Food & Drink
5. Pears. They're now recognized as having more fiber, thanks to a corrected calculation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. At six grams
(formerly four grams) per medium-size pear, they're great at filling you up.
Apples come in second, with about three grams per medium-size fruit. Both
contain pectin fiber, which decreases blood-sugar levels, helping you avoid
between-meal snacking. This may explain why, in a Brazilian study that
lasted 12 weeks, overweight women who ate three small pears or apples a
day lost more weight than women on the same diet who ate three oat cookies
daily instead of the fruit.
6. Soup. A cup of chicken soup is as appetite
blunting as a piece of chicken: That was the finding
of a Purdue University study with 18 women and 13
men. Why? Researchers speculate that even the
simplest soup satisfies hunger because your brain
perceives it as filling.
7. Lean beef. It's what's for dinner-or should be, if you're trying to shed pounds. The amino acid leucine, which is abundant in
proteins like meat and fish as well as in dairy products, can help
you pare down while maintaining calorie-burning muscle. That's
what it did for 24 overweight middle-aged women in a study at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Eating anywhere from nine to 10 ounces of
beef a day on a roughly 1,700-calorie diet
helped the women lose more weight, more
fat, and less muscle mass than a control
group consuming the same number of calories, but less protein. The beef eaters also
had fewer hunger pangs
8. Olive oil. Fight off middle-age pounds with extra virgin olive oil. A monounsaturated fat, it'll help you burn 6