Jenn's Losing It

It might be hard to cut your nightly Dexter  marathon short, but watch out—staying up late may do more than make you sluggish the next day. Cutting back on sleep increases the likelihood of indulging in fatty, high-cal fare at night, which leads to weight gain , finds new research. For the study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine followed a control group of 27 participants who went to bed at 10 p.m. and another group of 198 who went to bed at 4 a.m. They found that the sleep-restricted subjects consumed about 550 calories—a good portion of which came from fat—after their well-rested counterparts had gone to sleep. After five consecutive nights of limited rest, participants in the second group had gained an average of more than two pounds. Night-time munching happens for a few reasons, says lead study author Andrea M. Spaeth, MA, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. For starters, the longer you stay awake, the ...

Eating well-balanced meals and snacks are both important for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But whether it’s because you find yourself mindlessly snacking or because your meals aren’t keeping you as full as you’d like, sometimes you need something to keep you from rummaging through the pantry. Here are 15 appetite-suppressing foods that keep you feeling full! 1. Nuts Nuts don’t just contain healthy fats to help keep your cholesterol low—they are also good sources of appetite-killing fiber, which digests slowly so it stays in your stomach much longer than other carbohydrates. A 1/4 cup of almonds, for example, contains  four grams of fiber . 2. Oatmeal Stay fuller longer with a bowl of oatmeal; half a cup of rolled oats contains five grams of fiber. Besides that, oatmeal can help increase your body’s levels of the appetite-regulating hormone cholecystokinin,  which may help control hunger  in some people. 3. Apples An apple makes an ideal morning or afternoon snack; the ...

This routine boosts metabolism, slims you down and sculpts lean muscle. Not bad for 30 minutes of your time Ketchup or mustard? Flats or heels?  The X Factor  or The Voice ? That eternal fitness face-off—cardio or strength training—is just as perplexing. Cardio is a known calorie crusher, but strength workouts build muscle and  boost metabolism . But you don't have to choose sides: A new regimen experts have dubbed metabolic conditioning offers the best of both. By combining short, high-intensity work periods, little to no rest between weight-loss exercises, and big-body movements, metabolic conditioning challenges your strength, power, and cardiovascular endurance in one workout—maximizing  calorie burn  during and after a sweat session, says Frank Salzone, a group fitness instructor for Equinox in New York City. It also helps improve your muscles' ability to use energy during workouts, so you can push harder and get better results over time. Sound too good to ...

Strapless dresses expose your upper back, shoulders, upper chest, and arms. This workout will shape all those places. Do these  arm exercises  one after another with no rest in between. Repeat the circuit, resting a minute between circuits.  MOVE   1  Standing V Raise Hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, arms at your sides, palms in. With arms straight but not locked, raise the weights diagonally in front of you, so that your arms form a V shape, until your arms are parallel to the floor. Hold for one second, then return to the starting position. Do 12 to 15 reps. MOVE   2   Shoulder Press Holding a pair of dumbbells just above your shoulders, palms facing each other, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent. Press the weights until your arms are straight overhead. Hold for one second, then take three seconds to lower the dumbbells back to your shoulders. Do six to eight reps. MOVE   3 ...

New research suggests that sleep is even more important than we thought~ Not getting enough sleep can make you groggy, but can it also make you fat? Researchers at the University of Chicago think it's a strong possibility. In a new study published in the  Annals of Internal Medicine , researchers determined that  four nights of sleep deprivation reduced insulin sensitivity in fat cells by a whopping 30 percent. And the less sensitive your cells are to insulin, the less your body produces the hunger-regulating hormone leptin. "This is one of the first studies to show that a cell outside of the brain—the fat cell—also needs sleep," says study author Matthew Brady, Ph.D., vice-chair of the Committee on Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition at the University of Chicago. Brady and a team of researchers put seven young, healthy subjects through two study conditions: First, they spent 8.5 hours in bed for four nights in a row (participants slept for roughly 8 hours each night, the ...