Amazing Diet!!! Lose 10 Pounds in a Week

Step 1

Losing any amount of weight requires a life change and a diet change. There are certain foods that you are going to need to cut out or at least eat in moderation. Also you are going to want to incorporate exercise into your daily lifestyle. It is very easy to make these changes, and once you start noticing the weight coming off it will motivate you even more.

Step 2

Stay away from any crash dieting or other unhealthy ways of losing weight. Do not fast, because once you eat you will start to gain it all back. Depending on the starting weight that you are at now, will help determine the amount of weight you will lose. Of course a person that has more weight to lose then another will drop more pounds the first few weeks.

Step 3

The best way to lose weight, no matter what the amount that you are trying to lose, is to do the old fashioned way ~ Exercise and Diet ~ We all want a magic way of dropping pounds, but taking a pill or fasting only have their downfalls.

Step 4

* Stop eating sugary foods. Just dropping the sugar from your diet can help you lose weight quickly. Make sure that you stay away from it all together if you want to lose weight quickly. This means no sugar in your coffee, on your cereals, or eating that candy bar!

* Cut the carbs from your diet. Carbohydrates turn into sugar inside our body's and makes you hold onto body weight and fat. Omitting carbs from your diet can help you drastically drop the unwanted pounds. These days there are many alternatives to diets without carbs that are tasty and nutritious.

* Increase fiber into your diet.

* Incorporate fruits and vegetables into your diet.

* Make sure you eat your dairy items. You can choose to have low fat or even fat free milks and yogurt's.

Step 5

* Watch your portion sizes! Many people have no concept of the amount of food that hey should be eating. Here are some helpful tips about portion sizes...
3 ounces of meat, fish, chicken, etc. is about the size of the palm of a woman's hand or a deck of playing cards.
An ounce of cheese is about the size of your thumb.
A teaspoon of butter is the about the size of your thumb tip.
Learning the correct portions that you should consume can greatly improve your weight lose.

* Stay aways from fried foods.

* Watch the calories. They count when you are trying to lose weight. Stick to a diet within a certain range of calories consumption ideal for you.

Step 6

* Exercise! Many of us may feel that we simply do not have the time to incorporate exercise int your busy lifestyle. That is just an excuse! There are many ways to get the exercise that you need. When you are at work take the stairs instead of the elevator, or park a little farther then normal so you walk farther. Instead of going out to the movies where you just sit, do something physical like bowling, golfing, dancing, etc. Every extra bit of exercise helps!

Remember that any diet that promises you a fast and easy way to lose weight without even trying, is a fake! They are relying on the hopeful ones that want to believe there is a miracle cure to lose weight out there to get themselves rich. They are selling you a fantasy and that s the bottom line.

Step 7

It takes work and commitment to lose weight and nothing less. Once you start to make these changes to your diet and include exercise you need to be consistent. It will all pay off when you are losing weight the healthy way and your friends and relatives that are still trying all the new so called "breakthroughs" on the market are still struggling.

Step 8

You need to focus on the positive changes that you have done and if you slip up once is awhile just know that its O.K. Focus on the positive and not the negative. Remember to reward yourself with a day off every so often to help keep you motivated and determined.
Good Luck!
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How Should I Be Taking Care Of My Skin In My 20s And 30s, And What Kinds Of Issues Should I Be Thinking About?

Question: How should I be taking care of my skin in my 20s and 30s, and what kinds of issues should I be thinking about?

Answer: In your 20s, the most important thing is to really develop a good skin care regimen. The first thing you should start with is sunscreen every morning, either in a moisturizer or separate. An SPF 15 is best, and SPF only tells you UVB (ultraviolet B) so you want a broad-based UVA-UVB sunscreen in the morning.

In your 20s at night, you can use a moisturizer over the counter with a retinol product in it.

In your 30s, you want to continue this regimen, but you may consider adding a prescription retinoic acid like tretinoin -- and this is available from your dermatologist. And that just helps with the fine lines and wrinkles.

In your late 30s, to your skin care regimen, you can consider something like Botox, which treats the fine wrinkles of the forehead and around the eyes, to add to your regimen, as well as possibly laser treatments. And those can be discussed with your dermatologist.
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Top 6 Extreme Cosmetic Surgeries: Obsession with Breast Implants to Feline Looks

Many moms would love to be mistaken for their 20-something daughter's twin. But Janet Cunliffe went as far as Croatia and $14,700 to make sure it happened.

