If you’re one of the 80 kajillion people with ‘lose weight’ at the top of their New Year’s resolutions list, chances are you need a little assistance in working your way to a slimmer waistline. For ThisNexter GirlPaint, the website SparkPeople is “one of the BEST, if not the best, places for fitness, health and weight loss resources.” There you can have a diet plan customized just for you - completely free of charge. And, GirlPaint adds, “the food tracker is the best I’ve seen, not to mention the ‘Exercise of the Day’ feature that tells you step-by-step how to properly perform an exercise and shows you a video to ensure you are using proper form.”

GirlPaint’s also a fan of Ladies Home Journal’s Health Guides & Fitness How-To Workouts, another online resource that offers “great, FREE tools to help you get (and stay) healthy, lose weight, track your food intake and much, much more.” Through the site, you’ll find advice on sticking to your diet, personal stories for inspiration, and articles on topics such as the link between hormone replacement therapy and weight gain.

...continued: Weight-loss wonders

For those in need of a diet makeover, ThisNext is beginning to form a mini-library of healthy-eating books suited to many a food-focused goal. Whether you’re looking to drop a jeans size or incorporate more organic food into your meals, revamping your routine with the help of a new read can be one of the simplest ways to do good for your body, mind, and even the planet.

Take Jeff Cox’s Organic Cook’s Bible: How to Select and Cook the Best Ingredients on the Market, recommended by our recently interviewed shopcaster Fanny The Fairy. With 250 recipes using more than 150 organic ingredients, the book encourages readers to support Earth-friendly forms of food production and become more connected to what they’re consuming (“I love this book because i think it’s important to know the food you eat,” says Fanny in her shopcast).

With a similar emphasis on exploring organic foods – especially of the locally, sustainably grown variety – Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry’s Grub presents healthy eating as a form of activism. In her review at Fit Fare, Sara Maamouri dubs the book “a fired-up call to action” that teaches readers “exactly what they can do to change their food future,” while at the same time serving as “a reminder that ultimately, food should be a fun, creative part of our lives, and not simply a bland and boring fuel.”

...continued: Healthy reads

I can’t be trusted with a jar of peanut butter. If there’s ever some Skippy or Peter Pan or Smuckers left around the apartment, I somehow end up spooning the stuff straight from the jar once crazy deadlines start hitting. (A while back I even went through a phase of keeping a jar of Jif inside my desk – baaaaaaad idea.) Luckily I’ve discovered the next best thing for when I’m craving peanut buttery goodness: Nature Valley Peanut Butter Crunchy Granola Bars, which are much harder to O.D. on, given their convenient little 180-calorie-per-serving packages.

In fact, practically all the products in the Nature Valley line appear to be the perfect solution for when you need a snacky little pick-me-up but don’t want to resort to junk food. ThisNext member Yumi Chen goes for Nature Valley Healthy Heart Granola Bars, which “have just the right amount of crunch and gooeyness.” Daily Mogs’ blogger, meanwhile, loves Nature Valley’s Sweet and Salty Nut Bars because they’re “more like a candy bar to me which tricks my mind and delights my palate.”

...continued: ThisNext's guide to healthy snackage

Diabetes Mine - a “gold mine of straight talk and encouragement for people living with diabetes” - truly lives up to its tagline. Maintained by “inquisitive, perhaps-just-a-tad overly analytical new diabetic” Amy Tenderich, the blog performs the very valuable service of keeping readers informed with health news, product reviews, and interviews - such as this recent Q & A with diabetes expert and Guide to Healthy Restaurant Eating author Hope Warshaw. An excerpt:

DM: It’s hard to know what to eat with diabetes. What is the first thing you’d tell a person newly diagnosed with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes about eating?

HW: More than likely a person with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes has some weight to trim off. Therefore, I want to help them find some easy ways to accomplish this goal. One of the first things I talk about is not what people eat, but what they drink. Are you downing a Caramel Macchiato every day? Are you guzzling Gatorade? People can drink 1,000 calories in beverages through the course of the day without realizing it, so that’s an A-Number-1 priority. People can have weight melting off them just by changing what they drink.

Not all free weights are created equal, says Jim Foster at In Pursuit of Fitness. In a post at his “personal fitness journal,” Jim cautions that the weight indicated on barbell plates might not always match the actual heaviness of the plate itself. His advice on finding an accurate weight?

“The next time you find those weights just a bit heavy, try getting on the scales with and without the plate, and compare the difference. You might be surprised.”

At her healthy weight-loss blog, Ediet.com’s “master motivator” Julia Griggs Havey posts news and advice to help readers make big strides toward shedding pounds. Here, the Awaken the Diet Within talks about the importance of writing down your weight-loss goals:

“If you have your daily plan written down, with the details of all you want to get done today, including the snacks you will carry with you and your meals chosen for the day, you will be much more inclined to avoid the unhealthy foods and actions that may throw you off track. If you can plan the activities, the errands, and all the tasks you will be doing each day from the time you get up ‘til the time you go to bed, you will be keeping yourself busy on accomplishing what’s on your daily planner, rather than spending time worrying about your weight or other things that may not be productive.”

