BEST DIET : LOSE WEIGHT WITH BEST TRICK

The trouble with stress is that it seeps into every area of your life — affecting your sleep, mood and the size of your waistline. The interactions between these factors were the subject of a recent study in the International Journal of Obesity, which found that people with high stress and poor sleep were less likely to achieve a 10-lb. weight loss goal.

The study [PDF], led by Dr. Charles Elder of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., involved 472 obese adults (with BMIs between 30 and 50) over age 30; 83% of the participants were women and a quarter were senior citizens over 65. The volunteers were enrolled in a weight-loss program that included attending weekly group counseling sessions, keeping a food diary, exercising at moderate intensity most days of the week (for at least three hours per week), reducing daily consumption by 500 calories and sticking to a low-fat, low-salt diet high in fruits, veggies, whole grains and lean proteins. (More on Time.com: Is Daylight Saving Time Bad for Your Health?)

At the beginning of the study and again six months later, the researchers looked at certain lifestyle measures, like the participants’ stress levels, nightly sleep quality, and depression.

Over the course of the study, 60% of participants lost at least 10 lbs. — the threshold that gained them entry into the second, weight-maintenance phase of the trial (the results of which are not yet available). As expected, researchers found that factors like exercise, keeping a food diary and attending behavioral counseling sessions were highly correlated with successful weight loss. (On average, participants lost nearly 14 lbs.)

But the researchers also found some other influential predictors of success: sleep quality and stress. Participants who reported sleeping less than 6 hours, or more than 8 hours, per night at the start of the study were less likely to meet the 10-lb. weight loss goal, compared with people who slept 6-8 hours. (More on Time.com: Lack of Sleep Linked With Depression, Weight Gain and Even Death)

Stress compounded that association: people who slept too little or too much and reported high levels of stress were only half as likely to make it to the second phase of the study as people who got 6-8 hours of sleep and had low stress. What’s more, weight loss was tied to reductions in stress and depression over time, leading the authors to suggest that for people trying to shed extra pounds, it might be worth focusing on proper sleep and stress reduction too. “[C]linicians and investigators might consider targeting sleep, depression and stress as part of a behavioral weight loss intervention,” the authors concluded.

This isn’t the first time scientists have identified sleep or stress as a culprit in weight gain. At last week’s American Heart Association meeting, researchers from Columbia University released data from a study of 26 healthy men and women, showing that when people are sleep-deprived (4 hours of sleep a night for six nights), they eat significantly more calories than when they’re well rested (9 hours of sleep a night for six nights). In the study, sleep-deprived women ate 329 more calories per day, and men ate 263 more calories — and most of those excess calories came from foods like ice cream and fast food.

It’s thought that disruptions to the sleep cycle stimulate a hormone called ghrelin, which in turn stimulates appetite.

Further, there’s increasing evidence that chronic stress can trigger overeating as a coping behavior. And studies show that high-calorie, fatty foods light up some of the same reward pathways in the brain that drugs do (at least in mice) — in other words, fatty, sugary snacks can become “addictive.” (More on Time.com: Overeating: Is It an Addiction?)

For dieters, the combination of poor sleep and lots of stress can be a serious gut-buster.

In its first ever ranking of 20 popular diets, U.S. News & World Report rated the DASH diet No. 1.

The what, you say? The DASH diet, for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, is designed primarily to lower blood pressure rather than to reduce weight — though it helps do that too. (A study published on Monday, found that teen girls who adhered to the DASH diet gained less weight than other girls over 10 years.) It emphasizes fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean protein and low-fat dairy, and limits high-fat, high-calorie sweets and red meat. It also restricts salt. U.S. News ranked DASH the best overall diet and the best diet for diabetes.

The comprehensive ratings were based on expert reviews of profiles compiled by a U.S. News team, who aggregated data from medical journals, government reports and other sources to create in-depth descriptions of each dietary plan — how it works, how well it works, its risks, etc.

