later, I've cut my TV time by a quarter.

I say yes when I mean no

The quit tip

Become more aware. For me, saying yes is the path of least resistance—usually, I'm nodding before someone has even finished an inconvenient request. So I signed up for a week of emails from HabitChanger.com, a site that uses cognitive-behavioral techniques to change semiautomatic habits. Specifically, you get a barrage of cheerleading or instructional texts and messages designed to interrupt your impulse. The hope is that once you become more tuned in to your typical behavior, you can change the way you respond.

Did it work?

Partly. A peppering of four or five missives every day for a week (the program is normally 42 days; I did a modified version) made me much more aware of my tendency to sabotage myself. I got an especially relevant email on a day when I'd agreed to take my sons to visit my parents 90 minutes away, stop at Costco to do the family shopping and drive home in time to make it to a book group (for which I hadn't finished the book). "Eliminate the word should from your vocabulary," the message instructed. "Replace it with would like to." I wish I'd read it a day earlier, when I could have said, "I'd like to&but I can't," to one or more of the above activities. Maybe next time!

I’m Starbucks’s best customer

The quit tip

Zen out. Simple meditation exercises, such as noticing your breath, can help you get off autopilot, says Martine Batchelor, author of Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits. She tells me to notice what I see, hear, smell and touch as I head out on the street: "Before you leave home, be aware of your hand on the stroller," she says. She also tells me to bring something to sip, because I associate Starbucks with a drink.

"The two main elements of meditation—concentration and inquiry—are key to getting control of your actions," Batchelor explains. "Concentration helps because every time you come back to your breath, your body, a mantra or whatever your meditation is, you dissolve the habit's power," she notes. Inquiry, she tells me, is what follows. "It's like a beam of light," she says. "Normally, you find yourself at Starbucks before you think about it. With inquiry, you notice the details of the experience, you take the time to observe when and how the habit arises, and you become a little more aware that you don't want to do it."

Did it work?

Absolutely. The first morning, I head out the door armed with an iced tea I made at home. Then I look down at my son's hair through the plastic moonroof of the stroller and feel the roughness of the foam handle. As I watch my son fidgeting with his sunglasses, I savor the sweetness of my iced tea. With all the things I'm noticing, I become aware of this stunning fact: I don't feel like going into Starbucks. I try to intuit why I'm normally drawn to the store. It's a treat, I realize. Or it was. What it has become is an expensive habit that I no longer have to indulge, especially with all the other things capturing my attention. I steer the stroller away and keep going, past four more Starbucks. I don't stop at any. It's as if a string has been cut. I'm finally free.

11 Indian beauty secrets

These ancient tried-and-tested rituals use Ayurvedic expertise, oils and herbs for gorgeous hair, skin, and body: Monisha Bharadwaj

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

Try this simple exercise. Look at the tip of your nose for a minute, then focus on an object far away for another minute. Choose a different object each time. Do this for five minutes every day until the eyes develop an unwavering gaze.

2. Get rid of blemishes

Blemishes are usually temporary and can be caused by anything from strong sun and wind to an excess of alcohol. A light dab of either sandalwood or turmeric powder mixed in a little water should clear the problem. Both of these have unique antiseptic properties. Carrots, known for their high vitamin A content, also make a wonderful treatment. Simply grate a carrot, squeeze out a teaspoonful of fresh saffron-coloured juice and then wipe over the blemished areas. Rinse off after half an hour.

(Always prepare only small quantities of any recipe, so that you can use it up quickly. Home recipes do not contain any preservatives [unlike commercial products] and can be breeding grounds for bacteria if stored for too long or in the wrong conditions.)

3. Improve the appearance of enlarged pores

Enlarged pores are caused mainly by the over-stretching of pores that then fill with excess oil. Any part of the body that stretches beyond its capacity may refuse to return perfectly to its original shape and size and pores are no exception. The problems can be resolved by temporarily by closing the pores with astringents, so that the skin looks toned. Buttermilk or watered-down yoghurt, a popular drink all over India known as chaas or lassi, works wonders, closing the pores to create the illusion of finely textured, perfect skin. Use it as a daily face wash and splash with cold water afterwards.

