Why Does Music Make Us Feel better?

A recent Time magazine article, "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin," is misleading at best. Exercise is critical to losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight, especially when paired with healthy eating habits.

Countless studies, numerous experts who study exercise, and the millions of people who have lost weight all attest to the fact that working out works.

1. Exercise zaps belly fat

   Regular moderate to high intensity aerobic exercise has the greatest impact on reducing abdominal fat -- the dangerous fat that increases your risk of diabetes and heart disease.

2. Exercise controls calories

   You need to burn more calories than you consume in order to lose weight. Regular exercise uses up excess calories that would otherwise be stored as fat.

3. Exercise keeps lost pounds MIA

   Ninety percent of people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off for a year do about an hour of physical activity a day.

4. Exercise boosts metabolism

   You'll lose fat when you diet without exercising, but you'll also lose muscle, which means you'll burn fewer calories. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism and the more calories you'll burn.

5. Exercise does more than the scale shows

   If you gain 3 pounds of lean muscle and lose 4 pounds of fat, you've actually experienced a 7-pound improvement in your body condition, despite the scale only showing 1 pound of weight loss.

6. Exercise curbs emotional eating

   Working out has been proven time and time again to help regulate mood, which has a direct effect on people who eat when they're stressed or upset.

7. Exercise creates a healthy chain reaction

   Healthy habits tend to cluster together. When people make positive changes, like getting more exercise, they tend to work on other health improvements as well, such as eating better.

8. Exercise brings on the fun

   Rock-climbing is more exciting than eating a celery stick. That's why it's sometimes easier to be active to stay slim than to maintain a strict diet.

9. Exercise stops hunger

   People who exercise and diet are actually less hungry than those who only diet, according to at least one study.

10. Exercise increases energy

    Regular physical activity increases stamina by boosting your body's production of energy-promoting neurotransmitters. That gives you even more motivation to get moving and shed pounds.

Do you want to be a more light-hearted parent; less nagging, more laughing?

Here are some tips that may help:

1. At least once a day, make each child helpless with laughter.

2. Sing in the morning. It’s hard both to sing and to maintain a grouchy mood, and it sets a happy tone for everyone.

3. Get enough sleep. It’s so tempting to stay up late, to enjoy the peace and quiet. But 6:30 AM comes fast.

4. Avoid feeling cranky by getting organized the night before and making sure you’re not rushed.

5. Most messages to kids are negative: “stop,” “don’t,” “no.” Try to cast your answers as “yes.” “Yes, we’ll go as soon as you’ve finished eating,” not “We’re not leaving until you’ve finished eating.”

6. Say “no” only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine.

Everyone wants a peaceful, cheerful, even joyous, atmosphere at home -- but you can’t nag and yell your way to get there. So think about ways, like those listed above, to cut back on the shouting and to add moments of laughing, singing, and saying “yes.”

Tomatoes are a good source of the antioxidants lycopene and beta-carotene. But if you eat a tomato without adding a little fat, your body is unlikely to absorb all these nutrients.

Scientists recruited graduate students to eat bowls of salad greens with tomatoes and various types of salad dressings. The researchers put IV lines into the participants' veins and drew blood samples before and after they'd eaten the salads in order to get precise measurements of the absorption of nutrients.

When researchers went back and analyzed the blood samples, they realized that people who had eaten fat-free or low-fat dressings didn't absorb the beneficial carotenoids from the salad. Only when they had eaten the oil-based dressing did they get the nutrients.