by Mike Roussell, phD, SHAPE Diet Doctor

What you need to know before taking this supplementThis supplement is said to suppress appetite, but will it help you lose weight? Probably not, but it depends. 5-hydroxy-L-tryptophan is a derivative of the amino acid tryptophan and is converted to the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. What does that have to do with weight loss? Serotonin is a multifaceted neurotransmitter, and one of its roles is impacting appetite. (Have you ever been in a carb-induced coma where your appetite was completely squashed? Serotonin had a hand in that.)

Because of this connection to hunger, modulating serotonin levels and effects to elicit greater weight loss has long been a pursuit of the drug companies. One of the most famous (or infamous) prescription weight-loss drugs, Phentermine, had a modest impact on serotonin release.

When it comes to actual research on 5-HTP and its impact on weight loss, you won't find much. In one small study, Italian researchers put a group of obese, hyperphagic (science for

Source: Healthy Spreads For Bagels Help Save on Fat and Calories

There's nothing wrong with a little cream cheese here and there, but enter the world of other topping possibilities. These new tastes are fresh and can help you to mix up your palate. Another perk of these foreign bagel flavors is that they are all healthier options without sacrificing flavor. See which spread will be the next butter to your bread.

• Neufchâtel: This spreadable cheese looks just like cream cheese and is usually available right next to it in the refrigerator aisle. Judging by labels alone, this is the health-conscious choice with 10 percent less fat than cream cheese.
• Farmer cheese: Lower in calories and in fat is farmer cheese. If you enjoy the texture and taste of ricotta cheese, think of this as its cousin, which makes it a whipped-style bagel topper.
• Goat cheese spread: Herbed goat cheese can taste great on a bagel. The lower-cal, more spreadable version involves combining it

Source: Healthy Baking: Surprising Butter Substitutes

Baking calms the mind and feeds the soul, but all that buttery goodness can pack on the pounds. If looking to make healthier baked goods, omitting some or all of the butter from your favorite recipes greatly reduce the amount of calories, fat, and cholesterol in your sweet treats. There are countless ways to replace eggs in recipes, and here are healthier alternatives to using butter. These substitutes are great for vegan bakers too.

• Applesauce: Often used to replace oil in recipes, applesauce can also be used as butter alternative, and works best in cake-like recipes (like this Vegan Banana Apple Chunk Bread). Replace half the amount of butter in your recipe with applesauce; if the recipe calls for one cup of butter, use half a cup of butter and half a cup of applesauce. If you don't mind a denser, more moist bread, replace all the butter with applesauce to cut even more calories and fat.
• Avocado: Substitute half

by Heidi Pashman

These dreamy stars are known for their compassionate diets. We swoon!

Ne-Yo1. Ne-Yo: The newest meat- and dairy-free male celeb, Ne-Yo tweeted on December 30, "What's everybody's New Year's resolution? I'm gonna try to go Vegan. Discipline test. NOT looking forward to it. Wish me luck!!"

We hear the singer is still going strong!

2. Jason Mraz: The sexy singer who just won "Favorite Male Artist" at the People's Choice Awards is serious about healthy food (He lives on an avocado farm!) And he's not shy about sharing how his plant-based diet has changed his life on his blog. "I ride longer distances on my bike, can do more pull-ups than ever, and my brain seems to have a larger capacity for new projects, problem solving, songwriting, and fielding random questions... It also makes me a lot better in bed." Can't argue with that!

3. Tobey Maguire: The oh-so-studly actor who stars in The Great Gatsby, due out this spring, became a vegetarian in 1992 and a vegan in 2009. In a

Someone took the time to leave a few words of encouragement to women who had shared their worst secrets. (Photo: Reddit.com)"What has been the worst day of your life?" read the question in a women's bathroom at Western University in Ontario, Canada. All around it, women had written their confessions on the walls of the bathroom stall. Some had suffered from eating disorders. Some had been raped. Others had lost a parent or lived through a crisis.

One person took the time to read them all, and left a life-affirming response taped to the wall. "In a girls' bathroom stall at my university, girls have written about some of their most horrifying life experiences," Reddit user chellylauren wrote as she shared the note. "This week, somebody replied."

The letter reads:

To the girl who was raped: You are so strong. I cannot fathom the pain you must have gone through. The fact that you have the bravery to write it (even on a bathroom wall) gives me hope.

To the girl with eating disorders: I promise you, although I don't know you, you are beautiful, you deserve your health. You deserve freedom from that hell.

Sleeping in the nude is good for you!A recent study showed that less than 10 percent of Americans sleep in the buff. Whaa? Not only is it dead sexy, experts swear naked sleep is actually good for you. We asked them to spill on the top reasons you should ditch those pajamas for good.

By Natasha Burton

1. You'll Air Out Your Hoo-Ha
Jennifer Landa, MD, author of The Sex Drive Solution for Women, says that sleeping naked can be healthier for your private parts. While it's totally normal to have yeast and bacteria down there, the warm environment can sometimes cause an overgrowth. One way to prevent infections is to "air it out" and go commando.

2. You'll Sleep Better
While you might like being cozy and warm at night, it's actually important to have a cooler environment when you sleep, says Lisa Shives, MD, who sits on the National Sleep Foundation's board of directors. "Your body temp progressively declines as you sleep, which is a natural tendency of the body, so being too warm with heavy PJs and

The groovy movie posterDid you know that the home-birth world had its very own rock star? Yep: Ina May Gaskin, the world's most famous midwife, worshiped by natural-birth proponents since 1975, when her book Spiritual Midwifery, now in its fourth edition, captivated women everywhere.

And this week, when a new doc examining her life and work opened in New York City, with Gaskin on hand to answer post-film questions, her groupies showed up in full force—more than 200 of them. Many of them were hugely pregnant, and a handful carried newborns, nursing in their slings. They got what they came for, both from the 72-year-old dynamo, a warm, old-school hippie who covered topics from acid trips to vaginal walls, and from the film, Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives, packed with more raucous, gooey, joyous birth scenes than pretty much anyone has ever seen.

"We've got young women now who think giving birth the old way is gross," Gaskin laments early on in the film, made by young moms Sara Lamm and

It's no secret that there is an obesity epidemic in America. Our perceptions of what is healthy have become totally skewed. Play it "healthy" by ordering a salad and in many cases you're consuming around 1,000 calories, or half your calories for the day! The CSPI creates an annual list of the unhealthiest meals found in restaurants around the country to alert you to menu items with eye-popping levels of calories, saturated fat, sugar and sodium. According to CSPI, "To put the numbers you're about to see into context, a typical adult should consume about 2,000 calories and no more than 20 grams of saturated fat and 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends consuming no more than six teaspoons of added sugars for women and nine teaspoons for men." Here are 7 meals that topped this year's list of the most unhealthy restaurant dishes in America. - By Monica Bielanko

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