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They say you are what you eat. So if you’re starting to feel as sluggish and as coagulated as a big bowl of chocolate pudding, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your eating habits…specifically the stuff you call “comfort food”.

Instead of calorie-laden snacks on a gloomy day, why not try these healthier alternatives? Research shows that, eaten in moderation, certain food can help bring about a more relaxed and calmer state.

For instance, those that trigger happy memories or associations, based on their presentation, scent, or taste, subconsciously connect people to their childhood or beautiful moments from the past. Mac and cheese, always a childhood favorite, has become many a grown person’s comfort food because it was usually served as an after-school snack. Today, however, make sure to substitute low-fat ingredients when making your mac and cheese if you’re figure or weight conscious.

Or have a turkey sandwich. Yes, you read it right. Just make sure the bread is whole wheat and not white to stick to your caloric counter. Turkey has healthy protein that produces dopamine and norepinephrine, which are brain chemicals that have something to do with you being mentally alert. Plus, protein is more easily digestible than carbs, so you can go on without feeling hungry for longer. A good turkey sandwich also helps calm you down because of the chemical tryptophan. It’s an amino acid that raises serotonin levels. Add to that the selenium coming from the whole-wheat bread, and you’re as calm and serene as a baby with a pacifier, while you munch away at this Thanksgiving staple gone deliciously healthy between slabs of bread.

Finally, milk is alway something good to pour in a glass and down, because calcium has been proven to regulate the tension and relaxation of blood vessels. So if you’re feeling a sudden rush of adrenalin, drink some of this pristine white childhood beverage. Remember when your mom would heat up some milk for when you can’t sleep at night? There’s some truth to that, because a warm glass of milk has about 300 mg of calcium to make you relaxed enough to harvest some Zzzz’s not long after you drink it.

Some Q’s for you to gauge if you’re not getting enough Zzzzz’s:

1. Are you the type who becomes unconscious as soon as your head hits the pillow? Y/N

2. Do you find yourself nodding off when you’re supposed to be relaxing for a couple of hours in front of the TV at night? Y/N

3. Are you always moody, grumpy, and easily distracted under daily circumstances? Y/N

4. Do you rely on an alarm clock to wake you up, and when it does, do you hit the snooze button repeatedly? Y/N

5. A cup of coffee is your lifeline every morning. Y/N

6. You find yourself overcompensating for sleep during weekends, because the rest of the week you are always burning the midnight oil. Y/N

Now, tally your scores. Count the number of times you said “yes” to the questions and statements above. If you have no “yes” answers, chances are you have pretty sound and healthy sleep habits.

If you answered “yes” once or more, you may be sleep deprived and need to review your current lifestyle. The quality and quantity of sleep get directly affected by your schedule, and other things that you don’t think matter. If you suspect a sleep disorder that is not easily remedied, consult your doctor.

Getting into a peaceful state of mind need not be the expensive, seminar-induced way to go when you really, really need to deal with stress ASAP. This especially holds true when you’re at work or in any other situation where you can’t just walk off and take a vacation somewhere far. Sometimes, a little mental adjustment is all you need to get through the day without feeling physically, emotionally, and mentally run through the clothes wringer.

First off, start the day by pacing yourself slowly. Whereas you used to rely on the alarm clock to signal your military-like preparations for the day, why not get up ten minutes earlier so you won’t have to rush around like a headless chicken? Same goes with driving: there’s no need to beat every red light or be all Schumacher-like on the fast lane. Leave the house earlier than usual, take in the sights and sounds of the neighborhood, and get to work on time with some more minutes to spare. And when you’re conversing with people, don’t say the first thing that comes to your noggin. Pause for a few seconds, think the questions over, and then give your well-digested answers. That way, you’ll be creating an overall calm aura that can be contagious to other people rushing about and insisting on being all hectic.

Also, to avoid tension from coagulating the duration of the day, try this simple formula. For the span of an hour, work for 55 minutes and take a break for 5 minutes. Not only will you feel rejuvenated, but this can actually increase productivity in the work place. You don’t have to go anywhere for such breaks all the time. You can simply ease your mind into screensaver mode and think about nothing. In this case, having a poster of something calm or visually pleasing would help wonders in your cubicle. Or perhaps a bowl with a goldfish or a lovely flowering plant can help. Just don’t overdo it, or the flora and fauna in your workstation might prove more stress-inducing in terms of upkeep.

Also, make sure you put your vacation leaves to good use. A two-week break has been proven in researches about office goers to be more mentally soothing and calming to the spirit, in comparison to those using up their office leaves whenever they feel too stressed. Before you know it, you’ve used up all your breaks, and the stress still keeps piling up.

In case this does happen, don’t blame yourself or try to heap your plate with more responsibilities. Seek help from family, friends, and colleagues, and you’ll be surprised at how much easier it gets when they’ve extended their helping hands. Just make sure you ask nicely and not be an ogre, or else you’ll be passing on the stress to everyone else.

