Tag Archives: weight loss

Mila Kunis Shares Nasty Side Effects of Rapid Weight Loss and Gain

It’s not uncommon for Hollywood starlets to change their bodies drastically for a movie role. With studios providing personal trainers and dieticians to make sure they get the job done, the transformation is often amazing. The actress loses weight, the movie makes a few million dollars and everybody goes home happy, right? Well, not exactly. As Mila Kunis recently admitted in a Harper’s Bazaar interview, when the weight comes back, it’s not always where you’d like it to be.

Last year, Mila Kunis twirled and grand jete’d her way across the screen as Natalie Portman’s ballet rival in Black Swan. Though she was already thin, Mila lost 20 pounds in just a few short months to play the fame-obsessed ballerina. About her Black Swan body, Mila reveals, “I was muscles, like a little brick house, but skin and bones. When I gained it back, it went to completely different areas.”

Health experts say redistributed weight is a common problem associated with rapid weight loss. As fat is lost, unfortunately so is muscle tissue. When the weight comes back on, it comes back as fat. Where it lands depends on your genetic predisposition, not your opinion of where you’d like it to go. Though Mila would’ve preferred to put some meat back on her chest and derriere, instead she says, “All the weight that left my chest, went to my side hip and my stomach.”
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Posted on March 15, 2024 by Health Buzz

Cooler Hands Help You Exercise More Consistently

A simple solution has been offered for helping obese women exercise longer and stay faithful to their workouts: cool palms.

Research scientist and exercise physiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine Stacy Sims ran this study and got some pretty amazing results. “If you think about adipose fat tissue, it’s a great insulator. For people who are obese, that means they often get too hot while exercising,” Sims said. Her goal was to see if cooling the palms of the women participating in the study would help them overcome fatigue and overheating while they were exercising. Professional athletes currently use the same palm cooling device that was used in the study. She chose to test this theory on obese women because she found they tend to abandon workouts due to overheating and fatigue.

Within the study, 24 women, ages 30 to 45 were evaluated. None of the participants had a history of long-term exercise and all of them were obese with a BMI between 30 and 35. The women were broken into two groups. Both groups used the cooling device, but only one group had cool water in their device. The other group’s devices held water that was body temperature. The groups did three exercise sessions per week for a total of 12 weeks. The sessions were broken down to include 10 minutes of body weight exercise, 25 to 45 minutes of walking on the treadmill while holding the cooling device followed by 10 minutes of core exercises. On the first and last day of the study there was a timed 1.5 mile walk. The group that used the devices with cool water managed to trim over five minutes off their time for the 1.5 mile walk, took more than two inches off their waist and lowered their blood pressure.

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Posted on March 15, 2024 by Descygna

Glee Star Amber Riley Drops Two Dress Sizes by Dropping Junk Food

Glee star Amber Riley showed off her smaller frame at last week’s NAACP Image Awards. The 26-year old has recently dropped two dress sizes and is loving the change.

Riley began a new diet and exercise plan last July. The actress had been experiencing chronic stomach pains as a result of her diet and a visit to her doctor put her on a path that cut out fast food. She says the weight loss was unintentional as the actress’ goal was simply to get healthier.

Another exciting, yet unintentional side effect? Many of Riley’s old clothes do not fit and she has had a new wardrobe provided for her on the set of Glee. In addition to the new clothes on set, the actress admits getting dolled up for events is much nicer now too. Riley explained how formal gowns fit much better at her new size.
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Posted on February 24, 2024 by Lacy

Empty Calories Comic: Celebrate Your Weight Loss

See more Empty Calories right here in the blog each week, or receive one each month when you subscribe to our free newsletter. (more…)

Posted on February 4, 2024 by Health Buzz

How to Choose a Medically Supervised Weight Loss Program

woman and a doctorDeciding on a medically supervised weight loss program is an important decision. Many people find that a doctor-supervised plan to lose weight helps them stay accountable for their progress. At the same time it is less risky than weight loss surgery. The fact that part of the cost may be covered by insurance is also often a reason some people choose the option of losing weight at a medical facility.

However, the range of medical clinics that offer weight loss services can vary widely, from centers that offer some of the best weight loss advice available to storefront offices that tout downright dangerous practices. Before you sign up, there are several things you should consider.

“Definitely do your research,” says Shawna Biggars, who has lost over 100 pounds at a Medi-Weightloss clinic, which has locations throughout the U.S. “We talked to a family friend who was on the program. We talked to our personal physician about the program. We did research online. We tried to get as much information as possible, so that we were consumers making an informed choice.” Talking with your family physician is a particularly important piece of this process, as they may already have a weight loss program to recommend to you.

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Posted on February 3, 2024 by Margaret

Choosing the Best Weight Loss Maintenance Plan for You

So you’ve lost the weight and you’ve achieved your goal – so now what? You’ve probably spent so much time thinking about your goal that you may not have thought too much about what to do after it was met. And although it’s easy to slip back into old eating habits, it’s also easy to gain back all that weight you worked so hard to lose in the first place. To keep that from happening, you need to have a plan – a maintenance plan. But how do you know what plan is right for you?

