"Health" foods that aren't

Chicken Caesar Salad
Caesar salads suffer the consequences of two natural disasters: a flood of fatty dressing and a ton of Parmesan cheese and croutons. Even a Caesar side salad before a meal can cost you up to 500 calories. Instead, make a grilled chicken breast tossed in a bed of mixed greens tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette. The vinaigrette is a vast improvement over the Caesar dressing, and the absence of Parmesan means that you'll save nearly an entire meal's worth of calories by making this simple swap.

Granola Bar
Ever wonder what keeps a granola bar together? They use mostly high-fructose corn syrup as their glue, which in turns quickly raises blood sugar and cancels out any of the potential benefits you might otherwise get from the oats. By switching over to good old-fashioned cheese and crackers, you swap out sugar and calories for protein and fiber.

Dried Fruit
The dehydration process sucks most of the volume from the fruit, allowing you to eat cups of the stuff, and 600 calories later, still not feel any fuller. More troubling, though, is the fact that companies like Sun-Maid and Ocean Spray almost invariably add a ton of sugar to the fruit, making Craisins closer to candy than Mother Nature’s original intention. Stick to the real stuff.

Fruit Smoothies
Many fruit smoothies contain added sugars and high-fructose corn syrup, which means they're more milkshake than smoothie. The key here really is in the name: A 100% fruit smoothie made with plain yogurt instead of ice cream or sherbert will contain nearly half the calories and significantly less sugar, plus it will provide all of the vitamin and antioxidant capacity that a smoothie is supposed to have.

Stick to your workout

A recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics found that only 19% of the population regularly engages in high levels of physical activity. That's defined as three intense 20-minute workouts per week.

Another 63%, about the same percentage as that of Americans who are overweight, believe that exercising would make them healthier, leaner, and less stressed, but they don't do it. At the root of this problem is motivation, or the lack thereof.

Here are some tips to help you stick to your workout:

Tie Exercise to Your Health
Check your cholesterol. Then set a goal of lowering your LDL cholesterol by 20 points and increasing your HDL cholesterol by 5 points. You'll decrease your risk of heart disease while providing yourself with a very important, concrete goal. Ask your doctor to write a prescription for new blood work in a month. You'll just have to go to the lab, and the doctor will call you with the results.

Switch Your Training Partners
Working out with a partner who will hold you accountable for showing up at the gym works well for a while. But the more familiar you are with the partner, the easier it becomes to back out of workout plans. Close friends and family members don't always make the best training partners because they may allow you to slack off or cancel workouts. To keep this from happening, find a new, less forgiving workout partner every few months.

Compete
Find a sport or event that you enjoy and train to compete in it. It adds a greater meaning to each workout.

Strike an Agreement with Your Mate and Kids
The rule: You get 1 hour to yourself every day, provided that you use it for exercise and reciprocate the favor. So there's no pressure to do household chores, play marathon games of any board game. Since it's for your health, it's a contract they can't refuse. And that will allow you to exercise guilt-free while acting as a role model for your children.

Don't Do What You Hate
Whenever you start to dread your workout, do what appeals to you instead. If you dislike going to a gym, try working out at home. If you despise the treadmill, then jump rope, lift weights, or find a basketball court. Bottom line: If you're sick of your routine, find a new one.

Plan Your Workouts in Advance
At the start of each month, schedule all of your workouts at once, and cross them off as they're completed. For an average month, you might try for a total of 16 workouts. If any are left undone at the end of the month, tack them on to the following month. And make sure you have a back up plan for bad weather and unscheduled meetings. You're about 40 percent more likely to work out if you have strategies to help you overcome these obstacles.

Tips to create a sleep sanctuary

Buy a New Mattress
Don't even try to comparison shop. Every mattress in every store has a different name. And every owner of every mattress shop says that the mattresses in his shop are different and better than every other mattress shop on the planet. The truth is that the right mattress for you is the one that you try in your home for 30 days. Find a mattress shop that offers that option, pick out the mattress that you and your partner think is the most comfortable, make sure it has a guarantee, and buy it. Don't worry about coils and foam and luxury toppers. The mattress that allows you to sink into a deep, natural sleep and wake up in the morning without aches and pains is the one you want.

Chill Before Bed
Lower the temperature of your bedroom before you climb into bed. Lower temperatures signal your body it's time to sleep.

Soak
A hot bath also helps you lower your body's temperature. Yeah, your temperature goes up while you're in the bath, but your body's response to the heat will be to drop your temperature way down low.