A survey conducted by the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachussets has gleaned that the bigget sources of stress for working adults have a lot to do with trying to balance the demands of a job and a family. They are the following:

1. Time pressures, especially deadlines and bills payment.

2. Feeling a lack of control.

3. Worry about one’s physical apperance.

4. Job pressures.

5. Health concerns.

6. Lack of joy.

7. Family relationships.

8. Friends/social life.

9. Lack of self-esteem.

10. Worries about marriage or primary relationships.

There are ways to cope with minor stresses, to be discussed more thoroughly in another post. Meantime, take a deep breath, relax, and take a mental dive into a pristine blue sea which mirrors a turquoise sky…

So you’re wide awake at an ungodly hour once again…and you’re not even partying! Insomnia has reared its ugly head and you’re suffering big time. You just want to sleep and put your poor, tired body to rest for the night.

If you’re iffy about taking sleeping pills (and I don’t blame you), why not try taking Valerian? It’s a natural sleep aid that’s been approved in plenty of European countries like Germany and Britain. Native to Europe and North America, it grows in all seasons, with the Latin name Valeriana officinalis. Easily recognizable for its pretty pinkish-white flowers, Valerian is harvested when it’s around two years old for the important compounds found in its roots. These compounds: valepotriates, valeric acid, and other volatile oils, are proven to have sedative powers.

And the natural ingredients of a Valerian plant don’t only induce sleep. They actually help relax the mind, as well. Used as a calming agent for centuries, Valerian is also ideal for even stressful situations in the day time, as well as anxiety disorders including diverticulosis and irritable bowel syndrome.

Some notes before taking Valerian for insomnia or stress, however: it may cause drowsiness if taken during the day. Also, breastfeeding or pregnant women shoud avoid taking Valerian. Otherwise, it’s pretty safe to pop a Valerian capsule, pill, or drink an infusion of it as tea, and let the natural ingredients work their way into a calmer state of mind for you.

Those living in a cold and cruel clime would have to agree with me that, no matter how many months of winter one can get used to all their lives, dry skin is still something one would want to scratch out of the list for a Winter Wonderland experience. With Jack Frost nipping at your nose and elsewhere, frost bite is just the tip of the iceberg (pun unintended) for skin-conscious folks. So, short of moving to Florida or elsewhere with a friendlier tropical weather, what can one do to keep dry skin at bay? Read on for DIY tips while taking a bath.

First, you should disabuse yourself of the notion that baths in the winter time ought to involve hot water. Lukewarm water is better, and soaking yourself for about fifteen minutes ought to do it nicely. Immerse yourself longer, and you’ll end up looking like a real prune–all wrinkly and with a not so nice blotchy colored skin. Afterwards, moisturize yourself to retain the water from the bath. Here’s a tip to lock in the moisture faster: towel dry but keep skin damp, and then apply moisturizer or body lotion. This ensures water entrapment better than if you totally dry yourself off.

While we’re on the subject of bathing, remember that a lot of soaps contain lye. It’s what makes soaps cleansing ingredients, and in humid weather, what makes your skin feel refreshed. But this very ingredient can be the bane to already dry, flakey skin. The best bet for winter bathing would be liquid soaps, or those with superfatty substances like cocoa butter, cream, lanolin, or coconut oil. Nix the super-clean, shower-fresh feeling for the meantime. Your skin will thank you for it come the chilliest nights of the year.

And those things that you eat that are proven nutritious for you inside will also prove the same on your outer covering…try oats in the bath. Oatmeal has been around for thousands of years, and no, they weren’t packaged in tins before, either. It was used primarily to soothe skin almost 4,000 years ago, and the wonderful thing is, you can still get the same benefits today in your own tub. Simply pour 2 cups of colloidal (meaning ground to fine powder) oatmeal in your tub of lukewarm water, and then immerse yourself in it. This would be the wet equivalent of cornstarch powder soothing summer rashes. Plus, you can use oatmeal as a loofah substitute. Just tie some colloidal oatmeal in a small hanky, dip it in water, squeeze out the excess, and then use as a washcloth all over your body. Aaaaaah!

The problem of overweight has taken hold of more than half of the adult contingent in America. Of course, almost all of these people wish to trim off a couple of pounds from their body, but most of them want to skip the difficult part of working out and dieting. Hence, it’s not surprising that they opt to use weight loss supplements as a way of shedding off unnecessary pounds. They want someone else to lose weight for them.

Despite the reliance of people on weight loss pills, nobody can deny that the supplements sell very well. Below are some of the factors that people must look into before taking medication to solve their weight issues.

The main objective why people use weight loss is to look attractive and attain a sense of confidence in their physical appearance. It really does help if a person looks in accordance to what society deems as appealing, so losing weight is advantageous in a psychological sense. They won’t have to deal with the prejudice and bias against being called “fat”.

On the other hand, people lose weight for primarily health reasons. Some of these overweight people are obese and need to lose weight fast. Normally, a strict diet and exercise would do them well, but their conditions caused by their obesity needs them to lose weight as fast as possible. Hence, it is best to intake weight loss supplements in this case.