(More on TIME.com: Diet Psych Out: Why ‘Health’ Food Is Less Satisfying, Even If It’s Sinful)

A panel of 22 diet and nutrition experts, including specialists in diabetes and heart disease, then reviewed the profiles and rated each diet’s merits in seven categories:

• short-term weight loss

• long-term weight loss

• how easy it is to follow

• nutritional completeness

• safety

• ability to prevent or manage diabetes

• ability to prevent or manage heart disease

Those scores were then assessed to rank the various plans within five “best” lists: best overall diets, best weight-loss diets, best diabetes diets, best heart-healthy diets and best commercial diet plans.

The best heart-healthy diet was Dean Ornish’s low-fat, vegetarian-friendly plan, which also emphasizes regular exercise and stress-reduction. Weight Watchers topped both the best weight-loss and best commercial plan lists, with Jenny Craig coming in right behind it.

You might recall that another recent diet ranking by another magazine, Consumer Reports, rated the Jenny Craig plan No. 1, ahead of Weight Watchers — to much debate and criticism.

(More on TIME.com: Diet Bake-Off: Jenny Craig Wins, Says Consumer Reports)

So if all the ratings have got you wondering which weight-loss plan is really best, here’s the simplest answer: whichever one you can reasonably stick with. Regardless of its rating, a diet won’t work if you can’t stick with it.

That may be where the new U.S. News findings could come in especially handy. The magazine exhaustively assessed 20 diets, including popular plans like South Beach and the Zone, as well as vegan, vegetarian and raw-food regimens, and the full ratings published online contain thorough information about each plan, laying out how closely each one adheres to the federal government’s dietary guidelines, for example, and giving recipes, sample menus and helpful do’s and don’ts.

(More on TIME.com: Overcoming Obesity)

If you’re looking to lose a few pounds or just adopt a healthier eating plan, reading through U.S. News‘s clearinghouse of info might take you a long way toward settling on the best diet for you.

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow — if you want to stick to your diet. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which found that upbeat, forward-looking feelings like hopefulness led to better dietary choices, while positive emotions like happiness weren’t necessarily conducive to self-control.

“Past research is a bit conflicting in terms of how positive emotion affects food consumption,” says lead author Kelly Haws, assistant professor of marketing at Texas A&M University. “We found that the more future-focused positive emotions were leading people to consume less.”

Research on unhealthy eating behavior has typically focused on negative emotions like fear, anxiety and hopelessness because people tend to use sweet or salty foods to alleviate distress. However, as anyone who has ever been to a party knows, celebrations of good times and positive feelings are also occasions for indulgence.

Haws and her colleagues wanted to study what types of positive emotions lead to unhealthy behaviors — like letting yourself slip and have “just one” as a reward for being good — and which foster greater restraint.

MORE: What to Do When You Fall Off the Wagon

In the first experiment, 59 college students, most of whom were at a healthy weight, wrote essays aimed at making them feel either happy or hopeful. One group was asked to write about three happy experiences and to revisit the feelings they evoked. The other group wrote about and recalled the feelings associated with three experiences that made them most hopeful about the future.

While they wrote the essays, the students were given M&Ms and raisins to snack on. Both groups ate about the same amount of raisins, but those who were primed to feel happy ate 44% more M&Ms than those who were focused on their hope for the future.

“That’s huge,” says Haws. “You would not expect the effect to be that large.”

MORE: 8 ‘Xtreme’ Meals: Report Identifies Worst Menu Choices

Another experiment involving 191 undergrads found that students who generally tended to be more focused on the past were less influenced by the experience of hopefulness when it came to choosing between healthy and unhealthy snacks.

“Most people sort of implicitly understand that negative emotions can lead them to engage in unhealthy behavior,” says Haws. “With positive emotions, there’s not as much awareness about how they can have a negative effect on consumption as well.”

Recognizing this influence may help to counteract it. “A shift in the focus [toward] positive emotions [related to the] future is more conducive to achieving your goals and having more healthy behavior,” Haws says.

The study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer for TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

December is a very ill-advised month in which to embark on an exercise program. You might even call it sadistic, with temptations lurking everywhere — from my first-grader’s ethnic brunch (two groaning buffet tables with three kinds of homemade scones, noodle kugels galore and cookies begging to be sampled) to various holiday soirees (hello, peppermint white-chocolate bark!).