4. Get perfect foundation

If you want your make-up to last, there are two things you can do. First splash ice-cold water on your face and neck after you have applied foundation to set the base. Gently pat dry and continue your routine. Second, seal your look with a fine dusting of loose face powder. Use a soft, fat brush and blow away any excess before you start on your face. Blend well to eliminate any powdery patches.

5. Moisturise

Moisturising forms an even more important part of your beauty routine during the winter months. Always remember to treat your neck to all the goodies you use on your face - otherwise you will end up with a lovely face on a crepey neck.

Night cream

The cocoa in this moisturiser will not stain the face. Instead the alkaloids it contains - mainly theobromine and caffeine - act as stimulants and rejuvenate the skin. Lanolin is available from health and specialist beauty shops.

2 tbsp almost oil

2 tbsp lanolin

1 tsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp rosewater

Put the almond oil, lanolin and cocoa in a heatproof glass bowl. Place the bowl over a pan of water and heat gently over a low heat till the mixture melts into a smooth cream. Use only a wooden spoon to stir as a metal one will react with the ingredients. Take off the heat and add the rosewater, stirring all the while. Allow the cream to cool and store in a glass bottle.

6. Treat dark circles with Malti's under-eye remedy

My aunt Malti swears by the juice of mint although she can't explain exactly how it helps. The almond oil has gentle lubricating properties, which help to dispel fine lines and dark patches due to dry skin. Honey is an ideal energising food and according to Ayurveda has a tremendous healing effect on the body.

5 fresh mint leaves

1 tsp almond oil

1/2 tsp honey

Crush the mint with a little water in a mortar. Strain the juice and add to the almond oil and honey. Stir till completely mixed and apply a tiny amount under the eyes before going to bed.

7. Use a traditional skin polisher

This is used by women all over India. The turmeric acts as a natural cleanser and disinfectant and will not turn your skin yellow. The chickpea flour sloughs off dead skin to give unimagined silkiness and the milk will firm up the entire body. Even the tiniest of babies are massaged with this body polisher, but do be careful if you have a history of allergy to wheat or lentil flour - use rice flour instead.

1 tablespoon chickpea flour

Pinch of turmeric

About 2 tsp of milk

Mix all the ingredients together and rub on to wet skin instead of soap.

8. Treat skin with masks

The most luxurious beauty treatment for the face is the application of a face pack. It deep-cleans, tones and moisturises all at once, smells delicious and makes you feel relaxed and pampered. Face masks are simple to make and can easily save you money spent on commercial products.

For oily skin - Sandalwood is a natural astringent. Tumeric is antiseptic, and keeps spots in check, while the fruit acid in orange juice clears blemishes. Ther turmeric may stain the skin slightly, but this is temporary and will clear after a few washes. If you have a sensitive skin and are worried about staining, substitute the murmeric with geranium leaf juice (crush one leaf with a little water, strain and use 1/2 tsp of the liquid), reducing the quantity of orange juice by the same amount.

1 1/2 tbsp sandalwood powder

Tiny pinch (few grains) of ground turmeric

3 tbsp orange juice

Mix all the ingredients together and apply over the face and neck, avoiding the eye area. Allow to dry, then rinse off with cool water, without pulling the skin.

For dry skin - This mask conditions dry skin and leaves it supple and radiant.

1 egg white

1 tsp honey

1 tsp full-fat cream

Mix together all the ingredients and pat on to the face and neck. Rinse off after 20 minutes.

For normal skin - The protein in milk powder leaves skin petal-soft and the rosewater tones and refreshes.

2tbsp milk powder

Rosewater to mix

Combine the ingredients into a thick paste and apply to the face and neck.

9. Condition hair

Conditioners put the life back into dull hair and are simple to make at home.

My own super conditioner

When I was growing up in Mumbai, my parents owned a farmhouse in the verdant, waterfall-dotted slopes of the Sahyadri mountains. All kinds of wonderful herbs grew there and each weekend visit would find me bringing a basketful of freshly plucked herbs home to Mumbai to grind up into conditioning hair masks. I have never been able to achieve the same gloss and texture from any bottled conditioner.