Just four hours of surgery on her eyes and nose, plus a couple of lip injections and a diet, and 50-year-old Janet says she's now regularly mistaken as the sister of her 27-year-old daughter, Jane Cunliffe, according to reporting by the Daily Mail.

"I envied Jane's crinkle-free eyes, full lips and luscious, long blonde hair," Janet told the Mail. "I was desperate to look more like my daughter, but knew no wrinkle creams could ever wind back the clock that far."

From foot binding, to piercings and heels, humans have always gone to great lengths to alter their appearance. But with the relatively low price of modern plastic surgery, people can, and do, go much further today.

One woman's quest for a bigger bosom hit the legal limit; at a gallon of silicone in each breast, any more would have broken Texas state law. Last fall a Korean woman's compulsion for silicone injections led her to try a homemade injection of cooking oil.

Experts say compulsive, severe and risky plastic surgery can belie an underlying psychological problem, but not always.

The following is a list of notable cosmetic procedures compiled by ABCNews.com, as well as reflection by reputable plastic surgeons and doctors on what the medical profession should do about patients seeking extreme plastic surgery.

Cunliffe was not the first woman to ever ask for another person's face. So-called "octomom" Nadya Sulemen reportedly wanted to look like actress Angelina Jolie.

But plastic surgeons say Cunliffe's request to look like a family member is very rare.

"Certainly it's not the usual day in my office," said Dr. Malcolm Roth, director of plastic surgery at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"To say, 'you're 50 years old, I'm going to make you 20 years old' -- that's not reasonable," said Roth, who is also the vice president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

However, Roth said in Cunliffe's case, the request to make her look like her daughter might be more reasonable than a request like Sulemen's to look like a total stranger.

"It's her daughter -- they have the same genes, probably a lot of the same facial structure and architecture," he said.

But just because something is possible doesn't mean Roth will always comply with a patient's request.

"Over half of the patients who come into my office for plastic surgery I would not operate on," said Roth, who listed both medical concerns and concern over the idealism of his patients as reasons he'd not operate.

Cunliffe's case might be a drastic request, but Roth said he'd be more wary of her choice to try medical tourism.

"We're seeing, unfortunately, a lot of people who are looking for good deals, going to medical tourism and then they come back with problems that cost them more than they would have paid in the first place," he said.

It would be hard to miss Sheyla Hershey if she were walking down the street. She has record-setting breasts after years of plastic surgery.

After over eight surgeries and a gallon of silicone, Hershey's breasts balloon to an astonishing 38KKK, protruding like beach balls from her petite frame. The surgery had to be done in Brazil because of U.S. restrictions on how much silicone can be injected into a person's body.

"I want to look better each day, every day," Hershey told Fox 26 in Houston, Texas. "Everybody's got a dream inside, you know? And it's good when you can make your dream come true."

Hershey, a singer, dancer, actress and model, has consciously undergone multiple procedures on her breasts as well as her nose, lips and buttocks over several years in order to aid her career.

While Hershey's dream might be realized for now, some experts say that the feeling may not last.

"At the moment, the person that says it's enhancing their [career] may believe that," said Dr. Alan Matarasso, a clinical professor of plastic surgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and a spokesperson for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

But Matarasso pointed out that overdone breast augmentation could leave a person a breast implant cripple for life, unable to go without implants because the alternative would be stretched out, flat breasts.

"They're not doing themselves any service," Matarassso said. "And most of what we do isn't reversible."

Jocelyn Wildenstein's famous plastic surgery might never be topped. Many women think it's sexy to dress up as cat woman, but this New York socialite decided she literally wanted to be a cat-woman.

When there's a will, and millions of dollars, there's a way. According to The Times of London, Wildenstein spent more than $3 million to transform her face into a feline visage.

Much press coverage mused about her sanity, and there are several documented psychological disturbances that could contribute to such severe plastic surgery.

But Arie Winograd, psychotherapist and director of the Los Angeles Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Body Image clinic, cautions the quick judgment of those who get multiple surgeries.

"There are so many factors -- just because someone gets a lot of surgeries doesn't mean its Body Dysmorphic Disorder (or another disorder)," said Winograd, who defined Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) as a psychological disturbance in which people obsess about a body part or body parts and compulsively act on that obsession in a certain way -- either by checking mirrors constantly, hiding the feature, touching the body part or getting repeated surgeries.

