Sure, portion size and exercise are important factors for losing the extra kilos, but psychologists say that dieters should pay attention to the role emotions play in weight gain and loss if they hope to succeed.

The survey, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, asked more than 1,300 licensed psychologists how they dealt with clients” weight and weight loss challenges.

When asked which strategies were essential to losing weight and keeping it off, psychologists cited “understanding and managing the behaviors and emotions related to weight management” as essential for addressing weight loss with their clients (44 percent).

Survey respondents also cited “emotional eating” (43 percent) as a barrier to weight loss, and included “maintaining a regular exercise schedule” (43 percent) and “making proper food choices in general” (28 percent) as keys to shedding pounds. In general, gaining self-control over behaviors and emotions related to eating were both key, indicating that the two go together.

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If you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to eat better, you are in for luck, as a new report suggests that Weight Watchers and the government-developed DASH diet are the best for boosting health and losing weight.

According to the magazine’s health and wellness editor, Angela Haupt, in its third annual “Best Diets” report, US News and World Report ranks 29 popular diets on their impact and user-friendliness, ABC News reported.

Weight Watchers topped the list for weight loss and being easy to follow, while the DASH diet — designed to lower blood pressure — earned top marks for healthfulness and preventing and managing diabetes. It also earned the “best diet overall” title for a third year.

Haupt said that it was designed to treat hypertension but it’s also effective for weight loss, adding that it’s a smart, sensible plan that’s safe and nutritious and helps control diabetes in addition to supporting heart health.

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Losing weight is one of the top resolutions made each year, yet only 20 percent of people are able to achieve successful weight-loss and maintenance.

Now, Jessica Bartfield, MD, internal medicine who specializes in nutrition and weight management at the Loyola Center for Metabolic Surgery and Bariatric Care, has revealed the top four reasons why many dieters fail to lose weight.

Firstly, she said, that most people underestimated the amount of calories that they consumed per day. Food eaten outside their home tended to be much larger portion sizes and much higher in calories.

Next, she said, that typically people needed to cut 500 calories per day to lose 1 pound per week, which was very difficult to achieve through exercise alone, so it required about 60 minutes or more of vigorous activity every day.

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Insufficient sleep is one of the outcrops of a fast and furious lifestyle. We talk enormously about changing our eating and exercising enough, but somehow sleeping habits are not so much talked about unless it is related to beauty. The present generation is either working or studying or partying late into the night. Consistent lack of sleep over time can lead to diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiac diseases, depression and obesity. Therefore medical researchers are now saying that a good night’s sleep should be appreciated as being equally important as exercising and eating well for good health.

The new born slumbers most of the day. As we age, our sleep requirements reduce. The healthy sleep norm is about 8 hours for an adult and a bit over 9 hours for children.

Why is sleep so important?

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Activities like smoking, having a couple of drinks, eating red meat and watching television any time of year can each knock at least 30 minutes off your life expectancy for every day you indulge, according to a study.

In contrast, each day of sticking to just one alcoholic drink, eating plenty of fruit and vegetables, and exercising can be expected to add up to two hours to your life, it stated.

Professor David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge, wanted to find a simple way of communicating the impact of our behaviours on expected length of life.

He suggests using the concept of ageing faster or slower, by expressing the daily effect of lifestyle habits as “microlives” (half hours of life expectancy).

A half hour of adult life expectancy can be termed a microlife as it is loosely equivalent to one millionth of life after age 35, he explained.

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If your New Year’s resolution is to live a healthier life, it might be best to ditch that diet because a bit of extra weight could actually help you live longer, researchers say.

According to an extensive research, men and women who are slightly plump have longer lives than those who are slimmer.

Analysis of the results of almost 100 studies revealed that those who were of normal weight were likely to die sooner than those who were slightly overweight, News.com.au reported.

However, those who were any bigger than this were around a third more likely to die during the months or years they were being studied than those of normal weight.

For the latest study, US government researchers read 91 previous research papers on the topic from around the world, involving millions of men and women.

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People who profess to be spiritual, are more likely to suffer from a host of mental challenges, a study has revealed.

The study found that spiritual people suffered problems including abnormal eating conditions, drug abuse, anxiety disorder, phobias and neurosis, the Daily Mail reported.

These people were also more likely than others to be taking medicines for problems regarding mental health.

Professor Michael King, from University College London, and his fellow researchers’ study was based on a survey of 7,403 randomly selected men and women in England who were questioned about their spiritual and religious beliefs, and mental state.

Of the participants, 35 percent described themselves as “religious,” meaning that they attended a church, mosque, synagogue or temple.

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Our body warns us when we’re stressed out.

Ignoring them can cost our life because chronic stress increases risk for a host of health problems, including high blood pressure, heart attacks, stroke and depression, to name a few.

Experts have revealed eight sneaky symptoms of stress that we might mistakenly chalk up to some other health problem or brush off as nothing to worry about, Huffingtonpost reported.

The first is weird and/or recurring dreams.

“Unfortunately, the stress we deal with during the day tends to follow us to bed at night and plays out in our dreams,” Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, author of Dream On It – Unlock Your Dreams, Change Your Life, wrote for DoctorOz.com.

Maybe you don’t realize you’re burning the candle at both ends until that dream comes back where you miss your bus or your house is on fire, two of the five most common stress dreams, according to Loewenberg.

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Obesity may develop when we eat too much, as a result of chronically high insulin levels, not the other way around.

This is the conclusion of a mouse study, which challenges the widespread view that rising insulin is a secondary consequence of obesity and insulin resistance.

The new study helps to solve this chicken-or-the-egg dilemma by showing that animals with persistently lower insulin stay trim even as they indulge themselves on a high-fat, all-you-can-eat buffet.

The findings come as some of the first direct evidence in mammals that circulating insulin itself drives obesity, the researchers said.

The results are also consistent with clinical studies showing that long-term insulin use by people with diabetes tends to come with weight gain, said James Johnson of the University of British Columbia.

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While hungover Indians reach for refreshing, electrolyte-rich coconut water to cure their post-bender misery, poached duck embryo and dried bull’s penis are some popular remedies around the world.

Here are a few hangover remedy traditions from drinking cultures around the world, according to the New York Daily News.

Filipino partiers calm a queasy stomach with a delicacy known as balut, a poached duck embryo, beak often included.

A popular remedy in the Western US is the Prairie Oyster, which is a drink made from Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt and pepper, and a whole raw egg. Diehards add a shot of vodka. It”s also widely known that hungover cowboys soothed their aching heads with a freshly brewed tea made from rabbit droppings, dubbed pellet tea.

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