It’s Sustainable for the Long Haul. 

Any maintenance plan you decide to follow should be something you can do today, tomorrow, and every day after that. If it’s overly restrictive, requires you to eat weird foods or incorporate foods you don’t love, you probably won’t stick with it for very long. To avoid going back to a less nutritious way of eating, keep your maintenance plan balanced and realistic.

It Doesn’t Eliminate Major Food Groups. 

If you discover a maintenance plan that asks you to eliminate an entire food group from your eating plan, don’t walk, run away! Any type of diet or meal plan that restricts or eliminates whole food groups is often unbalanced and can result in nutritional deficiencies if you aren’t careful. Your body simply needs a wide variety of foods to function at its best. A decent maintenance plan should allow for all foods to be incorporated in some shape or form.

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Posted on February 2, 2024 by Kati

Georgia Cheerleader Strong in Mind and Body

Anna Watson, University of Georgia cheerleader, doesn’t allow things like being the only girl in the weight room or putting on some muscle intimidate her. She welcomes the challenge. Georgia cheerleaer Anna WatsonShe even claims her faith in God and wears it boldly. Even when she was denied a lucrative fitness modeling contract because she didn’t want to take the legal steroid Anavar—to put on more muscle—she stood strong in her convictions. “It was definitely something I was tempted with more than one time,” she said. “[The agent] made it sound as good as he could.”

“I don’t serve a modeling agent. I serve the Lord,” Watson said. “I’m not going to compromise my morals and my beliefs just to take pictures. I believe that my body is a temple and a beautiful creation, so I don’t want to put anything into it that can harm it.”

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Posted on January 31, 2024 by Carol

Weight Loss Surgery Coverage Push

More obese Americans may be given the opportunity to have their weight loss surgery covered by insurance if device manufacturers have their way. Allergan Inc., makers of the LapBand gastric banding device, has been the most vocal in their efforts to give obese patients access to this life-altering surgery. Weight Loss Surgery Coverage PushBeing able to have this surgery covered by insurance will give patients the tools they need to fight a host of life-threatening illnesses brought on by their obesity. Allergan proposes that allowing more people access to insurance coverage will save billions of dollars in healthcare costs for both the government and employers.

The Dilemma

Critics argue that bariatric surgery has high rates of complications which can reach into the thousands and that the surgery doesn’t change the underlying behavior.

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Posted on January 25, 2024 by Carol

Eat Fat to Lose Fat

Aimee E. Raupp is the author of Chill Out and Get Healthy– a no nonsense guide for women on improving their health now. As well she is a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist with a masters of science in Traditional Oriental Medicine. For more information visit AimeeRaupp.com.

Eat fat to lose fat

Yes, you heard me: eat fat to lose fat.

“But, isn’t fat is bad for my health? And, doesn’t it cause heart disease?” I hear you say. The answer to both is no.

For many centuries, cultures (like the French) have been eating high fat diets and, oddly enough, they have much lower rates of obesity and type II diabetes than we do here in the United States. You see, what happened was back in the 1950’s some scientists ran a small and very poorly designed study looking at the incidence of heart disease and the dietary habits of different nations. Somehow (after leaving out a great bit of data) these researchers determined that Americans hearty full-fat diet caused the most heart disease. And, voila now American’s eat a low-fat diet because their doctors recommend it.
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Posted on January 17, 2025 by GuestBlogger

Why You Should Ditch Your New Year’s Resolution

By Eve Kecskes MS, RD

It’s two-and-a-half weeks into the new year: are you still following your resolution? If so, how much longer do you think you can keep it up? Or are you like most of us and did you ditch it by now?

Most people make resolutions that are too hard to stick with long-term. We end up failing and then give up completely. As a dietitian, I’m going to focus on New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight and be healthy. I’m sure you want to be healthier even if you didn’t make a formal resolution.

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Posted on January 17, 2025 by GuestBlogger

Is Britney Spears’ Weight Loss Just Photoshopping?

femme fatale tourPop icon Britney Spears can’t escape the headlines for too long, it seems she’s always making some sort of news. Currently it’s her weight loss that’s being put under the microscope. Or rather, the possible falsified photos indicating weight loss. Spears just wrapped up a successful concert tour titled Femme Fatale and she accepted an engagement proposal from her longtime boyfriend Jason Trawick. Things have been looking up for the young star. After years of negative drama swarming her image, Spears seems to be in a much healthier place. Her body has represented that health as well. Critics have taken note that she’s slimmed down in the last few months and she’s looking better than ever.

Spears appeared in the recent edition of V Magazine. The article discussed her tour and she praised her crew for all their hard work. The image of Spears was captured in September and is currently the only piece of the article getting mentioned.

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Posted on January 16, 2025 by Lacy