Handful each hibiscus, marigold, balsam, basil and mint leaves

Handful of rose petals

Grind all of these (or as many as you can find) in a blender with a little water til you get an emerald-green, coarse, sticky mixture. Apply this directly to the scalp and hair and leave on for at least an hour. Wash off thoroughly. Your hair is sure to gleam like gold.

10. Oil your hair

Oiling the hair has been a highly regarded ritual in India for at least five thousand years. Even today wise old women are convinced that regular oiling maintains the natural colour of the hair and prevents greying. Oil cools the head and promotes luxurious hair growth, whereas internal body heat does the opposite. Many of my own aunts still have jet-black hair even at the age of seventy!

Oil for falling hair

The eucalyptus and clove oils in this preparation boost blood circulation that nourishes the root of the hair and prevents hair loss.

5 tbsp coconut oil

1 tsp eucalyptus oil

1 tsp clove oil

Mix the three oils together and gently rub into the scalp at night.

11. Banish dandruff

A nourishing hair pack that clears up dandruff can be made of four tablespoons rosemary infusion, an egg yolk and a pinch of borax: simple massage into the scalp before shampooing. Occasional bouts of scurfiness can be cleared up with a relaxing massage with warm olive oil.

Excerpted from India’s Beauty Secrets by Monisha Bharadwaj, Kyle Cathie

How to Lose 5 Pounds by Valentine's Day

Look Good for the One You Love

Everybody 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 great, and feeling great about yourself, are all part of living life to the fullest—and that’s better than leaving the dinner table at your fullest.

So how could you drop significant weight in the short time before Valentine’s Day? Let’s do some math: It takes about 3,500 calories to build a pound of fat. It stands to reason, then, that if you can shed those calories from your diet, and burn more in your everyday activities, you stand to drop pounds quickly, and gain sex appeal and self-esteem at the same time.

We’re here to help.

To lose five pounds in two weeks, you’d need to ditch about 1,250 calories per day. Impossible? Hardly! Here’s how we’ll get you there, based on the principles of The Lean Belly Prescription:

Start your day with breakfast

Simple, right? So how come there are so many portly breakfast skippers out there?

SAVINGS: 200 CALORIES A DAY. According to Donald Layman, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of Illinois, people who start the day with a protein-rich breakfast consume 200 fewer calories a day than those who chow down on a carb-heavy breakfast, like a jam-smeared bagel.

Bonus Tip: Speaking of the most important meal of the day, avoid these 20 Worst Breakfasts in America! Some of them have a day's worth of calories, fat, sodium, or sugar in one meal!

Say no to soda

Drink seltzer water, unsweetened ice tea, or ice water with a squeeze of lemon juice, instead of soda.

SAVINGS: 450 CALORIES A DAY According to a study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, that’s how many calories you drink every day from sweetened beverages. We’re already half way to our goal of 1,250 calories saved in a day!

Turn off the TV when you eat dinner

SAVINGS: 300 CALORIES A DAY Distracted eaters eat more food, and eat for longer periods of time, according to a study publicshed inTrends in Food Science & Technology. The average: a whopping extra 300 calories per meal. More than halfway home to your calorie cutting goal!

Find little ways to burn calories

Stand up when you talk on the phone (49 calories per 20 minutes). Park at the far end of the office parking lot (50 calories, to the mall and back). Play vigorously with your pet or your kids for 30 minutes (160 calories). Wash the dishes by hand, then go for a walk through the neighborhood (75 calories).

SAVINGS: 334 CALORIES A DAY Notice how we didn’t even suggest that you hit the gym? Everyday activities burn the most calories; walk more, play more, weigh less!

Slash calories from your diet

Eat at home, and pack a lunch, instead of out at restaurants or fast food joints. SAVINGS: 200 CALORIES A DAY The United States Department of Agriculture calculated that we consume an extra 106 calories every time we eat out.