As mentioned above, weight loss pills are easy to use and are relative effective, which is why they are popular and sell pretty well among overweight people. Even a child can pop one in, no problem, but not that they actually should. However, things get a little bit complicated when dealing with the speed and effectiveness of these supplements.

Everybody knows that losing weight requires them to eat and live healthy by consuming the right food and devoting a couple of minutes exercising. But these people have lived life conducive to gaining weight, which is why they are overweight in the first place. They’re probably sneaking off to the store buying a couple of sodas and munching on some greasy chips when they’re supposed to be dedicating their time cutting their food consumption.

Changing one’s lifestyle for the better may be the most difficult thing when it comes to losing weight. Hence, if you’re not up to the challenge of kicking the old habit and changing it for the better, then even the intake of weight loss supplement won’t help you from trimming a couple of inches off your body.

Throughout these past couple of years, green tea has received resurgence in the modern world as a weight-loss brew. This ancient Japanese drink may be all hype, but let’s look at the facts that make green tea such work in losing weight.

According to extensive study as reported by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, green tea is believed to boost up metabolism by 4% within 24 hours after consumption due to the abundance of catechin polyphenols. These polyphenols not only increase the rate at which calories are burned by the body, but also helps in preventing the absorption of fat and regulating glucose levels in the body. With regard to the glucose regulation, green tea debilitates the movement of blood sugar after a full meal, preventing high levels of insulin (responsible for the promotion of fat storage).

Green tea is also healthy way of keeping you away from unnecessary calories. Scientists have discovered that green tea can reduce appetite, after injecting rats with extracts of green tea and seeing them consume food that is 60% less than their regular intake after a week’s worth of regular infection. The effect may be correlated to how green tea regulates blood sugar. Also, green tea works as a capable alternative to coffee. Everybody drinks coffee in order to get their motors running in the morning, but little do they know about the excess calories that they also intake also drinking their favorite brand of frappuccino and what-not. Hence, you can enjoy the vitalizing effects of coffee without the unnecessary junk by drinking green tea regularly.

The amount of green tea consumption ranges from 3-5 cups per day in order to feel its effects. The great thing about this is that people don’t necessary have to follow a strict plan or visit the gym regularly in order to benefit from its weight-loss effects. Just include the consumption of green tea in your regular activities, just like drinking lots of water. Of course, you are mistaken if you think that green tea is the cure for weight problems. It all has something to do with balancing food consumption, so do not rely solely on the green tea. Still, it definitely makes cutting down on weight much easier.

It really isn’t fair.

Not only has Renee Zellweger earned an Oscar nomination for her fleshed-out role (pun unintended) of the chick-lit Bridget Jones diary about one British girl with an obsession for crash diets and finding Mr. Right, but she also got the plum role of Roxie Hart in Chicago a year later. Now, we all have to bear in mind that she needed to gain a lot of weight for the Bridget role, something that required, let’s see…at least 30 more pounds and 4 dress sizes up to be credible. Amazing? Hell, yeah. Even sumo wrestlers rarely achieve something in such a short time.

There were rumors flying around like gnats that Renee had to down “buckets of cream cheese”, boxes of donuts, and delivery pizzas. Don’t we all wish we can have something as great as acting to tack our slovenly eating practices to? But really, for the sake of art or not, sudden weight gain is never attractive. And I am not only speaking about the physical aspect of it (though I should, really), but what it does to us internally. This includes yo-yo dieting, or that nasty habit of going on a crash diet but gaining your poundage back after a few weeks, which is actually hazardous. Studies show that yo-yo dieters are at risk of getting gallstones and higher blood pressure. There’s also the possibility of quickly losing HDL cholesterol; the very things needed to prevent heart diesease. So really, the best thing to do after you’ve shed off those pounds with the diet of your choice would be to make sure they don’t come back full force.

Take Renee Zellweger, for instance. Flushed with the success of her Briton chubby singleton character, she needed to lose weight—fast—for her Roxie Hart role. So just imagine all the cholesterol, flabs, cellulite, and all manner of unwanted, unsightly wobbly things still attached to her Bridget Jones persona that needed purging, firming up, shedding, etc. that would eventually result in this:

Sexy, toned, and confident, Renee Zellweger has transformed her lardness to whistlebait sexiness. How did she do it? In an interview, she claims to have gone organic on most of her food choices, and going full hog (again, pun unintended) on the yoga, swimming, and hiking. And remember, she only had a couple of months allowed to do all this, and to be the dancing, singing, sexy villainess she was on Chicago. And while our blonde star has the funds to submit herself to $2500 weight loss regimen at an expensive facility, again, it’s never a good idea to go crash dieting for whatever reason. It’s best to have some discipline by writing down your caloric consumption daily, tallying them per week, and then marking those that exceeded your target calorie intake and eliminating from the diet altogehter. This is especially recommended for those who don’t seem to have the time for regular trips to the gym.

Renee Zellweger has since maintained her healthy and trimmed bod by hiking on a daily basis on the Hollywood Hills and watching the carbs. And she’s refused to take on a third reprisal of her Bridget Jones role, claiming it might “kill her” to gain so much weight again in so little time. Smart girl.

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