"It's not the vain person or the narcissistic person who likes how they look. BDD is the antithesis," said Winograd. "We are referred a lot of people from all over the place, who we find out later might have other conditions."

The unfortunate case of Hang Mioku's silicon (and cooking oil injections) last fall showed the world the depths of a cosmetic procedure compulsion.

Mioku's first cosmetic procedure at age 28 seemed normal enough, but after 20 years of surgeries, injections and lifts, the Korean woman had disfigured herself and ran out of doctors who would help her in her quest for silicone injections.

Then, at home in her kitchen, Mioku reached for some cooking oil and a syringe, instead. The public took pity on Mioku and helped pay for surgeons to remove the foreign matter after the local media broadcast images of her swollen face, according to reporting by The Telegraph.

But however much material they reomoved, local doctors said she could never retrieve her original face.

Winograd couldn't comment on Mioku's individual case, but he has seen how a compulsion manifests itself into cosmetic surgeries.

"Cosmetic procedures are a compulsion, but just because someone has BDD doesn't mean they act on the compulsion of surgery versus something else," said Winograd. "But then, there's people who get procedures and keep getting procedures and they're never satisfied because BDD is a psychological problem within and they're trying to fix it by fixing the shell."

While it's lyrics might attempt to convey a more nuanced message, the title of Michael Jackson's song "Black And White" is a good summary of how many people who get multiple, extreme plastic surgeries see the world.

People with the combination of psychological problems who seek out these surgeries never have a "kind of a good day," said Leslie Seppinni, a psychotherapist in Beverly Hills, Calif.

"It's either, 'I look fabulous today,' or 'I need to put a mask on my face,'" she explained.

Seppinni said the self-hatred that comes on days when some people don't like how they look is part of a drive for flawlessness.

"One thing is that they're looking for absolute perfection, and it's very narcissistic," said Seppinni.

"If they could only fix how they look on the outside ... then life will be so much better for them," she said, and that creates a very all or nothing situation, where they either feel really good about themselves or that they are a complete disaster.

Stemming from a lack of balance in their emotional lives along with poor coping skills, Seppinni said, it often leads some people to imitate a single person who they view as ideal.

"Usually, they have a vision of someone they've conjured up who they believe is perfection. And they sculpt themselves toward that look," she said.

In the case of Octomom Nadya Suleman, that person was actress Angelina Jolie, Seppinni conjectured, noting Suleman's attempts to emulate her.

As for Jackson?

"In his case, for years he said ... Diana Ross was like his ideal vision. He wanted her look," mused Seppinni.

While some who get multiple plastic surgeries idealize someone else, reality TV star Brigitte Nielsensaid she gets them because she idealizes herself -- or a younger version of herself, anyhow.

"She's trying to get back to a place that she can't get back to," said Seppinni. "There's an emotional immaturity."

People who strive to look like former visions of themselves, or even like someone else, Seppinni explained, often reach a point where they stop maturing emotionally, so, over time, it becomes more and more out of sync with their chronological age.

"Once they start to get help, they have to make up emotionally for the time they [lost] when they weren't maturing emotionally," she said. "Playing catch-up is really painful."

A desire to appear on reality shows, Seppinni said, may also appeal to a frequent-surgery-seeker's narcissism.

But in addition to narcissism, the desire to have multiple plastic surgeries often ties in to borderline personality disorder, where sufferers have difficulty maintaining relationships, and body dysmorphic disorder, where a person becomes obsessed with a minor or imaginary flaw with their body.

"They have a real false sense of what they see in the mirror," said Seppinni.

"Many of them will tell you that when they look in the mirror, they won't look in the mirror unless it's from the neck down," she said, with the person only looking at the part of their body they need to.

"Even though, physically, they've changed [after surgery], they don't see the change, and that's why they continue to move forward with other surgery. They really have a distorted body image."

But the bigger issue, said Seppinni, is how narcissism and an addiction to drama that is common in reality television, affects viewers. It shows, she said, a lack of concern for the message to young women.

"That [a reality TV star] is a person where you have to ask what would you do if your life was productive? What would you replace the drama with?" said Seppinni.

Pamela Noon: Surgery That Never Ends

Pamela Noon looks like a woman 20 years her junior. But it took Noon, who is in her early 60s, over 20 year to complete the transformation -- and she says it's not over.

Noon has had over 26 cosmetic operations on her face and body, as well as over 80 maintenance procedures, such as botox injections. Some of the procedures she has undergone include liposuction, multiple face lifts, brow lifts and rhinoplasty.

