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I’m always looking for great on-the-run options that are healthy and easy on my waistline. I recently discovered that Jamba Juice is offering Jamba Light smoothies that are the perfect complement to those with an active and healthy lifestyle. Available in strawberry, berry, and mango flavors, these creamy, fruit-filled drinks have no added sugars and nearly half the calories — 160 versus 280 — of the regular smoothie versions.

Plus they also fuel your body with lots of good stuff, like Vitamin C, Calcium and 6-7 wonderful grams of protein. These nutritious, great-tasting drinks make achieving a lighter lifestyle a lot more fun!

When one of the hottest New York beauty spas takes 10 years of experience and places it all into one product, you know it’s got to be something good. Bliss has created an incredibly effective anti-again powerhouse cream that promises to produce a regenerative effect like nothing else on the market.

The Youth As We Know It ($79) dream cream contains 10 anti-aging active ingredients:

• MMP inhibitors slow the formation of matrix metalloproteinases that causes the breakdown of collagen in the skin
• Wrinkle reduction peptides help improve elasticity and skin tone
• Vsual facial ‘fillers’ volumize hollow areas
• Cellular respiration boosters help reduce redness and stir cellular oxygenation
• Hyperdermal destressors decrease transepidermal water loss
• 7-day hydrators maintain the skin’s hydrolipidic film and skin barrier
• Barrier repairing ceramides increase and repair barrier function
• Vitamin C stimulates collagen
• Pigment inhibitiors brighten skin tone
• Active vitamin A mimics retin-A, but without the irritation

Apply a thin layer of the youth as we know it morning and evening onto a well cleansed face, neck and eye area. In the morning, following with a seasonably suitable SPF or SPF-enhanced foundation formula.

More and more we’re spending a significant part of our afternoons staring blankly at a computer screen, or just trying to stay awake for a boring afternoon department staff meeting.

Sneak away during lunch or break, and recharge yourself with a power nap. Power naps lasts from 10-20 minutes and help maximize the benefits cell repair, heart function, and hormonal maintenance in as short a time as possible.

Cornell University social psychologist James Maas found that even a 10-minute snooze improved job performance.

A recent study found that the omega-3s in fish can fire up your metabolism and slow down fat storage.

“They improve insulin response by stimulating the release of leptin, a hormone that helps regular food intake and metabolism,” says Lisa Dorfman, R.D., an adjunct professor at the University of Miami.

This just gave me another reason to eat sushi. Not that I needed one of course!

Does your back hurt when you wake up in the morning? If so, you may be sleeping in the wrong position. The best position for pain relief is to sleep on your side with a pillow between your knees, or if you can stand it, lie on your back with a pillow under your knees. Both methods will significantly decrease the pressure and weight on your lower back.

Sleep on a firm mattress that provides good support and avoid sleeping on your stomach, which places your back in an unnatural posture. If you do have to sleep on your stomach, avoid using a pillow for your head and place it under your abdomen instead.

Lower back pain from sleeping incorrectly is a common experience, but it doesn’t have to be.

If you think eating a muffin and strawberries makes for a “well-balanced” breakfast, you’re wrong. Most breakfast foods like cereal, fruit, and bread provide nothing but carbohydrates. If you’re looking to build muscle, you’ll need to add protein and even a little bit of fat into your first meal of the day.

High-quality proteins from fish, meat, eggs and dairy are essential in building muscle, and the fat from them also helps to slow the absorption of carbohydrates into your bloodstream. So instead of a quick sugar rush of energy from eating carbohydrates alone, you’ll have a steady supply of energy all day long.

Proteins and fats also keep you full longer, curbing your urge to binge eat, and shrinking your midsection in the process. A study between Saint Louis University and Wayne State University has shown that eating eggs as part of your breakfast will result in fewer calories consumed throughout your day.

Yoga is a gentle exercise that can help align the body, ease the mind, and restore a sense of balance and wholeness to your life. Best of all, unlike other forms of exercise like weight-lifting or working out on a Stairmaster, yoga equipment is relatively simple and inexpensive.

You don’t need special shoes as most people perform yoga barefoot. For clothing, a pair of shorts and a slightly fitted shirt will take care of the apparel you need.

One essential piece of yoga equipment you’ll need is a yoga sticky mat. A yoga sticky mat gives your hands and feet some traction and allows you to assume the different postures without fear of slipping and sliding. Yoga mats are available online starting at about $20.

As you work out, the mat will probably get soiled with sweat. You can clean most mats with a mixture of water and vinegar. Vinegar is a great low-cost natural cleaning ingredient that kills mold and bacteria.