Schedule a Massage
Massage interrupts the neurohormones connected with sleeplessness and almost manually imposes sleep on you. If you can't afford a massage, go to a massage school. You can get one there for $15.

Shut the drapes
You sleep better in the dark. If your eyelids flutter open as you move from one stage of sleep to another, even streetlights or a full moon can wake you up.

Ditch the night lights
You can also get rid of the clock radios with lighted displays. It turns out your brain can misinterpret even such dim lights and wonder if it should wake you up. Dark inhibits the brain's biological clock. It tells your brain it's time to sleep.

Pull on socks
There's no solid explanation for it, but studies have found that wearing socks to bed helps you sleep. It may be that warming your feet and legs allows your internal body temperature to drop.

Foods that fight cancer

Spice it up
The right spice can make the meal and block the tumor. That's what University of Illinois researchers discovered when they pitted turmeric against 19 different strains of H. pylori, the ulcer-inducing bacterium that's been linked to colon and gastric cancers. In every case, turmeric took the teeth out of H. pylori.

Turmeric didn't necessarily reduce the bacterial load, what it did was reduce the chronic inflammation caused by H. pylori. And it's this inflammation that has been associated with the development of cancer.

The best way to increase your intake of turmeric? Eat Indian food. Specifically, try dining on curry, which is rich in turmeric and often contains additional cancer suppresors, such as garlic and onions.

Another option: Slather extra mustard on all your sandwiches, the bright yellow variety is loaded with turmeric.


Fish
A recently completed 12-year Harvard study of nearly 48,000 men determined that those who ate fish more than three times a week were 40 percent less likely to develop advanced prostate cancer than those who hit the surf only twice a month. It's those amazing omega-3s again, though they don't deserve all the credit. Fish also contains vitamin A and vitamin D, which may help prevent prostate cancer.

Salmon, mackerel, and herring have the best balance of omega-3s, vitamin A, and vitamin D. Don't wait until the weekend to go fishing. Space your fish consumption out over the week so you consume a steady supply of these compounds.


Add Zest to Life
Fresh squeezed OJ contains all the health benefits of oranges except one: the cancer protection in the peel. People who regularly consume citrus zest reduce their risk of squamous-cell skin cancer by 30 percent, according to a recent University of Arizona study. Even lab rats live longer on the stuff; animal studies suggest that citrus zest can actually shrink existing tumors.

Turns out the oils in the peels of oranges, lemons, and grapefruit contain powerful compounds that stimulate the body's production of a detoxifying enzyme.

Grate the colored portion of the peel and add the pile of zest to soups, salads, and salsa, or sprinkle it on chicken or fish.


White Tea
Green tea grabs all the headlines as a tumor-taming brew, but the white kind surpasses it at preventing colon cancer. When researchers at Oregon State University's Linus Pauling Institute tested the two teas' abilities to block colon-polyp growth, the white beverage was about 10 percent more effective. In fact, it stopped polyps as effectively as sulindac, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug.

While prescription anti-inflammatories can cause internal bleeding and ulcers, "tea is pretty much guaranteed not to cause side effects. The study used Exotica white tea, 3 cups a day may be enough to cut your cancer risk.


Berries
Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles have confirmed that cranberries contain a trove of tumor-blocking compounds, including phenolic acids, glycosides, and anthocyanins.

These phytochemicals are effective at preventing cancer down below—in the colon and prostate—as well as up top—on the head and neck. They force cancer cells to die or they inhibit their unregulated growth.

To hit your daily cran quota, down a small glass of cranberry juice (the type that lists at least 27 percent juice on the label) at breakfast and snack on Craisins (sweetened dried cranberries) throughout the day.

Live a stress-free life

Sneak a workout in
Eveyone has those days: no exercise time. Compensate with active bursts throughout the day. Drop and give yourself 20 pushups at intervals throughout the day. Do that 10 times throughout the day and you'll be surprised how many you've done at the end of the day. Or even mix it up with crunches, squats, whatever.

Adopt a simple philosophy
Some of life's biggest stressors are the remains of self-destructive things you do. Don't hold grudges, do things right, and don't cheat to get them done. Don't owe anybody anything and if you do pay it off as soon as possible.

Keep away from avoidable disasters
Whether it's in business or your personal life, if you've got positive, like-minded people around you, then your systems are in place.