Carb Attack tracks one blogger’s journey through the 30-in-30 low carb diet challenge, an effort to shed 30 pounds in 30 weeks. Also working to manage her diabetes, Kathryn has sought some help from Dr. Richard K. Bernstein’s book The Diabetes Diet (a low-carb solution to keeping diabetes in check). The results thus far:

“So Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetic Diet seems to be working! If you are diabetic or insulin resistant, I recommend it. It’s extremely low carb, so many people have a hard time staying on it. But I find that the good results I get make me willing to stick with it pretty well so far.”

“If I’m not liplocked to a bottle of Perrier I’m drowning at the bottom of a teapot,” says Fear And Loathing In The Kitchen blogger Tracy (a “navel-gazer self-absorbed enough to believe that her ongoing battle with weight, body image, and food addictions and obsessions makes for interesting reading,” according to her bio). “I have no idea what it’s like to actually feel thirsty.” We know the feeling: Drowning in reminders to get that 64-ounces-a-day, my fingertips are never too far from a 1.5-liter bottle of Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water.

Determined to find out whether we really truly require so much hydration, Tracy turned to Dartmouth researcher and kidney specialist Heinz Valtin, M.D. Her discovery:

“According to Valtin, when you start to get low on fluid your body will compensate by bringing fluid back out of your kidneys and by slowing the loss of water through your skin. Thirst begins when the concentration of blood (an accurate indicator of our state of hydration) has risen by less than two percent, whereas most experts would define dehydration as beginning when that concentration has risen by at least five percent - so you can absolutely rely on your thirst to tell you when to have a drink. He also found that coffee, tea etc are perfectly fine to drink and do count toward your fluid intake. And he found no studies at all showing that the magic 8 cups of water are necessary for health.”

Like Carrie Bradshaw, I’m a girl who generally only uses her oven for storage. But I’m much tempted by a baking-required recipe recently discovered via (W)EIGHT (a weight-loss blog, natch). It’s for homemade vegan granola bars, and includes so much wholesome goodness: honey and peanut butter and cinnamon and nutmeg, plus your choice of naturally yummy stuff like coconut, raisins, dried apples, and chopped nuts. I might end up concocting some variety with about a 1,000 calories per bar, but hey.

We love Zara at weight-maintenance blog Yo Heave Ho not just for her fluency in piratespeak, but for her willingness to share new discoveries such as the very adorable, cantaloupe-sized Pure Heart watermelon from Dulcinea Farms. Says Zara:

“I learned that the little individual Dulcinea watermelons are sweeter and easier to manage than the original full-size seedless watermelon I butchered. And they are so darn cute! But the best thing that has come out of this is that when I want something crunchy and/or sweet, mindless munching on watermelon does much less damage than, say, 0reos. I wish I could say I liked watermelon better than 0reos, but who am I kidding here? It’s just a purposeful choice to substitute something healthy and so far, it’s helping.”

Looking to lose weight? Spend more time in the sack.

OK, so it’s not that simple - but Connie Bennett at SUGAR SHOCK! Blog has just discovered a new study finding that women who sleep five or fewer hours a night may be a third more likely to gain weight than those who get adequate sleep.

We’re off to catch some ZZZs now…

At A Stomach, Not a Waist Basket, blogger Paige keeps track of her effort to drop from 192.8 pounds (where she began in May 2004) to her goal weight of 125-130 (about 20 more to go from her current weight). Here, Paige shares a list of 9 snacks under 200 calories, including:

-8 ounces nonfat yogurt with 1/2 cup mixed berries
-1 medium pear with 1 ounce Brie
-3/4 cup Post Bran Flakes with 1/2 cup skim milk
-1 Nature Valley Chewy Trail Mix Bar

If you’re strength-training to shed pounds, don’t make the all-too-common mistake of lifting lighter weights for more repetitions. At Realgoalgetter, fitness nutritionist and trainer Lynn VanDyke recommends picking up some heavier weights and going for low-to-medium repetition ranges. Here, VanDyke’s checklist of what to include in your fat-melting strength-training regimen:

- An exercise for each major muscle
- Between 3-4 sets for each exercise
- 8-10 reps per set
- A correct weight for each exercise
- 1-2 minute rest periods between sets

One kind of rollercoaster-riding we wouldn’t recommend this summer: the potentially health-hazardous up-and-down of yo-yo dieting. At CalorieLab Calorie Counter News - where top experts weigh in on shedding pounds safely - dietitian Susan McQuillan suggests snubbing fad diets and focusing on weight maintenance. Here, she breaks down an easy formula for determining your ideal calorie intake:

“Simply multiply your weight times ten. Try to stick to within 100-200 calories of that amount, most days of the week, and that should help you stabilize your weight if you don’t make any changes to your exercise routine. For example, if you weigh 160 pounds, try to stick to a 1,600 to 1,800 calorie diet. Weigh yourself weekly, if necessary, to make sure you’re not gaining, and try to stay at your current weight until you’re ready to start losing.”

Like June Dent at DelightVitality, ThisNext isn’t totally down with getting weight-loss advice through whatever fad diet book everyone’s freaking out over at the moment. So we’re psyched that June directed us to SparkPeople, a free online service that lets you “track calories, fat, protein and carbs, matching up what you ate against what you really should be eating in order to squeeze into your slinky dress.” We’re most curious about the feature that helps you figure out if you’re working out enough to shed pounds. And while SparkPeople may - as June points out - end up “indulging my obsession with recording every morsel I consume,” we’re sure the site will prove valuable to anyone looking to get slimmer this swimsuit season.