Here are a couple articles I found recently and thought I'd share...

To slim down, first you need to bulk up

Adding lean muscle tissue to your body can help you consume more calories and burn more fat. Here, John Berardi, co-author of Scrawny to Brawny, offers some essential tips to help you develop lean muscle:

Boost calorie burning with interval training. For example, try this 20-minute workout: Do 30 seconds of running, biking, rowing, skipping or stair-climbing as hard as you can. Then follow this with 90 seconds of slow walking, biking, rowing or stair-climbing. Repeat 10 times.

Increase lean protein intake. If you're exercising regularly (especially strength training), make sure you get some lean protein with every meal. Shoot for about 1 gram per pound of body weight.

Build muscle to speed up your metabolism. Most average folks lose about 5 to 10 pounds of lean muscle mass per decade, which correlates to a 5% to 10% drop in metabolism. To prevent this drop, build back some of the lean mass by hitting the gym and training your muscles with resistance. If you gain back 5 to 10 pounds of muscle, you can rev up your resting metabolic rate by more than 100 calories each day.


Calcium foods are vital

To keep bones strong as you grow older, should you eat foods that are high in calcium or take calcium pills?

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine says postmenopausal women who got most of their calcium from their diet or from diet and supplements had better bones than women who got most of their calcium from pills alone.

Probable reason: Calcium in food is better absorbed.

Women who averaged 830mg of calcium daily in food had higher bone density in their spines and hips than women who averaged 1,030mg of calcium daily from pills. Women who ate high-calcium foods and took pills averaged 1,620mg and had the highest bone density.