Web site helps you visualize your weight loss goals
Virtual weight loss
How would you look 10 pounds thinner? Twenty pounds?
You can get a peek at WeightView.com, a free digital weight loss tool. Upload a photo of yourself, tell how many pounds you'd like to use and WeightView will send you an image of yourself at your goal weight. You can hang it on your refrigerator (instead of that motivational photo of Jennifer Aniston or Matthew McConaughey) or even use it as a screen saver.
Or, as the folks at WeightView say, "Why use a photo of a celebrity as your body aspiration, when you can use yourself as your own?"
WeightView also has a new Facebook community and application at apps.facebook.com/weightview where you can track your weight-loss progress and buddy up with others for support.
Egging you on
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And if you're trying to lose weight, you might want to consider eating an egg - or egg whites, if you are watching your cholesterol intake.
Recent research found that people on low-calorie diets who ate two eggs for breakfast lost 65 percent more weight and had a 61 percent greater reduction in BMI than those who ate a bagel with the same number of calories, Prevention magazine reports.
It's probably because the high-protein eggs kept them from getting too hungry before their next meal. But there is a catch: One egg yolk has 210 mg of cholesterol. The American Heart Association recommends keeping cholesterol intake to less than 300 mg a day (or 200 mg for heart patients), so scramble up just one egg yolk and two egg whites.
Not so fast
Fast foods tend to be high in fat, but a fast-food meal doesn't necessarily have more calories than a meal at a sit-down restaurant. In fact, the restaurant meal typically has more calories because the portions are bigger, say researchers at Purdue University.
However, people who eat a restaurant meal are more likely to cut back on food consumption the rest of the day, researchers found.
"It is misleading to focus concerns about the nutritional effects of increased food away from home primarily on fast food," said Purdue's James K. Binkley. "All food away from home should be considered."