Start now, and be skinnier by Valentine’s Day! And really, can you think of a better gift to give to a loved one than a sexier you?

source: fitbie

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 Health

Could 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 kept by 380 people—280 of them obese and 100 of them normal weight. No matter what people ate in the morning, they consumed roughly the same amount of food at lunch and dinner. Meaning: When they ate a tiny breakfast, they downed fewer calories that day.

Now, we’re not talking about gigantic Bob Evans buffets: The biggest breakfast in the study came in at 611 calories—a reasonable helping for the average guy. The smallest was about 100 calories.

For years, we’ve heard (and preached) that breakfast helps us avoid overeating and boosts our metabolism. So is this study believable? We looked at the research and called leading nutrition and breakfast experts to figure it out.

First, the drawbacks of the study:

Food diaries. The German study relied on self-reported food intake. But studies have established that people, especially obese ones, say they eat less than they actually do. It’s more accurate to watch people eat in a lab or even to get them to use a cell phone camera to photograph what they eat, explains Nikhil Dhurandhar, Ph.D., an associate professor at Louisiana’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center who has conducted numerous obesity studies.

Also, people eat less than they normally do when they keep food diaries, research has found. That’s why they’re often recommended as a weight-loss tool.

Both problems may have been the case here: In the German breakfast study, the participants reported eating a suspiciously low total number of calories. Obese subjects ate between 1,200 and 1,700 calories a day. Which begs the question, “How are they obese?” It’s possible that they weren’t accurately recording what they ate, or they changed their eating habits during the study—or both.

Exercise. Researchers looked at energy intake but failed to account for energy expenditure. “Suppose people who eat breakfast are those who do so because they then cycle or walk to work like I do every day,” says nutrition and obesity researcher Gavin Sandercock, Ph.D., of the University of Essex. “We simply don’t know what the participants were doing all day. This is a big limitation of the data presented.” In fact, a 2005 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that adults who eat breakfast are more likely to be exercisers.

So in the German study, people could just be burning off the extra calories they ate at breakfast with exercise—hardly warranting the advice to “stop eating breakfast.” But we can’t say, since this wasn’t reported.

Breakdown of carbs, fat, and protein. The study didn’t report exactly what people ate, just how many calories they downed. But research has shown that it makes a difference whether someone eats a carb-heavy versus a high-protein breakfast.

In an often-cited story from 2005, U.S. researchers found that subjects ate 574 calories for lunch after a breakfast of eggs, toast, and jelly—but 738 calories after a breakfast of a bagel, cream cheese, and yogurt.

What this means for our German subjects: Maybe they need a breakfast upgrade. Had they been eating balanced breakfasts with protein, they might have eaten less for lunch. But we’re just guessing here. Again, it’s impossible to know without raiding the researchers’ drawers and getting our mitts on the food diaries. . . . which we’d like do to, except that as we pointed out, we can’t trust the diaries anyway. (Plus, Germany is a long way from our offices.)

Here are two simple rules to start your day off right, based off of years of solid scientific research.

Breakfast rule #1: Eat something. Study after study has linked skipping breakfast to being heavier and having a larger waist. As we’ve previously reported, lifelong breakfast skippers have an extra 1.8 inches on their waist, on average, compared to people who have always eaten breakfast. That’s also just one study, but anecdotally, most nutritionists say it makes sense based on their observations while working with real people in the real world.

Another reason to rise and dine: Missing meals can stifle your muscle gains. “If we don’t eat breakfast, we are going for a really long time before fueling our body again—go too long without a meal, and that can make your body start metabolizing muscle to make glucose,” says nutritionist Megan McCrory, Ph.D., of Purdue University.

Ideally, aim to eat about 30 to 35 percent of your daily calories before lunch, recommends Dave Grotto, R.D., author of 101 Optimal Life Foods. Pressed on time? Whip up one of these 10 Quick and Easy Breakfasts.

Breakfast rule #2: Fill it full of nutrition. Common breakfast foods—oatmeal, cereal, bagels—are heavy in carbs, low in muscle-building protein and nutrient-packed produce. You can do better. Like this balanced, super-quick recipe from Bill Hartman, P.T., C.S.C.S.: Prepare a package of instant oatmeal and mix in a scoop of whey protein powder and 1/2 cup of blueberries.