Participants were brought into a lab ostensibly to help with an experiment on movie viewing, with each volunteer paired up with another person who was a "confederate" working with the researchers - unbeknownst to the volunteer. Half the time, the confederate was a thin size-0 woman and the other half the time, it was the same woman wearing a fat suit that made her appear to be a size 16.

Each pair was offered a snack of granola or M&M's and the confederate always went first and took a big helping of the snack. When she was thin, the participants heaped their plates too, taking even more food than people did when they were in the room alone with no one influencing them. When the confederate was obese, the volunteers took a smaller amount of food, though still more than they did when they were alone.

"Although participants in the low-carbohydrate group lost more weight at 12 months, they regained more weight during the next 24 months," says the study, written by Marion L. Vetter, MD, RD of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in the "Annals of Internal Medicine."

"In contrast, participants in the low-fat group maintained their weight loss." The study took a group of 132 people, weighing an average of 289 pounds each, and put them on either a low-carb or a low-fat diet for one year, but checking their progress over a three-year period.

It is not your average diet. Usually it happens that fad diets come and go. But this program uses a simple formula to encourage portion control, healthy eating habits, and reasonable weight loss.

You lose weight without obsessing over calories counts. This is one of that makes your journey an easy one. Are you ready to lose weight the proven way with Biggest Loser?

Some 285 million people around the world already have the disease which annually kills more people than any war and is the leading cause of blindness, heart attack, stroke, kidney failure and the amputation of limbs.

What is new is the idea of shifting from a doctor-centred approach to a self-management focus if we are to get a handle on this disease. Because unlike, say, pneumonia which may be treated by a doctor's prescription, Type 2 Diabetes is not going to be cured by any magic pill. You may be prescribed insulin and directed to a particular diet, but these are not cures.

But with a little creativity in presentation, a healthy portion can look and feel like a satisfying feast. One easy trick is to avoid serving small amounts of food on large plates. Instead, serve meals on smaller plates that make healthy portions appear larger.

Another way to trick your brain is to heap healthy whole grains and vegetables on the plate before adding any of the protein or main course. This gives the feeling of an oversized serving without all the fat and calories. You also can borrow a trick from restaurants. Stack and arrange foods in a way that gives them height and suggests greater volume.

“Don’t mistake setbacks with failure.” So, here are a few ways “cheating” on your diet can actually be a refreshing and powerful strategy to support successful weight control.Order dessert first This strategy helps you plan the rest of your meal around the sinfully rich dessert you really crave.

OK, the waiter may think you’re weird asking to see the dessert menu first, but you need information on your destination before you can map out the meal. So, if you know you’ve just got to have the chocolate cheesecake or coconut cake with pineapple ice cream, then you will make sure not to start with the fried calamari appetizer or the creamy New England clam chowder. Save yourself for your true love, dessert.

This is important because cerebrovascular disease not only leads to an increased risk of stroke, it also leads to an increased risk of dementia (which in its early stages is often called mild cognitive impairment, or MCI for short).

This additional beneficial effect of eating the mediterranean way (lots of fresh vegetables, healthy oils (such as olive oil), fish, nuts, and fruit) has been suspected, but never shown to be a fact. For the first time, a recent study seems to have done just that.