From Thanksgiving weekend to New Year’s Day, the holiday season is all about food. But when I launched a month-long fitness boot camp on Dec. 5, I kissed carbs goodbye. I am kind of regretting that right about now.

I am a starch nut. I’ll eat cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and pasta for dinner. I’m not much of a meat eater, but I consume plenty of healthy proteins, namely beans. But what good are beans without a bed of rice or a blanket of toasted tortilla? How am I to savor Indian food without the naan?

For three weeks now, I haven’t eaten a slice of bread or a strand of spaghetti. Even harder to resist, for me, are cookies and cakes. I love to bake; making banana chocolate chip muffins with my kids is as much a part of the rhythm of family life as brushing teeth.

I haven’t been doing much baking lately. Instead, I’ve been loading up on protein, eating more red meat in the past few weeks than has crossed my plate in months. I’m pairing up egg whites and black beans for breakfast and snacking on nuts and carrots. I’ve learned to cook my own green lentil daal.

And still — still! — I’ve lost just 1 lb. For two weeks now, the scale has held steady at 131. It’s enough to make a girl channel her frustration into a double chocolate doughnut.

MORE: Study: Cutting Carbs Two Days a Week Is Better than Full-Time Dieting

Family, friends and readers who’ve been following my weekly updates have talked me off the ledge. @workoutmommy, a kettlebell queen, tweeted: “hang in there! Sometimes the body is slow to adapt & might need another week or so to catch up! :)”

I didn’t register for boot camp primarily to lose weight, actually. I’d wanted to feel healthier and work vigorous exercise into my day. That part has been wildly successful; after a few weeks of sprints and abs-crunches on Bosu balls, I did 12 push-ups on Wednesday, which is 11 more than I could have done a month ago. But I’d hoped that weight loss would be a fringe benefit. I had visions of the pounds speedily melting off until I approached 120 lbs., about what I weighed when I got married 10 years ago.

Perhaps my expectations were unrealistic. The boot camp guru didn’t help either when he announced that participants had collectively lost 100 pounds. I know he was trying to inspire, but the news just left me wondering if I’m destined to be Rubenesque forever.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the scale is broken.

Bonnie Rochman is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @brochman. You can also continue the discussion on TIME‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Sugar poses enough health risks that it should be considered a controlled substance just like alcohol and tobacco, contend a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

In an opinion piece called “The Toxic Truth About Sugar” that was published Feb. 1 in the journal Nature, Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis argue that it’s a misnomer to consider sugar just “empty calories.” They write: “There is nothing empty about these calories. A growing body of scientific evidence is showing that fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases. A little is not a problem, but a lot kills — slowly.”

Almost everyone’s heard of — or personally experienced — the proverbial sugar high, so perhaps the comparison between sugar and alcohol or tobacco shouldn’t come as a surprise. But it’s doubtful that Americans will look favorably upon regulating their favorite vice. We’re a nation that’s sweet on sugar: the average U.S. adult downs 22 teaspoons of sugar a day, according to the American Heart Association, and surveys have found that teens swallow 34 teaspoons.

To counter our consumption, the authors advocate taxing sugary foods and controlling sales to kids under 17. Already, 17% of U.S. children and teens are obese, and across the world the sugar intake has tripled in the past 50 years. The increase has helped create a global obesity pandemic that contributes to 35 million annual deaths worldwide from noninfectious diseases including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

“There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates,” Lustig, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) program at UCSF, said in a statement. “But sugar is toxic beyond its calories.”

The food industry tries to imply that “a calorie is a calorie,” says Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. “But this and other research suggests there is something different about sugar,” says Brownell.

(MORE: Ads Featuring Overweight Children Make Some Experts Uncomfortable)

The UCSF report emphasizes the metabolic effects of sugar. Excess sugar can alter metabolism, raise blood pressure, skew the signaling of hormones and damage the liver — outcomes that sound suspiciously similar to what can happen after a person drinks too much alcohol. Schmidt, co-chair of UCSF’s Community Engagement and Health Policy program, noted on CNN: “When you think about it, this actually makes a lot of sense. Alcohol, after all, is simply the distillation of sugar. Where does vodka come from? Sugar.”

