Eat Chick Peas for Weight Loss

Chick peas, also known as garbanzo beans, are together with the whole legume family, one of the best foods you can eat for weight loss.

One cup of garbanzo beans will provide you with 50% of the fiber amount recommended for daily consumption. The high fiber prevents blood sugar levels from rising too rapidly after a meal, this being especially good for anyone with diabetes, insulin resistance or hypoglycemia.

Garbanzo beans are an excellent source of the trace mineral molybdenum which helps detoxify sulfites. Sulfites are a preservative that is often added to prepared foods such as deli salads and salad bars.

The insoluble fiber found in garbanzo beans helps to make your stools bigger and to prevent constipation, irritable bowel syndrome and diverticulosis.

A cup of garbanzo beans has amazing nutritional benefits. Of the daily recommended values of key nutrients, it provides 70% of folate, 50% of fiber, 29% of protein, 26% of iron, 84% of magnamese and 164% of molybdenum. All for 269 calories.

See the excellent overview of chick pea health benefits here.

See the recipe for the Garbanzo bean salad above here.

The Alli Diet Pill Marketing Blitz

You'll be hearing all about Alli everywhere soon. This diet pill is going to be advertised heavily this year. Over 150 million dollars will be spent in just one year to promote this drug. That would buy quite a few celebrity endorsements. It's the first diet pill drug to be approved for sale over the counter, without needing a prescription.

See the New York Times article about the Alli advertising promotion by GlaxoSmithKline.

Alli works by preventing the body from absorbing some of the fat one eats. This could have some very uncomfortable side effects if one eats too many fats.

The Best Diet: Volumetrics

Consumer Reports has just released the results of their research on diets and diet books. They have awarded Volumetrics the prize for being the best diet plan.

The Volumetrics Eating Planwas developed by Barbara Rolls, a professor in the department of nutritional sciences at The Pennsylvania State University.

The main point behind the Volumetrics Eating Plan is to focus your eating on foods that have fewer calories per bite, or low 'energy density' foods. The idea is to eat lots and lots of fruits and vegetables.

It's been shown that people who eat a low energy diet end up consuming several hundred fewer calories per day than those with a high density diet. Yet they eat a much greater amount of food in total. It's all about feeling full on fewer calories.

In the picture here, the first small dish of macaroni and cheese has more calories than the second much larger portion. The second dish replaces regular pasta with whole-wheat pasta, uses less cheese and butter and piles on the vegetables.

Ricki Lake Loses 125 Pounds

Ricki Lake has lost over 125 pounds. She was on "The View" last week and was offered the cover of US Weekly Magazine within 48 hours of being on the show.

She's lost the weight without any help from any kind of weight loss surgery. She was partially motivated to lose the weight in order to make her documentary about home birth in the tub. She's outspoken about the negative aspects of hospital births and the pressure for women to have cesareans. Cesarean births make up about 40% of births in many hospitals.

She'll be making a cameo appearance in John Travolta's "Hairspray" remake this summer.

Story Source: Ricki Lake Wows the Glossies

Gluten Free Diets are Trendy

Gluten-free diets are becoming increasingly popular.

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. A lot of people consider it a culprit in all sorts of ailments ranging from upset stomachs, arthritis, depresion, acne, infertility and gas. Avoiding all foods with flour products is becoming an increasingly popular dieting trend.

See a good article about this in the New York Times today.

Kate Moss Clothing on eBay

The Kate Moss for Topshop clothing collection was just launched last week in the U.K. and Paris and quickly sold out. It looks like a lot of people who bought the items were thinking of profiting by reselling them on eBay. There are now over 3,500 items on auction at eBay.

The Kate Moss collection is available in British sizes 6 to 16. This converts to US sizes 2 to 12. Notice thee is no size zero available, which is a good sign for not encouraging sickly skinniness. On the other hand, anyone who is American size 14 or higher is out of luck if they want to wear the Kate Moss label.

See the very few size 16's, (American size 12's) being auctioned at eBay today.

See a video of the launch of the Kate Moss Topshop clothing collection here. It's a very skinny Kate Moss in a long red dress briefly flipping her hair in the Topshop storefront window.

Eggs are Better for a Smaller Waist Size

Eating eggs for breakfast instead of bagels is a good idea if you are overweight and want to lose weight. One bagel has about the same number of calories as two eggs but a recent study found that women who ate eggs lost significantly more weight than the women who chose bagels instead.

The study also found that waist size dropped 83 percent faster for women on the egg diet. And there were no significant changes in the levels of cholesterol or triglycerides.

This is an interesting finding but keep in mind that the study was funded by the American Egg Board.

The beautiful image above is by independentman