Blog Posts by Tips on Healthy Living

It's back-to-school season, and it's a good time to revamp your lunch with some savvy additions that will keep you feeling energized and satisfied for three to four hours. Mix it up with these healthy tips from Keri Gans, MS, RD, CDN, author of The Small Change Diet: 10 Steps to a Thinner, Healthier You.

1. Have a piece of fruit for dessert. This helps fill you up and completes the meal.

2. Choose 2 slices of whole-wheat bread for your sandwich. Avoid rolls, heroes, or buns, which tend to have more calories and less fiber than sliced whole-grain breads.

3. Add protein (i.e., chicken, turkey, egg) to your tossed salad. Otherwise you will still feel hungry.

4. Don't turn a salad into a high-fat, high-calorie disaster. Avoid creamy dressings, as well as "extras" like bacon bits and oily croutons.

5. If you're still hungry, add a pickle to your meal.

6. Instead of chips or fries with your sandwich, choose vegetables or fruit.

7. Ask for dressings and sauces

By Kristin Sidirov
Going away to college can be a challenging experience. Teens, uprooted from home with unsure footing in their new world, begin trying to discover just who they are. While many students find the transition liberating, it can also be intimidating to handle the pressures of academic life-and those emotions can be a perfect storm that leads to the infamous Freshman 15.

What can you do to avoid midnight pizza and the legendary beer belly? It's important for newbies to focus on positive changes they can make and avoid falling prey to the not-so-great temptations that college life affords.

If you're unpacking in your new dorm (or are the parent of a student you've just sent off to their new home), you'll be relieved to hear that the Freshman 15 is, for the most part, pure legend. While weight gain is certainly an issue for incoming freshmen, 15 lbs. is a bit of an exaggeration. It turns out that in reality, it's more like the Freshman 8 to 10-which is unfortunately

Pain lives forever, but silver linings are always possible. The last survivor of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Genelle Guzman-McMillan says that with a little faith, she hopes that horrible day will bring good change. From Angel in the Rubble: The Miraculous Rescue of 9/11's Last Survivor.

I believe something good can always come from something bad, even when that something bad is death. That doesn't mean that the pain the deceased's loved ones feel goes away. It doesn't, ever. But maybe it can soften a little bit by their finding a silver lining.

Deadly car crashes over the years have resulted in successful campaigns to create safer cars, which have probably saved thousands upon thousands of lives. Fires in buildings that took lives in the past have produced strict standards when buildings are constructed today, such as emergency exits and sprinkler systems, which have undoubtedly saved lives. The AMBER Alert system was named for a nine-year-old girl in Texas

Genelle Guzman-McMillan was the last survivor of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Buried alive for 27 hours, she reflects on the precious lessons she learned from her horrifying experience, including that despite it all, our country and our world continued to be filled with life. From Angel in the Rubble: The Miraculous Rescue of 9/11's Last Survivor.

After the attacks, the stock markets closed for nearly a week, airspace over the city was temporarily shut down, and businesses went under. But life did not stop. People in other places in the city, country, and world went to work. Babies continued to be born. People still went on vacations, worked in the yard, got married. In fact, for some, the world went at an even faster pace-for the rescuers, the hospital workers, the news media, and the government, all of which had to instantly respond to the attacks.

For the families of the victims, life sadly continued with funeral arrangements, final good-byes, and trying to figure out how

By Kristin Sidirov

Detox diets are a popular alternative health trend designed to help you lose weight, feel better, and purge your body of harmful contaminants and excess fat. Sounds pretty great, right? Millions of dieters, including celebrities like Bethenny Frankel, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Demi Moore, believe it does. Forget the fact that most varieties of the diet require strictly following regimens that seem both unnatural and, well, gross (the Master Cleanse includes consuming nothing but lemon juice, cayenne pepper, maple syrup, and laxatives for a minimum of 10 days) - it's hard to deny that at the end of the day, "detoxifying" sounds refreshingly healthy. But what exactly does it mean? And is it even necessary?

Pollution, alcohol, processed food, and caffeine can all take their toll on our bodies. Impossible to avoid and undeniably harmful, these everyday elements are thought to be the source of many health problems, especially if left unattended to over time. Detox

By Barbara K. Hofer, Ph.D. and Abigail Sullivan Moore
Authors of The iConnected Parent

With cell phones, Skype, texting, email, Twitter, and Facebook as a way to stay connected to mom and dad, some college kids are beginning to wonder if they have actually left home at all. What happened to that famed independence college was supposed to offer?

If your child is headed off to college this fall, you might want to stop and think back to when you first left home. Most of the parents in our research studies describe a time when a weekly call was sufficient and their parents hardly knew what courses they were taking or much about their social lives. Not so long ago, this provided a chance for college kids to make decisions on their own, govern their own lives, seek help when needed from college professionals, and move gradually and responsibly into adult roles.

By contrast, many college students today describe an electronic tether that links them to home, and in some cases the leash

This may seem like a no brainer, but when you have a bad day, remember: Pessimism can influence your susceptibility to illness, including cancer and cardiovascular disease, says Martin E.P. Seligman, author of Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being.

1. Optimists take action and have healthier lifestyles.Optimists believe that their actions matter, whereas pessimists believe they are helpless and nothing they do will matter. Optimists try, while pessimists lapse into passive helplessness. Optimists therefore act on medical advice readily, as George Vaillant found when the surgeon general's report on smoking and health came out in 1964; it was the optimists who gave up smoking, not the pessimists. Optimists may take better care of themselves.

Even more generally, people with high life satisfaction (which correlates highly with optimism) are much more likely to diet, not to smoke, and to exercise regularly than people with lower life satisfaction.

By Kristin Sidorov

Wait, what? Vegetables for dessert? Trust us: It's 100 percent true and utterly delicious. Creative veggie desserts have been popping up in the most popular restaurants across the country, with scrumptious results and rave reviews. So fill up that veggie drawer and whip up something magical with these clever recipes that give new life to "Eat your vegetables."

-White Chocolate Chip Zucchini Brownies (Full Measure of Happiness)
-Sweet Potato Vanilla Cake (Serial Cooking)
-Chocolate Carrot and Squash Cupcakes (My Kitchen Addiction)
-Avocado Cookies (Steph Chows)
-Tomato Cake with Olive Oil and Cinnamon (Love Food Eat)
-Beet Chocolate Bundt Cake (Always Order Dessert)
-Eggplant Chocolate Chip Muffins (In My Tiny Kitchen…)
-Cauliflower and Raspberry Mini Cheesecakes (Eat a Beet)
-Secret Spinach Whoopie Pies (Babble Food)

More Veggie-rific Tips:
-Shopping for Veggies at the Farmer's Market
-Jonathan Waxman's