On Nutrition Data, you'll find detailed nutrition information, plus unique analysis tools that tell you more about how foods affect your health and make it easier to choose healthy foods.

Welcome to Weighthacker, a site that provides smart strategies and tips for geeks who want to lose weight and get healthier.

To change your weight permanently, you need to change your life. Your weight can "creep up" on you, without you realising it, a little at a time.

Here’s a checklist of small changes that pay off in big rewards: a slimmer trimmer waistline.

Make one change today.

If you’re overweight and unmotivated to change your life drastically, just make a tiny change.

You’re not alone. There are more overweight people today than ever before, as a percentage of our population and in sheer numbers. I’ve been overweight (65 pounds heavier than I am today) and I know that it doesn’t feel good.

I also know that when we’re overweight, we often go into denial. We think it’s not a problem, or that we’re not that unhealthy, or that it’s something we can fix later. Or more likely, we try hard not to think about it. But it’s there, at the back of our minds if nowhere else, making us feel bad about ourselves and our lives, influencing the rest of what we do.

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I am certainly no fitness expert. But got in way better shape and lost 26 pounds last winter/spring (certainly one of the best things I have ever done for myself). Since I posted about that in June I have only gained back two pounds. So things are going pretty well and I don’t think that I have been in better shape than I am now since I was a kid.

So today I’d like to share six of my own favorite tips – mostly focused on the food you eat – for losing weight. This is just based on my own personal experience and what has worked for me. But since this blog has a pretty big readership I think that this article or at least some of the advice in it will be a good fit for quite a few people.

The advice in this article is simple. But it can have a big effect. If you actually apply it consistently.

For years I had a mild-to-medium case of insomnia, often staying up late watching crappy television and eating junk food because I couldn’t fall asleep, no matter how tired I was.

It is miserable. You walk through the day like a zombie, unable to function properly. You desperately try to sleep but nothing works. Sleeping pills leave you feeling drugged out.

Breathe.

Breathing can transform your life.

If you feel stressed out and overwhelmed, breathe. It will calm you and release the tensions.

If you are worried about something coming up, or caught up in something that already happened, breathe. It will bring you back to the present.

If you are discouraged and have forgotten your purpose in life, breathe. It will remind you about how precious life is, and that each breath in this life is a gift you need to appreciate. Make the most of this gift.

Our mind, body, and spirit are intimately connected.

If you neglect one part, many times another will start to fail.

If you start to consume junk, your thoughts will be junk. If your thoughts become junk, you might start creating it too.

Here’s what I like to do, when one part of the triad fails. In the long run it’s always better to slow down and regain health, rather than to ignore the problem until later.

While we're always using our brains, we're not necessarily doing much to keep them in good shape. Here are the top ten sites and tools to train your brain and exercise your mental muscles.

I’m in the best shape in my life.
I’m incredibly happy to say that. For years (as many of you know) I was in terrible health — I was overweight and sedentary and addicted to junk food and a smoker and overworked.
Today after more than five years of living healthy I am about 65 pounds lighter. I’m leaner than I’ve been since probably high school with the same pants size as I had in high school (32) — while being much stronger than I was back then. More importantly I am fitter: I can run and play sports and hike and do activities of all kinds better than ever before.
How have I achieved all of this? Slow change. I’ve done no fad diets or quick weight loss. I’ve done nothing extreme. Everything is about living healthier and eating whole foods and being active most days. And about enjoying the journey.
Today I thought I’d share a bit about how I eat. It’s not meant to be copied exactly but to inform others trying to make a similar journey. Next week I’ll talk about my exercise.

Following our Paleolithic ancestors, our Neolithic ancestors lost an average of six inches in height. Most people now have those last 5-10 pounds that seem impossible lose. The causes for both, surprisingly, may be the same.

Robb Wolf can explain. Robb, a former research biochemist, has functioned as a review editor for the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism and is co-owner of NorCal Strength & Conditioning, one of the Men’s Health “top 30 gyms in America.” He’s also a former California State Powerlifting Champion with a competition 565 lb. squat, 345 lb. bench, 565 lb. deadlift…

I have known of Robb for several years, but I only met him through a friend a week ago. Several weeks earlier, that same friend had sent me a copy of Robb’s book, The Paleo Solution, which I ended up devouring in a few sittings. The chapters on digestion and improving digestion where particularly fascinating to me, and, for that reason, this post is a book excerpt. It details a particular problem and specific solutions. Enjoy.

Today I set out from my house and walked. And walked.

I didn’t have a specific destination in mind, but wanted to walk a bit before finding a quiet place to write. So I walked, out of the town where I live and along the tropical, white-sand coastline, to the next town over.

Ever wonder what it looks like?

Health Canada recently put together a website called “My Food Guide” that tells you what you are supposed to eat.

So here’s how it works

You enter your gender and your age and it tells you how much of each food group you are supposed to eat.

As wild animals with massive brains and the ability to respond to sensory stimuli with more than just base instinctual behavior, we humans have the tendency to overthink pretty much, well, everything.

Lose It! is the most complete and streamlined weight loss application for the iPhone and iPod T

He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities. – Benjamin Franklin

Quieting the mind to focus on the important can be difficult. It’s so easy to get caught up in what we “should be” doing, rather than focusing on what brings us joy and happiness.

There are a number of foods and supplements that are known to thin the blood. These include foods with high amounts of aspirin like substances called salicylates, omega-3 fatty acids, foods with natural antibiotic properties and vitamin E supplements.

Tired of eating the same thing for breakfast? Here are two ways to incorporate super foods quinoa and flax into your morning meal, whether you like it hot or cold.

