With all those unhealthy treats around this time of year, temptation seems to be everywhere — from grandma’s cookies to your aunt’s egg nog to that tasty finger-food at your neighbor’s annual holiday party. But what if the secret to not overindulging wasn’t based on will power or self control, but rather a simple trick of the mind? It may seem like this type of Jedi-like behavior is right out of the Star Wars series, but research says that your brain can be a powerful ally in losing weight — if you use it the right way.

For many people who are trying to lose weight, visualizing yourself eating a not-so-healthy treat seems more like torture than a weight-loss strategy, but according to new research, scientists have found that imagining yourself eating a certain food may actually help you reduce your consumption of that food by decreasing your appetite for it. Talk about fascinating!

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Tune in this Thursday, November 18 to The Doctors to learn how to eat, drink and be healthy this Thanksgiving. Special guest Chef Devin Alexander, of the new Biggest Loser Dessert Cookbook, will share her healthy Thanksgiving feast.

The country’s most beloved holiday does not have to a gorge fest that derails your healthy intentions and expands your waistline. The Doctors show you how to prepare for a healthy holiday season beginning with Thanksgiving.

Get delicious recipes to cut fat and calories from traditional Thanksgiving fare. And, learn about The Doctors three tips to prevent overeating.
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Margaret Cho recounted her experience on Dancing With the Stars in a recent blog post. She wrote about body image and how it affected her dancing. Margaret “felt clumsy and awkward among the svelte, swanlike figures of Jennifer and Brandi and Audrina.”

She reports that practicing was much less nerve racking than the weekly competition. During practice, she was able to focus on her body a bit more and was able to achieve true beauty in her dance. She did get distracted by constantly seeing herself in the mirror, something she’s not entirely comfortable with or used to but she was able to dance past it.
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Most of us probably have the regular cup or two of coffee or tea in the morning to wake up and get raring to go for the day. I know each morning I look forward to my cup of hot green tea and sometimes even have a cup in the afternoon as a pick-me-up. On the weekends, I get a nonfat soy latte as a treat.

There’s a lot of research out there on caffeine- some of it good and some of it not so good. For example, caffeine has been shown to have a positive effect on sports performance. Caffeine increases the power output of muscles by releasing calcium, which basically helps you go longer and faster. Caffeine also helps you feel less tired, so, in a race, you just keep going and going. That cup of joe has also been shown to improve mental alertness and may help ward off a number of diseases including Alzheimer’s, cirrhosis and colon cancer.
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This isn’t the first time that someone has suggested that you not eat in front of the television. Generally the reasoning is that you will pay more attention to how much you are eating when you are not focused on your favorite show. The BBC is reporting recent research that suggests that the background noise of the television actually diminishes how much you taste the foods you are eating. The lead author on the study, Andy Woods, explained that they wanted to try to understand why airline food is notoriously bad. I had always figured it was a cost-cutting and logistics issue, but maybe not.

Experiment participants were asked to rate the overall flavor, sweetness, saltiness, and crunchiness of foods while blindfolded and wearing headphones. The headphones of the control group played no sound, while the experimental group heard white noise, like what you would hear on an airplane or with a fan nearby. The louder the white noise was, the less sweetness or saltiness the participants reported; however, they did report more crunchiness as noise increased.
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