Blog Posts by YouBeauty.com

It's easier than you think to fit in some physical activity.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently released a report that only one in five adults are meeting the government's physical activity recommendations. Those recommendations, by the way, aren't even high enough to be optimal for health. That means that 80 percent of people aren't getting even some ofthe exercise they need to keep their bodies in tip-top shape!

If you're feeling overwhelmed trying to figure out what the guidelines mean and whether or not you're meeting them, we understand. It's a lot of numbers and it can be hard to keep track. But don't sweat (at least not until you get moving)! We're here to break it down for you. We promise, it's not hard at all.

MORE: Everyday Activities Are Just as Good as Hitting the Gym

First, why is this important?
Physical activity isn't just about losing weight or building muscle (though those are two key benefits). It also helps you maintain your weight; keeps your arteries strong to prevent heart attack and stroke;

These small additions will bring you big results.

If you've tried every butt-blasting, glute-sculpting workout you can find and still see flat or saggy results, you may just need to tweak what you're doing to turn disappointment into an uplifting success.

VIDEOS: Top Trainers Share Their Favorite Butt-Toning Moves

Most butt-blaster workouts rightly incorporate squats, lunges, step ups and dead lifts. I'm not going to rehash or describe them here. You can find them easily online. I'm also not going to go into proper technique or discuss the risks associated with each exercise. You can find that elsewhere, too. What I am going to do is tell you how to adjust these exercises to actually make them work for you.

Up the Resistance
If you can do more than 12 repetitions of your chosen glute exercise, whether that's squats, lunges, step ups or dead lifts, add more resistance. Ten barbell squats to fatigue will do more to shape your rear than 50 squats without added weight. To build muscle effectively, you must have enough

Prepare your meals for the entire week—it's easier than you think.

Are you that person who frantically runs to the grocery store every afternoon because you have nothing for dinner? "Planning is the key to a balanced lifestyle, particularly when it comes to meals," explains Sharon Richter, registered dietician and FITiST expert based in New York City. "When you don't plan, you gravitate towards high fat, processed items," she says.

MORE: Cooking Gadgets That Make Your Life Easier

But if you commit to making your own food-and cook a lot at once-you'll know exactly what ingredients are in your dish, you'll save money and you won't find yourself hard-pressed for a meal at the last minute. Not sure where to start? All you need is a little how-to instruction on big batch cooking. And that's where we come in:

1. Choose One Day a Week To Work
Designate two or three hours on a weekend or a non-busy week day or night to grocery shop and cook your staples for the week's meals, suggests Devin Alexander, celebrity chef of NBC's "The Biggest

Seems like mushrooms truly are magical.

Mushrooms may not be a fruit or a vegetable, but science says they are a boon to your health. You may already have a hunch that they pack a pretty nutritious punch: "They're a good source of fiber, they also are low in calories, and they offer unsaturated fatty acids," says registered dietitian Heather Bauer, founder of the nutrition subscription service Bestowed. But recent studies have shown that mushrooms have even more benefits than we previously realized.

MORE: Why You Can't Stand Certain Foods

Not a fan of mushrooms? You may change your mind after we walk you through these fungi findings and the myriad of ways mushrooms boost your health:

Lose Weight
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University studied a group of adults who were trying to lose weight. Over the course of a year, half of these dieters substituted mushrooms for meat in their meals. The researchers found that these mushroom-eaters lost more weight than those on the meat diet, and they were able to keep

Getting in tune with your body is the best way to appreciate it.

Listen to your heart may sound like just another cliché catchphrase, but researchers have discovered that taking it literally may actually boost your self-image.

A 2013 study from the Department of Psychology at the University of London found that women who were closely in tune with the beating of their hearts had a healthier body image than women who weren't as accurate.

QUIZ: How Healthy Is Your Body Image?

Researchers had 50 volunteers try to listen to and count their heartbeats for a set period of time while a data unit recorded the actual number of beats. Then, the volunteers completed questionnaires designed to determine the extent to which they objectify themselves (that is, value their bodies based on attractiveness), a tendency that reflects poor self-image. The researchers found that women who rated highly for self-objectification were the ones who least accurately estimated their heartbeats.

While more research is needed to determine how much inner body

Now that chain restaurant menus list how many calories are in each dish, it's harder to justify eating certain foods anymore (we're talking to you ,460-calorie scone from Starbucks). But a study, presented by Texas Christian University researchers at the Experimental Biology meeting in April 2013, found that people make even healthier choices if, instead of seeing the calorie count, they're shown how much exercise it takes to burn off what they're considering eating.

Maybe one day, menus will list how many minutes you'll need to log on the rowing machine to erase that scone (48 minutes with vigorous effort, for the record). Until then, here's a quick guide for you (all calorie calculations are based on a 140-pound woman).

- by Melissa Walker

More From YouBeauty:

9 Nutritionist-Approved Snacks

Should You Get the Breast Cancer Gene Test?

The Health Benefits of Mushrooms

A preventative double mastectomy could be what keeps her healthy and cancer-free.

Angelina Jolie revealed today that she had a preventive double mastectomy after discovering she carried a "faulty" gene that made her highly susceptible to breast cancer. Now, she's encouraging other women to seek out information and consider testing for the same genes-namely, mutations on genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2, which have been linked to the development of breast cancer. But how necessary-not to mention affordable-is this?

MORE: What's Your Risk of Cancer?

The 37-year-old Oscar-winning actress wrote an op-ed in today's New York Times announcing her decision to undergo a double mastectomy after losing her mom to ovarian cancer and finding out that Jolie herself had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer due to a mutation of the BRCA1 gene, which predisposes her to both diseases.

There's no denying that the numbers surrounding breast cancer are scary: More than 230,000 women are diagnosed in the U.S. alone each year and nearly

There's a reason that sometimes they can't help but stop and stare.

We Asked: Viren Swami, Ph.D., YouBeauty Attraction Expert and Reader in Psychology at the University of Westminster in London, England.

The Answer: They stare, they ogle, they pat and they pinch. But what is it that draws some men so intensely to the female behind? The long held theory that an hourglass figure, including a full lower body, is attractive because it suggests health and fertility has been largely discredited. It has yet to be replaced by a convincing alternative.

MORE: Best Sculpting Exercises for Your Butt Type

What we do know is that a booty is a uniquely female trait-and therefore uniquely feminine. After puberty, sex hormones begin to dictate the distribution of fat on the body. In men, fat accumulation is stimulated around the gut and inhibited in the seat. It's the opposite for women, who tend to carry fat in their gluteofemoral region, that is, the butt and thighs.

MORE: Butt Moments Through The Years

That doesn't mean that males everywhere are