It is tempting to reach for sweet and salty snacks after a long of work but regular noshing can add to weight gain and poor health.

Replacing junk food with with healthy snacks filled with fiber and protein can stem cravings and provide nutritionally dense foods which are beneficial and filling.

Apple cider vinegar has a multitude of uses to keep you healthy.

The best vinegars contain the “mother” or the starter.

Prebiotics support the intestinal flora by providing nutrients and energy to good bacteria in the gut.

Preliminary evidence suggests that prebiotics can play a role in boosting the immune system, improving antibiotic-associated diarrhea, colitis and reducing irritable bowel problems.

1. Digestion and food poisoning. Vinegar contains malic acid, which can help common digestive issues like constipation or acid-reflux. And because it’s a trifecta of antifungal, antibacterial, and antiviral properties, a tablespoon or two in a 8 oz. glass of water may even help with a case of food poisoning.

2. Sleep issues. Many people swear by a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a cup of hot water with honey before bed, citing its sleep-inducing powers and that it promotes a more restful night’s sleep.

3. Diabetes. A 2007 study published in Diabetes Care, showed potential for apple cider vinegar as a tool to lower glucose levels. (Note that it can interfere with diabetes medication, if you are taking them. )

4. High cholesterol. Its high levels of pectin can help regulate blood pressure and lower cholesterol, showed a 2006 study done with rats.

5. Bones and teeth. Apple cider vinegar has the capacity to extract calcium from fruits, vegetables, and meat in your diet, thereby helping strengthen your bones and teeth.

6. Joint pain. Its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties may help provide pain-relief to neck, back, and shoulder joint pain (including arthritis).

7. Detox. High levels of potassium in the vinegar work like a clarifying tonic on the body, helping clear up sinus infections, candida, sore throats, and allergies. Some New Yorkers do a cleanse with it (and clean food) instead of juice.

8. Weight loss. It won’t replace eating well and exercise, but apple cider vinegar may help you feel full longer, and some natural-health experts say its enzymes and soluble fiber can aid in fat metabolism. A study done on mice showed that acetic acid (main component of the vinegar) slowed fat accumulation.

9. Summertime bug bites. It’s an antiseptic that can soothe bug bites and skin allergies almost instantly.

10. Beauty blemishes, burns, and bad hair days. When used as a toner, it helps curbs acne and blemishes with its antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties. Add it to a bath for sunburn relief (about a cup) and rinse your hair with it for instant shine (a few tablespoons).

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Don’t dispair if you are one of millions of dieters who have achieved weight loss success only to gain it all back, then repeat the cycle over and over again year after year.

Yo-yo dieting, as it is called, has been blamed for ruining metabolism and making it impossible for some to achieve real and permanent weight loss, however, a new study finds that this old wisdom may not be true.

The key to success is to keep a food journal and aim for healthy eating and exercise habits.

Weigh yourself weekly and don’t skip meals.

Being accountable to friends, family, doctor or trainers help.

Keeping a food and exercise journal keeps you accountable if only to yourself.

At the end of the study, which lasted a full year, researchers found something that they weren’t expecting: The yo-yo dieters fared just as well as the non-yo-yo dieters. There was no significant difference seen in the effect of diet or exercise, body fat percentage or lean muscle mass gained or lost.
“I was very surprised. People who have a history of weight cycling by definition have problems with lifestyle change for weight loss because they gain the weight back again,” McTiernan says. “I was surprised to find that, while many of them weighed more than the non-cyclers, they did just as well at losing weight with our lifestyle-change weight program as did women who did not have a weight cycling history.”

Any processed foods are a bad thing.

But always having to prepare meals can be difficult for even the most organized of us.

Along with a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains a few healthy shortcuts can make it easy to stay on your regime without falling off the wagon.

Being able to pick up a healthy snack or prepared meal when you’re on the go will help to insure that you can always make a good eating choice wherever you are.

Chiquita Pineapple Bites, Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza and Lucy’s Gluten-Free Ginger Snaps are just three of the 99 choices.

Read the list for all the healthy options.

The FDA has approved Qsymia for use today by those who are obese, with a BMI of 30 or more, or for those who have a BMI of 27 with weight related illness.

The history of weight loss pills has been fraught with law suits due to life threatening side affects and prescription abuse by physicians and patients.

The major problem with weight loss drugs is that they don’t address the underlying causes of weight gain such as the psychological component of over eating and the food itself.

There is wide ranging debate regarding the way certain processed and scientifically engineered foodstuffs react with human physiology and metabolism.

Until we confront these two major issues surrounding food it will be difficult to solve America’s obesity epidemic with a pill.

“Given the literally insatiable appetite of doctors and patients for new drugs as a quick fix for obesity, there is every reason to believe that, if approved, a combination like this, will be used by millions, over long periods of time far beyond its labeling indications. Because of a long list of safety reasons, this drug should not be approved,” the group’s Dr. Sidney Wolfe told the FDA advisory panel in 2010.
Vivus, the company that makes Qsymia, hopes it will be a safer successor to the notorious and now banned “fen-phen” diet cocktail. Fen-phen combined fenfluramine and phentermine — one of the two drugs in Qsymia — but it damaged the heart in some cases and caused a condition in some patients called pulmonary hypertension, which causes fluid to build up in the chest, bringing a feeling of breathlessness.