Know what you don't know
Fighting to prove you know something when you don't wastes time and sucks energy. The amount of time you can save just by saying you don't know is huge. We're brought up to be know-it-alls. I don't know can be perceived as a weakness, but instead see it as a sign of intelligence. Then you can experience something so you do know. How else will you ever learn something new?

Always schedule pleasure in your day
We all know pleasure is good for you. You might be saying, well that's obvious. But wait a minute: How much pleasure do you really allow yourself to have every day? There are some people who are so strict that they become a slave to their healthy lifestyle, a slave to working out, a slave to eating just the right foods. You have to be more flexible and enjoy having things. You don't go to a friend's barbecue and say, I'm sticking to salad. Who's going to enjoy that? Lighten up! It's your lifestyle, not your life.

Overcome the reasons you don't workout

New Relationship
Sure, you already have the girl, but adventurous activities can help you keep her. Buy a pair of mountain bikes or a pair of tennis rackets. Sharing new experiences mimics the brain's response to falling in love.

Major injury
Set a goal. You'll allow yourself to let go of your immediate disappointment and look beyond the injury. Depending on your rehab progression, aim for a mile swim or a 5-mile hike 6 months from the date of your injury.

New job
Identify the office athlete. You're more likely to maintain a fitness routine if the responsibility doesn't rest entirely on you. Approach the lunch-hour runner or the after-work gym fiend and adopt aspects of his routine until you develop one of your own.

New Baby
Cut your fitness program in half. Do shorter, more intense exercises, and you'll be less likely to quit working out altogether. Swap your hour long jog for half an hour of sprints, for example, or condense your lifting routine with supersets.

New Neighborhood
Join a new gym before you pack the moving van. You'll create a subconscious commitment to exercise regardless of geography. Use internet search engines ahead of time to chart new running routes and to search for a fitness center by zip code.

Vacation
Enjoy your time off. A couple weeks of rest gives your muscles and mind a chance to heal and restore. Afterward, ease back into your workout. Cut your number of sets and reduce the weight you lift by 20 percent for a week before blasting back to your routine.

Avoid sleeping with stress

Finding yourself wide awake after a few hours of sleep or waking often at night is call parasomnia. It's much more common than people think according to a 2005 National Sleep Foundation poll, which found that 75% of adults frequently have symptoms of a sleep problem.

The root of most sleep problems is STRESS. If you go to bed worried you're probably going to wake up in the middle of the night, only to go through the next day feeling like hell. We're overwhelming our body's ability to relax. Our nervous system is built for a sprint, but we're living in a stress marathon every day.

After an action packed day our brains need some time to wind down. Take 15 minutes to sit quietly, meditate, pray, or just listen to yourself breathing and allow your mind to slow down. Establish a routine before bed and you'll notice the repetition will condition your brain and body for sleep.

Nap time

Napping works wonders for a stressed brain. Napping 20 to 30 minutes gives you enough restorative power to perform better and does not interfere with falling asleep at night. The key is to nap early and keep it short.

Foods to Increase Your Brain Power

Your brain depends on key nutrients to keep itself balanced. Instead of downing a gallon of ice cream or drowning yourself in beer next time you're feeling down, give your body the fuel it needs.

Whatever your mood is, here are some snacks that will provide your brain the boost to get you through even the toughest situations without sacrificing your waistline.

Anxiety
The Meal: Half a grilled chicken wrap, hold the mayo

Here's why: Eating between 4 to 5 ounces of protein helps your brain create dopamine and norepinephrine, neurochemicals that keep you alert.


Stress
The Meal: A handful of sesame seeds or almonds

Here's why: Stress hormones can deplete your body's supply of magnesium, reducing your stress coping abilities and increasing your risk of developing high blood pressure.


Restlessness
The Meal: Nonfat popcorn half an hour before you go to bed

Here's why: The carbs will induce your body to create serotonin, a neurochemical that makes you feel relaxed, but make sure it's fat free or the fat will slow the process of boosting serotonin levels.


Depression
The Meal: Grilled salmon or sushi for dinner

Here's why: People who eat more fish are 31% less like to suffer from depression, according to a recent study in Finland. Also skip out on sweet, simple carbs because the sugar crash can deepen depression.


Confusion
The Meal: Pineapple chunks or a cup of berries

Here's why: Your brain consumes tons of oxygen, allowing oxidants to do heavy damage there. Antioxidants found in colorful fruits and veggies help pick off free radicals that wear away at your memory.