Laughter, weight loss and sex

Here are some outtakes from some articles I was sent:
7 Reasons Not to Diet
1. Lack of nutrition
Contrary to popular belief, most diets are not healthy and may actually border on malnutrition. Many urge us to do extreme things, forgo our favorite foods or cut major food groups in order to lose weight. Healthy eating requires ALL nutrients (carbs, fats, and protein) and a minimum number of calories in order to maintain health and proper body function.
2. Your body's opposite behaviour
Limiting your eating shocks your body into losing weight, but once it gets over that shock, it adapts. How? By slowing down your metabolism, going into unhealthy physical states or stopping weight loss. So, even if you have the mental willpower to diet forever, your body doesn’t.
3. "Yo-yo"
When you starve yourself to an extreme, you end up craving to an extreme. One day you’re “extremely good,” the next “extremely bad.” You may have heard this called “yo-yo dieting.”
4. Life doesn't support dieting
Diets often require us to change our eating habits in such a way that normal life becomes difficult. Eating out, going over friends’ houses for dinner, special occasions all become “problems.” These things, however, are the very things that make life worth living! Most of us are busy and can’t always shop, cook, and calorie-count the way many diets require.
5. Lack of energy
Dramatically reducing your calorie intake can result in reduced energy levels and fatigue. Instead, it is important to understand which foods provide you with quality nutrition.
6. Quantity vs Quality
Dieting doesn’t really teach you how to eat for the long term. You may be counting calories while eating foods that actually make you hungrier or cause you to crave more.
7. Uni-dimensional
In order to truly lose weight, you have to eat well and be active. As we get older, our metabolisms naturally slow down. The more active you are, the more calories you burn and the higher your metabolism will stay.

Original article

What helps to lose weight though?
Can you laugh your love handles off or shag yourself skinny? It sounds too good to be true. But according to a study about laughter, and a separately-authored book about sex and dieting, the answer is “yes, oh yes!” So what if french fries and ice cream are bad for you…if sex and laughter are good? Nature may not be so cruel after all.
Laughter experts Dr. Lee S. Berk and Dr. Stanley Tan have discovered that laughing helps maximize many functions of various body systems. Berk and his colleagues were the first to establish that laughter helps optimize the hormones in the endocrine system, including decreasing the levels of cortisol and epinephrine, which lead to stress reduction. They have also shown that laughter has a positive effect on modulating components of the immune system.
Their studies have shown that repetitious “mirthful (very happy) laughter,” causes the body to respond in a way similar to moderate physical exercise. Mirthful laughter enhances your mood, decreases stress hormones, enhances immune activity, lowers bad cholesterol and systolic blood pressure, and raises good cholesterol (HDL).
Berk explains, “Laughter causes a wide variety of modulation and that the body’s response to repetitive laughter is similar to the effect of repetitive exercise.”


Much like laughter, there are many health benefits associated with sex – including longer life spans, better cardiovascular health, higher pain tolerances, an improved immune system, and a lower rate of depression.

Aerobically, a half-hour roll in the hay burns approximately 150–250 calories – and even up to 350 calories if you are especially…acrobatic. (Ahem.) This is about the equivalent of briskly walking, running, or lifting weights for thirty minutes. According to Forbes magazine, having sex just twice a week for a year will burn off the equivalent of seven hefty pasta dinners. And that doesn’t even address the muscle-toning that occurs.

In The Ultimate Sex Diet (True Courage Press) author Kerry McCloskey confirms that: sex is a great exercise, and the more exercise you do in general, the better your sex life will be. Researchers at the University of California at San Diego found that three to four one-hour workouts per week helped men achieve steadier, more satisfying sex sessions with their partners. And in a Harvard School of Public Health study, men who worked out vigorously for twenty to thirty minutes several times a week reduced their risk of erection problems by half.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin discovered that women’s genital blood flow after watching an x-rated film was much greater after exercising than it was without the workout. So essentially, the more you exercise, the more sex you have, and the more sex you have, the more exercise you are getting.

Original article