But there are also other areas of impact that researchers have investigated: the effect of sugar on the brain and how liquid calories are interpreted differently by the body than solids. Research has suggested that sugar activates the same reward pathways in the brain as traditional drugs of abuse like morphine or heroin. No one is claiming the effect of sugar is quite that potent, but, says Brownell, “it helps confirm what people tell you anecdotally, that they crave sugar and have withdrawal symptoms when they stop eating it.”

There’s also something particularly insidious about sugary beverages. “When calories come in liquids, the body doesn’t feel as full,” says Brownell. “People are getting more of their calories than ever before from sugared beverages.”

Other countries, including France, Greece and Denmark, levy soda taxes, and the concept is being considered in at least 20 U.S. cities and states. Last summer, Philadelphia came close to passing a 2-cents-per-ounce soda tax. The Rudd Center has been a vocal proponent of a more modest 1-cent-per-ounce tax. But at least one study, from 2010, has raised doubts that soda taxes would result in significant weight loss: apparently people who are determined to eat — and drink — unhealthily will find ways to do it.

(MORE: Banning Sugared Drinks in Schools Doesn’t Lower Student Consumption)

Ultimately, regulating sugar will prove particularly tricky because it transcends health concerns; sugar, for so many people, is love. A plate of cut-up celery just doesn’t pack the same emotional punch as a tin of homemade chocolate chip cookies, which is why I took my daughter for a cake pop and not an apple as an after-school treat today. We don’t do that regularly — it’s the first time this school year, actually — and that’s what made it special. As a society, could we ever reach the point where we’d think apples — not cake on a stick — are something to get excited over? Says Brindis, one of the report’s authors and director of UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies: “We recognize that there are cultural and celebratory aspects of sugar. Changing these patterns is very complicated.”

For inroads to be made, say the authors in their statement, people have to be better educated about the hazards of sugar and agree that something’s got to change:

Many of the interventions that have reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption can be models for addressing the sugar problem, such as levying special sales taxes, controlling access, and tightening licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell high sugar products in schools and workplaces.

“We’re not talking prohibition,” Schmidt said. “We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives. We’re talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.”

Sugar poses enough health risks that it should be considered a controlled substance just like alcohol and tobacco, contend a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

In an opinion piece called “The Toxic Truth About Sugar” that was published Feb. 1 in the journal Nature, Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis argue that it’s a misnomer to consider sugar just “empty calories.” They write: “There is nothing empty about these calories. A growing body of scientific evidence is showing that fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases. A little is not a problem, but a lot kills — slowly.”

Almost everyone’s heard of — or personally experienced — the proverbial sugar high, so perhaps the comparison between sugar and alcohol or tobacco shouldn’t come as a surprise. But it’s doubtful that Americans will look favorably upon regulating their favorite vice. We’re a nation that’s sweet on sugar: the average U.S. adult downs 22 teaspoons of sugar a day, according to the American Heart Association, and surveys have found that teens swallow 34 teaspoons.

To counter our consumption, the authors advocate taxing sugary foods and controlling sales to kids under 17. Already, 17% of U.S. children and teens are obese, and across the world the sugar intake has tripled in the past 50 years. The increase has helped create a global obesity pandemic that contributes to 35 million annual deaths worldwide from noninfectious diseases including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

“There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates,” Lustig, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) program at UCSF, said in a statement. “But sugar is toxic beyond its calories.”

The food industry tries to imply that “a calorie is a calorie,” says Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. “But this and other research suggests there is something different about sugar,” says Brownell.

(MORE: Ads Featuring Overweight Children Make Some Experts Uncomfortable)

The UCSF report emphasizes the metabolic effects of sugar. Excess sugar can alter metabolism, raise blood pressure, skew the signaling of hormones and damage the liver — outcomes that sound suspiciously similar to what can happen after a person drinks too much alcohol. Schmidt, co-chair of UCSF’s Community Engagement and Health Policy program, noted on CNN: “When you think about it, this actually makes a lot of sense. Alcohol, after all, is simply the distillation of sugar. Where does vodka come from? Sugar.”

