No-Diet Tip 2: Six Steps to Success

On your lifetime no-diet plan you follow a nutritionally wise eating plan to enable yourself to progressively lose weight until you level off at your desired weight. You won't have to change your diet at that point because you will have already changed and stabilized it.

The following are common but tested techniques that you can work into your no-diet plan to support a lifestyle change in your eating habits:

1. Get rid of fattening foods such as cakes, cookies, potato chips, and other non-essential snack or dessert items, and then don't restock them.

2. Drop one fattening component from your diet each month. Pick the most fattening first (ice cream or cake, for example).

No-Diet Tip for Enlightened Eating

Eat healthy foods and eat more. These are the foods that deliver important nutrients to support all your body functions and that help keep your weight healthy and level.

That's right, you can eat more! Eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and you will be able to eat much more and feel satisfied by doing so. Let's look at one way to make enlightened eating choices.

Compare a cup of pinto beans to a five-ounce steak. The cup gives you 265 calories. The steak is 300 calories. That is a 35 calorie difference. That's a small caloric difference. The beans give 15 grams of protein to the steak's 44. "Oh," you say, "let's go with the steak." Before you rush to your local butcher for that filet, let's zoom in on this issue.

Excited Over Pope’s Condom Comments? Hold the Applause

As Spiderman was once so sagely advised, “With great power comes great responsibility.” I venture out on a limb to suggest that the Pope may have missed this memo, at least when it comes to protecting the reproductive health of his one billion or so followers.

The Catholic Church’s staunch view against the use of birth control was cemented in a 1968 pronouncement and hasn’t budged since. After four decades and the explosion of the AIDS epidemic, condoms got a big old “talk to the hand” again last year during the Pope’s trip to Africa, where he said the contraceptive “aggravates the problems” despite the HIV infection of more than 20 million on the continent.

Pope Clarifies: Condoms a “Lesser Evil”

After a few days of speculation, and perhaps putting some words in the Pope’s mouth, the Vatican’s spokesman has come forward to clarify the Pope’s recent comments on condom use.

The Pope is not condoning homosexual relations, prostitution or condom use just for males. Three out of three of those things are still very, very wrong. The Vatican maintains its castigating eye, but clarifies that when faced with the decision whether to use condoms or transmit/contract HIV, condom use is officially the lesser of those two evils. And this goes equally for men, women, and “transsexuals.” Relieved, aren’t you?

U.S. Flunks Women’s Health

Kids might dread that report card that comes every winter, but a nationwide report card on women’s health doesn’t make officials nearly as anxious as it should.

According to the National Women’s Law Center’s latest report card on state and national health policy, no state got a “satisfactory” (S) grade on the group’s selected health measures, and only Vermont and Massachussetts scored an S-minus. The many “F” states were concentrated in the Southeast, such as Mississippi. The nation as a whole got a big “U” (unsatisfactory), with passing marks in only three key areas:

the percentage of women age 40 and older across the country getting mammograms regularly, the percentage of women visiting the dentist annually and the percentage of women age 50 and older who receive screenings for colorectal cancer.

Women’s Health Care Ignored From the Waist Down

When it comes to health care, who would deny that prevention is preferable to treatment? I’m right there when public health recommendations include tobacco-free living, a reduction in alcohol and drug abuse and healthy eating. So I’m behind the president’s National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council, which he established in June. The council developed a national prevention, health promotion and public health strategy, complete with recommendations [PDF] that “provides an unprecedented opportunity to shift the nation from a focus on sickness and disease to one based on wellness and prevention.”

Why Have Abortion Rates Stopped Dropping?

Abortion rates have generally fallen since the 1980s for a variety of reasons including greater access to contraception and the availability of over-the-counter emergency contraception. But in recent years, according to a new study by the Guttmacher Institute, abortion rates have stalled, raising questions about whether pregnant women have access to a full range of reproductive options and choice.

The study reports:

Nationwide, the number of abortions peaked in 1990, at 1.61 million, and dropped 25 percent, to 1.21 million, by 2005. Similarly, the abortion rate declined 29 percent over the same period, from 27.4 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 to 19.4 per 1,000.