Another piece of yoga equipment I recommend is the yoga ball. Yoga balls vary in size from about 55 to 75 centimeters. These balls are used to give you extra support as you assume certain postures such as the backbend. They can also be used as chairs–used in this way, they enhance balance. The balls usually cost anywhere in the range of $20-$30.

Optional Yoga Equipment

Depending on which postures you will be practicing, you may also want to consider getting yoga blankets, blocks, and straps for further support for your head, neck, arms, and back.

I highly suggest a book or DVD for for beginners. Even if you’re taking a yoga glass, it’ll be nice to have a reference at home for various postures.

Yoga provides many benefits for very little financial investment. With a relatively minor expenditure, you can quickly be on your way to a healthier you.

I absolutely love pizza, and luckily enough, it’s one of the few fast foods that can be healthy if done right. A recent Harvard study found that eating foods with a tomato-based sauce once a day, can reduce the chances of heart disease by one-third.

So here’s a few tips on how to make any pizza healthier:

Cut the Cheese
Sure cheese makes a pizza taste good, but reducing it by half the amount can cut saturated fat by a third.

Veggies for Toppings
High in nutrients and vitamins, they’re a great alternative to toppings like sausage and pepperoni.

Blot the Oil
Patting your pizza with a clean napkin to soak up excess oil can cut fat by up to 50 percent.

Meat Choices
If you must have meat, choose chicken breast or “Canadian bacon” which is the leanest cut of bacon.

You’ve been working out hard and doing everything right — cardio, strength training and dieting — but suddenly all progress has come to an halt. Why aren’t you losing any more weight? The answer is simple. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR), the energy required to keep your heart pumping and other vital functions going when your body is at rest has decreased.

BMR decreases as your body mass decreases from losing body fat. For example, you weigh 125 pounds and eat 1,800 calories a day. To lose about a pound a week, you would need to cut about 500 calories from your diet a day. So you begin to eat about 1,300 calories a day and the weight is coming off nicely. Two months go by, and suddenly your weight refuses to budge and you’re not seeing a huge physical difference in the mirror. This happened because along with your fat loss, your BMR has declined. Where your body used to burn 1280 calories a day, now it’s only burning 1,100 calories a day.

At this lower weight, there’s less of you to move around, so you burn fewer calories doing the same workout. Your calorie expenditure is close to or slightly less than what you’re taking in, and thus you’ve hit a weight loss plateau.

Although you feel stuck, you’re probably still losing fat and weight, just not enough to show on the scale. Instead of losing a pound per week, now it’s probably closer to a third of a pound.

Watch the Calories and Increase Activity
To beat the weight loss plateau you’ll need to closely watch what you eat. Look for places that calories tend to hide such as dressings, sauces, and condiments. If cutting out any more food isn’t an option, you’ll need to up your workout activity. Remember that for each pound you want to lose, you’ll need to cut at least 3,500 a week, Adding an extra 10-15 minutes to your daily treadmill run should do the trick.

Add More Resistance
Another way to boost your BMR is to increase your resistance training. Increasing your muscle mass as you lose body fat can compensate for the decline in BMR induced by weight loss. The more muscle you have, the higher your BMR.

Keep up the healthy eating and physical activity and you’ll have the body you’re looking for in no time!

I absolutely love garlic. Whether it’s garlic fries, garlic toast, or garlic in my hamburger… I’ll gobble it up! While it tastes great and has many health benefits, there’s one serious drawback — it’s hard to prevent the dreaded garlic breath.

Some people, like myself, can carry this unwanted smell for days. Garlic literally reeks from every pore in my body.

One of the reasons that garlic breath is so strong is that garlic is full of sulphorous compounds. These compounds “feed” the bacteria in your mouth and bad breath (halitosis) is caused as a result.

Although there aren’t any ways to prevent garlic breath, except from barring yourself from eating garlic, there are ways to minimize the smell.

• Good oral hygiene
• Fresh chopped parsley with your meal helps reduce garlic breath.
• Some people also claim that chewing cardamon seeds has a similar effect to parsley and can work as a garlic breath remedy.
• Garlic smell on your hands? Simply rub your hands with a stainless steel spoon or other stainless steel utensil.
• Don’t have stainless steel utensils on hand? A little salt or baking soda rubbed on the hands should do the trick.

The best solution is probably just to surround yourself with other garlic lovers, because no solution can stop the garlic that works it’s way through your skin and emerges from your pores!