Quinoa, sometimes called a whole grain, is actually the seed of a green leafy plant that is still cultivated in South America. Revered by the ancient Aztecs as a source of energy, chefs and home cooks now admire it for its mild taste and creamy texture. Quinoa is as easy to cook as rice, but it's also a complete protein (translation: it has all 9 essential amino acids) and is very high in manganese (which helps keep bones strong), niacin and fiber.

Flax is another nutritional heavy hitter and has a nutty flavor reminiscent of toasted coconut. The seeds range in color from golden to brown to reddish brown. Heavy with omega-3 fatty acids, just two tablespoons of flax a day can give you almost all of your daily needs – but remember to purchase them ground, or grind your own, since the whole seed can pass through your system undigested. Ground flax can be sprinkled on top of or stirred into many of your favorite recipes.

If you can believe this, many Geeks are in bad shape. Many of you geeks might have this little voice in the backs of your heads saying you should be working out, but it is promptly silenced by the din of a good game of Half-Life or your blasting MP3's. However, should you decide to listen to that voice, as I did, here's a listing of the things I have found to be most important to my ongoing endeavor. I've been working out consistently now for over 6 months, so something's going right.

In 2003, I said that the only time you’d ever find me running was if Godzilla were chasing me. Then, a year later, I ran a trail marathon in November 2004. Marathons are officially 26.2 miles. Since that point, I’ve falling quite off that wagon, due to work pressures, and some lifestyle changes, and I couldn’t run a single mile in a row. However, that’s about to change.

I am more couch potato than runner. But not long ago, I decided to get myself into shape to run in the New York City Marathon, on Nov. 1, just 152 days from now. (Not that I’m counting.)

Here are 10 different ideas or techniques to help you pursue a lifetime of health and fitness.

Two common barriers for people who want to exercise and get in shape are a lack of time and money needed for fitness.
Who has the time to go to the gym, or buy expensive equipment, or take long bike rides?
Well, if those are the things stopping you, you’re in luck.
It takes no equipment to get a great workout and get in shape, and with one or two pieces of simple equipment, you can turn that great workout into a fantastic one, you magnificent beast, you.

Take heart, there is a truly effective strategy to lose belly fat, but you may have to loosen up some old preconceptions. Please note that in this article I am specifically talking about fat loss as opposed to overall weight loss (fat, muscle & water).

I would bet that I’m not alone here in wanting to get leaner and fitter — it’s something that many of us would like to do, and many of us are striving for all the time.
We don’t want to lose weight, although that’s often stated as the goal — we want to get leaner. We want to shed the fat and leave just the lean muscle (some of us want to increase the muscle, others just want to lose the fat). We want to be healthy and in good shape and able to be physically active.

It may seem a bit much to devote a whole chapter of the definitive guide to salad to bread but what can I say. I LOVE them.

Whoever first thought of tearing bread into chunks and tossing them with the salad dressing, rather than serving a slice on the side is a genius. Mystery bread salad inventor we owe you a big THANKYOU.

The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutritional science and — ahem — journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding what is, after all, the most elemental question an omnivore confronts.

Not everything we eat gets absorbed and used by our body. Our cooking and digestive process destroys and degrades nutrients before our body can use it. The amount of nutrients that is actually absorbed in our system is called bioavailability. Understanding how different foods react with one another can help you get more nutrients from your meal. Here are 5 ways to get more from the food we eat.

Add lemon to your tea
Adding a squirt of lemon to green tea can increase the amount of catechins your body will absorb. Catechins are one of the many health-promoting qualities in green tea, but is unstable in environments like our intestines. Less than 20 percent remain after digestion. Adding lemon juice caused 80 percent of the catechins to remain.

Have OJ with your meal
Iron found in red meat (haem iron) is readily absorbed in the body. However, the iron found in other sources, like spinach, contains non-haem iron which is not as readily absorbed. Having something like orange juice (or anything with vitamin C) with your meal changes the non-haem iron to heam iron. It's important to know too that the phenols found in tea and coffee, and calcium in dairy products inhibit iron absorption, and shouldn't be consumed in conjunction with iron rich foods (this includes eggs).

Cook your tomatoes and carrots
Tomatoes have lycopene, a great antioxidant that is much better absorbed when cooked. Fresh tomatoes have a total antioxidant potential of about 80. But boil them, and the antioxidant potential goes up five or six-fold. This happens because the lycopene in the raw tomato has been transformed to trans-lycopene in the cooked version, and trans-lycopene is much more readily absorbed. The downside is that vitamin C is degraded when cooked. Additionally, cooking carrots makes the beta-carotene, another form of antioxidant, more available as well.

Put some fat in your salad
Fat-soluble nutrients like lycopene, beta carotene, and lutein needs a little help getting absorbed into your system, specifically from fat. This applies the most to salads because the vegetables aren't prepared with anything except the dressing, and a study shows that the best dressing to use is actually not the fat-free kind. This doesn't mean drenching your salad in fatty dressing, but making sure to use natural and healthy fats so it doesn't become a counterproductive strategy. Adding healthy fats like avocado and olive oil into your salad will raise the nutrient levels effectively without raising your weight or cholesterol levels at the same time.

Black pepper isn't just for seasoning
Sprinkling a dash of black pepper does more than please your taste buds. The piperine in it increases the bioavailability of many substances through a bunch of cool processes, which results in more nutrients reaching your cells.  Not only that, but did you know piperine can act as an anti-depressant, pain reliever, and antacid, boost brain functioning, and help you sleep?! Can someone please pass the pepper STAT!

This is a post from our sister blog, Healthy Theory. Visit Healthy Theory for more health tips and news.