Category: Eating
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Discovery and success
jitenshasw shares her process of discovery and success — see the rest at her tumblr. No quick fixes here — just a willingness to ask herself tough questions and actively decide how she wanted to eat and move — and a journey that established the (different) way she wanted to live. This kind of change…
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What Makes Food Delicious?
Fat. Sugar. Salt. But what if you’re trying to improve the nutritional value of your food, and maybe try some options that don’t rely on fat, sugar, and salt to be palatable? One of the best ways to jazz up food is spices. And few (possibly no) traditions have as sophisticated a spice palate as…
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Vegetable, Fruit, Berry
So it turns out a tomato is not only a fruit but — botanically speaking — is also classified as a berry. This is rough news for aggregate fruits like strawberries and blackberries, which, it turns out are not, technically, berries at all. Fun! But all it really means is that scientific classification of plants…
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Are You Enjoying It?
Do you have a particular food you can’t have “just a little bit” of? Some foods are easy to keep eating — not only do they leave you hungry, they may even leave you thinking you want (“need”) more of the same. Candy and chips often have this effect — people will eat as much…
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It’s Never Just One Thing
Some say you can’t outrun your fork, or “weight loss happens in the kitchen.” You can outrun your fork — if you love running (or don’t tend to eat a lot), and as long as you don’t get injured (and knocked out of your routine). And you can definitely out-eat your exercise schedule, as many…
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Cleansing the Mind of Snake Oil
You can’t actually “detox” your body, but a market eager to sell you One Weird Trick and various magic elixirs makes it impossible to go very far without seeing a pitch for it. The reality is both harder (a single purchase won’t restore health) and easier (regular walking and sensible eating can). So why do…
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Early Weight-Loss Gimmicks and Plans
A few years ago, NPR’s Scott Hensley attended an event at the Library of Congress about modern attitudes toward obesity and weight-loss. “Annals Of Weight-Loss Gimmicks: From Bile Beans To Obesity Soap” features a slide show and a meal-plan from a 19th century diet book (William Banting’s Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public, which…
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Problem Areas
Especially if you’re a woman, you probably have a specific part of your body you wish you could change — it’s an unfortunate consequence of a thousand cultural cues and media representations. The fitness industry and women’s magazines are happy to market to this wish with their thousands of pitches about toning your arms, flattening…
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One Weird Trick?
The fitness industry is full of hard sells for simple solutions. Some of them are just junk, but most of them have a grain of truth to them, which is part of what makes it so hard to figure out what will help you. Effective weight management and healthy habits are never down to just…