By Vincent Pedre M.D.

Brace yourselves, it's the holidays again and with all the parties and celebrations, there will be food, drinks and more food. In fact, for Americans fully 51 percent of weight gain each year occurs during the six week holiday period.

It is thought that people gain five to ten pounds over the holidays and research suggests that if you are already overweight, the strikes are against you.

One study followed 195 adults from September through March, and found that the average weight gain was about 1 pound (0.37 kg).

However, in adults who were already overweight or obese, weight gain was greater, 14 percent averaging a weight gain of 5 lbs.[1]

In another study, the same was true for elementary school children. Those overweight or obese were most at risk for gaining weight during the holidays.[2]

The good news… With these healthy tips you can maintain your weight and avoid the holiday bulge.

Eight Steps to Avoid Holiday Weight

By Sofie Sausser

There's more to Christmas than St. Nick and a Christmas tree. Case in point, the people who come over to your house to break bread and who will most likely sit down at a table to do it. You're going to want to keep them there, enraptured with your superlative cooking. That's where interesting centerpieces come in and keep them fastened in their seats. Here are ten DIY table-top stunners that will make them want real estate in the very chair you assigned them. Take a tip from Sweet Paul and spray paint wine bottles white. Pick some greenery from your yard and set the table with blues and whites.


Grab a branch or a piece of driftwood and just add succulents.


Candles in a bucket with sand. Don't forget the ribbon.


Bring on the ambiance with punched paper wrapped around glass vases.


Spray branches gold and insert them in a block of wood for a modern table.


Any ornament or toy becomes special under a cloche bell jar. Just add snow.


Gather mason jars with a

Family buying a Christmas treeBy Trystan L. Bass

Nothing says "Christmas" like the smell of pine in your living room on a winter morning! But is that smell really "green" or is it bad for the planet? Is it more environmentally responsible to buy a fake tree and use it year after year? What about keeping a live tree for Christmas? Let's look at the options one by one.

If you want a tree for the holiday, the experts at Grist and TreeHugger say it's actually better to buy a cut real Christmas tree than an artificial tree.

Why? In a word, plastics. Fake trees are made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Producing this type of plastic creates a lot of pollution, and PVC is difficult to recycle.

Plus, lead is commonly found in PVC. According to a report in the Journal of Environmental Health, lead levels are about a third higher in older artificial trees (ranging in age from from 7 to 17 years). Tests revealed lead levels that are significantly higher than the safe daily exposure level for children.

hipster
By Luanne Bradley

You'd be surprised by which magazines use recycled paper these days. While it's expected from from publications like Plenty and Ode (and many on our list below), there are plenty of others using recycled content in addition to publishing articles on conscious and environmental topics. Here are nine magazines worth plunking down cash for in the age of online media.
1. Mother Jones

Never the mother of convention, Mother Jones seeks not just to expose but to move to action, as witnessed in its recycled pages and commitment to pressing planet-worthy issues. Environmental coverage ranges from asking how green your Thanksgiving menu is to the next frontier in natural gas wars.

2. Audubon

Audubon Magazine stays off the endangered list by staying current when it comes to fish and fowl play, tracking stewards of the planet who are protecting forests and swamps from urban encroachment, serving up responsible seafood guides and measuring solar power in the southwestern

Makeup aficionados, unite! Here's how you can help recycle your beauty tools into brand new products.

-Diana Denza, BettyConfidential.com

Reycle

If you're anything like us, your Saturday afternoons start with a stroll down the local drugstore's beauty aisle and end with a tube of mascara or shiny new lip gloss. But do you ever wonder where those containers end up once you've slathered on that last bit of concealer?

The answer, ladies, is rather bleak. Those castaways are taking up precious space in our already crowded landfills. But there's something you can do to help keep both your skin and the earth beautiful-and it's super easy to boot!

TerraCycle, an anti-waste company founded in 2001 by a Princeton freshman, has just formed the brand new Beauty Brigade. According to Stacey Cusack, the brand's public relations manager, the team's mission is "to eliminate the idea of waste all together. The goal of the Personal Care and Beauty Brigade is to keep all kinds of hair care,

The uses for empty toilet paper rolls are endless...A few weeks ago, I saw a post on using empty toilet paper rolls to store and organize cords. I thought it was so brilliant that I immediately started saving our empty rolls. Then, I stumbled on a tip for using one as filler for frugal holiday decor, and I couldn't stop thinking about this resource I've been ignorning.

Oh, sure, we recycle, but it's always better to reuse it first. So, the hunt began for cool ways to repurpose toilet paper rolls. And, I just. couldn't. stop. There were just so many awesome and totally clever ideas out there! You can use toilet paper rolls for organization, decoration, gifts, toys - the possibilities for that little tube are just endless. Check out my favorites:




Advent Calendar
1. Advent Calendar
I love this advent calendar. I've actually seen a few different versions of a toilet paper advent calendar - all of them super easy, cheap, and ready to fill with treats, devotions, good deeds, or family fun activities.
Find out how to make it

Related: 25 unique "green"