Why we're so fat

8 Reasons Our Waistlines Are Expanding

The government

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In 1998, 29 million people suddenly became overweight without gaining an ounce. That summer, the U.S. government announced new guidelines lowering the threshold of what classifies a person as overweight. Previously, if your body mass index (BMI) was less than 28 for men, or 27 for women, you were considered "normal." Now only BMIs of 25 or below are considered healthy. (BMI is a ratio of weight to height, and is considered an indicator of how much body fat a person has.)

Sources of Vitamin D

9 Good Sources of Disease-Fighter Vitamin D

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Sunlight: A whopping 80 percent or more of the vitamin D we need could come from the sun — if we let it. Sunscreen blocks about 97 percent of our body's vitamin D production, according to Dr. Mark Hyman, founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Mass. But we needn't endanger ourselves to take advantage of the sun's benefits: Fair-skinned people need less than 30 minutes of casual exposure on bright days to meet their daily requirement, while darker-skinned individuals need about two hours, Hyman said.

6 Ways to Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

Ways to Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

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The new food plate unveiled by the Department of Agriculture today (June 2) sends a clear message: eat more fruits and vegetables. Chances are, you've heard this message before. And chances are, you're guilty of not heeding it. But meeting the daily requirement for fruits and vegetables need not be such a struggle.

Here are six easy ways to get more of these important foods into your diet, according to Heather Mangieri, a nutrition consultant and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

Exercise Routine

How to Stick to an Exercise Routine

Many people struggle to adhere to an exercise routine. Researchers are beginning to unravel what makes us more likely to stick to a workout regime and what strategies we can employ to boost our willpower.

A key is having the confidence that you can do it, a new study shows. The researchers call this type of focused confidence "self-efficacy."

"You can apply the concept of self-efficacy to every single health behavior you can think of, because in many ways that really is what gets us through the day, gets us through the tough times," said Edward McAuley, a University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor who led the research. "People who are more efficacious tend to approach more challenging tasks, work harder and stick with it even in the face of early failures."

Radiation Exposure

Human Body Might Adapt to Radiation Exposure

Doctors who are regularly exposed to X-ray radiation may undergo changes in their cells that protect them from the radiation they encounter, a new study suggests.

These physicians have higher levels of a particular antioxidant called glutathione inside their red blood cells than physicians who don't use X-rays regularly, the study showed. In addition, some of these cells may be better able to self-destruct, which would be protective if they turned cancerous.

However, it's still not clear whether these changes will be beneficial in the long run, or reduce the physicians' cancer risk, said study researcher Dr. Gian Luigi Russo, a senior research scientist at the National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa, Italy. Instead, these alterations might be early indicators of a disease, Russo said.

Fighting Aging?

Fighting Aging? Skip the Botox and Go for the Face Cream

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People might like you more if you don't have surgery or get injections to look younger, a new study suggests.

The results show that study participants felt more warmth toward a woman, and said she was less vain, if they were told she fought the signs of aging by staying out of the sun or using face cream than if they were told she had used the cosmetic drug Botox or had a face-lift.

"This is important because it shows that despite the emphasis on looking younger in society, there are possible negative social consequences to fighting the signs of aging," using more extreme methods, said study researcher Alison Chasteen, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto.