Colors

What Colors Are on Your Plate?
Pick a color, any color. If you want to improve your health one serving at a time, choose vegetables and fruits of varying colors. Vibrant-colored fruits and veggies give you a range of phytonutrients, each with its own health-promoting strengths. Colorful plant foods happen to be incredible sources of soluble and insoluble fiber — both of which are essential for hormone balance and impossible to get from animal products.
Everyone knows that green veggies are great for you, but you don't always have to think green — explore your options. The UCLA Center for Human Nutrition has developed a system for grouping fruits and vegetables by color for easier selection. I've adapted this system into four categories, and I recommend aiming for one fruit or vegetable from each color group (including the greens!) every day.
Orange:  Carrots, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, and mangoes are high in beta-carotene, which may help cells communicate with one another a bit more frequently, therefore increasing the body's ability to avoid cancer. Beta-carotene also plays an important role in the production of progesterone, which contributes to a smooth pregnancy.
Yellow: Research suggests that the vitamin C in citrus foods can be a stress-buster. A German study tested this theory by subjecting people to a high-stress situation (they had to do math problem in front of a bunch of other people — I'd say that's stressful!). Half of those studied were given 1,000 mg of vitamin C and half were not. The people who did not get the vitamin C had elevated levels of cortisol and high blood pressure — surefire signs of stress. Those who'd taken vitamin C felt less stressed. (However, why supplement? Get the real thing and eat your vitamin C!) Foods in the Yellow group include oranges, tangerines (I know that sounds odd, but nutritionally oranges and tangerines are "yellow"), yellow grapefruit, lemons, peaches, and nectarines.
Purple: Berries are powerhouse foods that can help you lose weight and keep your blood sugar low, so definitely include them in your diet. Look out for other purple fruits and vegetables too, including plums, prunes, grapes, and eggplant, which all boast numerous vitamins and minerals.
Red: Red fruits and veggies contain the phytochemical lycopene, a powerful cancer-fighting antioxidant.  Studies showed that men with high blood levels of lycopene had the lowest risk of developing prostate cancer. Tomatoes are one of the richest sources of lycopene. Plus, one cup of tomatoes gives you almost 60 percent of your daily value of vitamin C and almost 8 percent of your daily fiber needs. You can get the health benefits from organic pasta sauce, tomato paste, and ketchup — just make sure there's no high-fructose corn syrup in the products you buy!

Fat Burning Foods?

Are There Foods That Burn Fat?
Q: Are there really foods that burn fat? If so, what are they?
A: Not really, but there are foods that contain fewer calories than the body uses to digest them. Therefore, when you eat these foods (cruciferous veggies, leafy greens, and so forth), you're helping create a calorie deficit.
That said, there are also certain foods that will crank up your metabolism by releasing the right hormones. Protein will release more human growth hormone. Foods with selenium and zinc will support a healthy thyroid. You can boost your metabolic rate by eating clean, whole, fresh foods and avoiding processed foods and chemicals. But there is no food that will magically burn off fat. For that, you have to get off your butt and get moving!

Free Food!

Well, some food is virtually calorie free. Even if you're just eating healthy soup or making a salad, definitely include some chopped cruciferous veggies with your meal! Cabbage, kale, and rutabaga all offer more volume to keep you full longer and have practically zero calories — and you get all the good phytochemicals that come with them.

Stress

Stress Got Your Metabolism Down?
I'm sure you've heard of the fight-or-flight response, and you probably know that it's the way your body reacts to danger or stress. But do you know what the fight-or-flight response is? You guessed it: It has to do with hormones.
When you're faced with a danger, your adrenal glands release three hormones: norepinephrine, epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), and cortisol. Norepinephrine and epinephrine cause several changes to help you survive the danger, including a pause in insulin release so you have lots of blood sugar available for energy, an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, and a suspension of your appetite. After the danger has passed, cortisol tells the body to stop producing norepinephrine and epinephrine and stimulates your appetite again.
This response evolved to help people deal with short-term survival situations, like an attack by a predator. The trouble is, it occurs in response to all stressors, including the deadlines pummeling you at work and the traffic that drives you crazy. When stress is always present, your body can't get rid of the excess cortisol built up in the blood. That cortisol just hangs around, causing lots of trouble: It turns young fat cells into mature fat cells that stick with you forever, and increases your cravings for high-fat, high-carb foods.
When you give in to those cravings, your body releases a cascade of rewarding brain chemicals that can set up an addictive relationship with food — you stress, you eat. If you don't consciously control the pattern, you can become physically and psychologically dependent on that release to manage stress. In fact, people who self-medicate with food tend to have hair-trigger epinephrine reactions and chronic high levels of cortisol.
You can help yourself keep cortisol in check by limiting caffeine intake to 200 milligrams a day; avoiding simple carbs, processed foods, and refined grains; and getting plenty of high-quality protein. It's also crucial that you find stress-relief techniques that work for you. If you can tame your stress response and lower cortisol levels, you'll have a much easier time losing weight.

Alcohol

Help With Happy Hour

Q: How can I responsibly fit alcohol into my diet? I enjoy having a cocktail or a glass of wine at the end of the day, but I don't want to blow my calorie allotment out of the water. Are certain kinds of alcohol "better" than others?
A: There are several answers to these questions. Unfortunately, when you're trying to lose weight, alcohol is the enemy for a number of reasons:
Alcohol is really just a ton of empty calories.
It releases estrogen into your bloodstream, promotes fat storage, and decreases muscle growth.
It weakens your willpower and inhibition — one minute you're at happy hour, the next you're at the all-night diner ordering the bacon cheeseburger with fries and a vanilla shake. I mean, who does that sober? Certainly not you! (At least, not on my watch!)
Now, don't get me wrong — I LOVE my red wine, and I can knock back tequila shots with the best of them. But those things should be enjoyed once you're in maintenance mode, not while you're trying to lose weight. If you must give in to temptation, do so with extreme caution.
If you are going to drink, my recommendation is wine. Although alcohol poses a breast cancer risk, one study showed that women who had an occasional glass of wine (one or less a day) increased their risk by only 7 percent. When you consider that moderate consumption of red wine is also associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, that increased risk might not seem so bad. However, if you have a family history of breast cancer, or other risk factors, talk to your doctor about what's best for you.
Also, try to find organic wine, produced without pesticides or preservatives, such as added sulfites. All wines contain a small amount of naturally occurring sulfites, but many wine manufacturers add more to increase wines' shelf life. Check labels for added sulfites. Once you've started drinking wines without them, you'll never go back — you'll taste the difference right away.
If wine isn't your thing, you might occasionally go with clear alcohols. They're not as good a choice as wine, but I'd rather you choose them than dark-colored alcohols. Have a vodka and soda water with lime, or a tequila shot (careful, don't go nuts with these!). Be creative. But ladies: BEWARE the fruity Barbie drinks! Piña coladas, frozen margaritas, apple-pineapple-strawberry-mango-whatevertinis, and so on. They can add up to 1,000 calories each — and only pansies drink that stuff, anyway.
Whatever you do, remember the golden rule: Watch your calories. Count the alcohol you consume in your daily calorie allowance, and try not to have more than one drink a day or four drinks a week.