But there are also other areas of impact that researchers have investigated: the effect of sugar on the brain and how liquid calories are interpreted differently by the body than solids. Research has suggested that sugar activates the same reward pathways in the brain as traditional drugs of abuse like morphine or heroin. No one is claiming the effect of sugar is quite that potent, but, says Brownell, “it helps confirm what people tell you anecdotally, that they crave sugar and have withdrawal symptoms when they stop eating it.”

There’s also something particularly insidious about sugary beverages. “When calories come in liquids, the body doesn’t feel as full,” says Brownell. “People are getting more of their calories than ever before from sugared beverages.”

Other countries, including France, Greece and Denmark, levy soda taxes, and the concept is being considered in at least 20 U.S. cities and states. Last summer, Philadelphia came close to passing a 2-cents-per-ounce soda tax. The Rudd Center has been a vocal proponent of a more modest 1-cent-per-ounce tax. But at least one study, from 2010, has raised doubts that soda taxes would result in significant weight loss: apparently people who are determined to eat — and drink — unhealthily will find ways to do it.

(MORE: Banning Sugared Drinks in Schools Doesn’t Lower Student Consumption)

Ultimately, regulating sugar will prove particularly tricky because it transcends health concerns; sugar, for so many people, is love. A plate of cut-up celery just doesn’t pack the same emotional punch as a tin of homemade chocolate chip cookies, which is why I took my daughter for a cake pop and not an apple as an after-school treat today. We don’t do that regularly — it’s the first time this school year, actually — and that’s what made it special. As a society, could we ever reach the point where we’d think apples — not cake on a stick — are something to get excited over? Says Brindis, one of the report’s authors and director of UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies: “We recognize that there are cultural and celebratory aspects of sugar. Changing these patterns is very complicated.”

For inroads to be made, say the authors in their statement, people have to be better educated about the hazards of sugar and agree that something’s got to change:

Many of the interventions that have reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption can be models for addressing the sugar problem, such as levying special sales taxes, controlling access, and tightening licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell high sugar products in schools and workplaces.

“We’re not talking prohibition,” Schmidt said. “We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives. We’re talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.”

A whiff of a decadent dessert can whet the appetite, but new research suggests that when it comes to the smell of food, you can have too much of a good thing.

In an odd but clever experiment, Rene de Wijk, a sensory scientist at Food & Biobased Research in the Netherlands, decided to investigate how smell affects the amount people eat. Previously, he and his colleagues had determined that the texture of food (what foodies call mouth feel) alters how much people consume — the more viscous and thick a food is, the less they eat with each bite. And the smaller the bite, the less people consume overall.

So de Wijk wondered what other factors might go into bite size. It matters because when we take smaller bites, we tend to process and swallow food faster, which limits the sensory experience of eating — that includes the way food feels, the way it smells and the flavors it releases on our tongue. The end result may be that we feel fuller sooner and put down the fork.

MORE: It’s the Calories, Stupid: Weight Gain Depends on How Much, Not What, You Eat

De Wijk focused on smell because odor is something that can be added or subtracted from food without affecting its other features, like its texture. So he set up a study in which 10 volunteers were hooked up to a pump that dispensed a custard dessert into their mouths, while at the same time a separate pump supplied differing levels of a cream aroma to the back of the nose and throat (it’s certainly not the way most of us eat, but for the purposes of the study, it worked). The participants controlled how much custard they received, which constituted their “bite.”

After 30 trials, de Wijk and his colleagues started to see a pattern. “The stronger the smell, the smaller the bite size,” he says. And it didn’t take much aroma to change the amount people ate. “Our concentrations were very low, hardly detectable,” he says. “So the effect is quite subtle.”

MORE: Why Sleep Deprivation May Lead to Overeating

That’s encouraging for weight-loss strategies, since it suggests that even a small boost in aroma might be enough to alert our senses that something intense is on its way to the mouth, and that perhaps we should exercise caution before gobbling it up. “It could be that people are self-regulating, and that with a more intense odor, we take instinctively smaller bites to avoid strong sensations,” says de Wijk.

Of course, food aromas work on multiple levels, and in many cases can trigger hunger sensations and the desire to eat. But if de Wijk’s results hold up, there may be a way to manipulate smell and counteract a heightened appetite by encouraging eaters to instinctively keep their bites on the small side.

Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.