The Dangers of Detox Diets

Janelle Brown of Self describes the dangers of Detox Diets in this article. Here are the highlights:

• Detoxes are bad if taken to extremes.
• Detoxing is not an effective way to drop pounds for good.
• A healthy "green" living diet should not be turned into a starving eating disorder.
• Detox done the Hollywood way can cause dehydration and can compromise the immune system.
• Repeated detoxing can lead to yo-yo dieting.
• Raw food diets without guidance on how to get all nutrients can lead to malnutrition on other health problems.
• Using supplements with no FDA approval during a Detox can magnify all the problems a detox can cause.

Kelly Clarkson Photo Retouched to Make Her 'Look Her Best'

Self Magazine is starting to come clean.

Lucy Danziger, editor-in-chief of the women's health magazine, is speaking out in defense of "retouching" the 27-year-old singer in order to make her "look her personal best" on the September issue.

Calling Clarkson "the picture of confidence," Danzinger writes, "I think this photo is the truest we have ever put out there on the newsstand."

If Kelly Clarkson is the closest they been to real in recent issues. Then people like Denise Richards were totally being sold as a lie saying Dancing can make you look that good while eating pizza.

Kelly Clarkson Key to Losing Weight

The Texas native admits she still eats chicken-fried steak, but also has days when she prefers salads. "I love healthy stuff and junk an equal amount," she tells the magazine. "Whatever I'm craving, I go for it."

Her secret to losing weight, in fact, is to not go on a diet: "For me, it's the times when I'm not paying attention that I end up losing weight. But I'm never trying to lose weight – or gain it. I'm just being!"

I wish more starlets were like Kelly Clarkson. She comes from a place of balance. For here she is not diet obsessed. She is just trying to live a balance life and sometimes that means weight lost, weight maintenance, or weight gain.

11 ways to change your weight fate

Improve your eating
1. Write off weight. To lower BMI, keep a food journal.
2. Befriend a farmer. Shop at a farmers' market to balance your diet
3. Eat heartily in the A.M. Make your morning meal the main one. Aim for up to 500 calories.
4. Start cookin'. Prepare at least half of your meals at home.
5. Snack smarter. Stop smoking and munch right to help your body stay at a healthy weight.
6. Limit yourself to one glass daily of soda or alcohol. Replacing caloric beverages with water can help you drop up to 20 pounds in a year.

Get your brain on board
1. Chill. Relaxing daily can lower the stress hormones that spur overeating, a study from Harvard Medical School in Boston finds.
2. Swap reruns for sleep. Replace half an hour of television watching with additional shut-eye daily and you'll wake up with lower levels of hunger hormones.
3. Pace yourself. Slow down at meals so your mind has time to register fullness before you go back for seconds.

Move more
1. Hoof it. Can't change your commute from car to foot? Achieve a similar effect by delivering news to coworkers in person, not via email.
2. Firm up. Muscle burns calories even as you rest, but women older than age 35 lose about a quarter pound of muscle per year.