"I think [cosmetic surgery] is fairly addictive, because if you do something that turns your life around a little bit, particularly the way you look, you automatically feel better about yourself and are on to yourself every time you see something you should attend to. I'm definitely a work in progress," Noon told the New Zealand Weekend Herald in 2003.

But plastic surgery experts say there could be underlying psychological forces driving people who go to extremes with plastic surgery procedures.

Matarasso pointed out that people who feel they need to constantly perfect themselves physically through surgery could be showing signs of obsessive compulsive disorder, a need for perfection, or an inability to deal with aging.

"No matter what, they're never happy," Matarasso said. "But if [plastic surgery] is minimized to the point of going shopping, they are no longer looking at it as medicine. ... This is real-life surgery with health, welfare and safety complications. You can't take this lightly."
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Hospital May Have Sidestepped Prior Rules for Face Transplant

A Boston hospital may have bent its own rules to offer a disfigured patient a facial transplant -- but doctors and ethicists say the move was likely justified.
The surgery, which took place Thursday at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, is the second face transplant operation performed in the United States and the seventh in the world.

A team of seven plastic surgeons and one ear, nose and throat surgeon led by Dr. Bohdan Pomahac took 17 hours to complete the surgery, according to a hospital press release. The release further indicated that the nose, hard palate, upper lip, facial skin, muscles of facial animation and the nerves that power them and provide sensation were transferred to the recipient from a deceased donor.

The patient was a man who required facial reconstruction after injuries he suffered in a severe traumatic accident, Kevin Myron, manager of media relations for Brigham and Women's Hospital, said.

At a Friday press conference, Pomahac acknowledged that the patient had not undergone immunosuppressant therapy before the operation -- a deviation from the hospital's previously stated policy on facial transplantation.
Immunosuppressant therapy -- a course of medication designed to ratchet down a patient's immune response -- is necessary in such operations to prevent the patient's body from rejecting the organs or tissues of the donor. Such therapy is crucial to the patient's survival, but it also comes with serious side effects, including an increased risk of infections.

At Friday's press conference, Pomahac said that the hospital has obtained approval from an institutional review board -- a committee that reviews the ethics of medical procedures -- for performing the operation on patients not on immunosuppressants. He said that the hospital made the decision to liberalize the rule in order to help more patients in need.

"We felt it was a natural progression of the program to extend [the operation] to the patient who is not on immunosuppressants."

Still, immunosuppressant therapy is a significant commitment. Dr. Joseph McCarthy, director of the Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery at New York University's Langone Medical Center, said that the side effects of immunosuppression may be an even weightier consideration than the surgery itself.

"You are really committing the patient to a lifetime of treatment to prevent rejection," he said. "You have to be absolutely convinced that no existing traditional surgery or techniques would give these patients the quality of life they need, and therefore you can justify starting a course of immunosuppressant medications."

Pomahac said that the patient is now on immunosuppressants, and likely will be for the forseeable future.

"The patient is now expected to take immunosuppressant medication for the rest of his life," he said. "There is nothing on the horizon, no major medical breakthrough that would suggest otherwise."

But he noted that the doses would likely be reduced as time progresses, which would likely come hand-in-hand with a reduction in side effects.

Implications of Immunosuppression After Face Transplant

The importance of such side effects was not lost on Brigham and Women's. A 2007 article in a hospital newsletter and a 2008 article in the journal Transplantation suggest that Brigham and Women's had a policy in place not to perform such a surgery on any patient who did not already have a suppressed immune system.

"The BWH team recognizes the ethical concerns and tailored BWH's programs to address them," reads the article in a 2007 issue of BWH Bulletin. "One concern is that transplant patients spend the rest of their lives taking immunosuppressant drugs to keep the body from rejecting the organ. BWH will only perform facial transplants on those who already are on these drugs, most likely from a previous transplant."

Pomahac is quoted in the article as saying that patients already on immunosuppressants "know what it's like to live on these drugs, which can have debilitating effects on the body."

And in the 2008 Transplantation article, Pomahac wrote:

"We currently share the concern that life-long immunosuppression associated with facial transplantation may not outweigh its benefits as compared to the alternative reconstructive methods. We asked ourselves the question of which patient population would risk less and overall benefit more from undergoing face transplantation, and identified those currently on immunosuppressive therapy the most suitable candidates."

The hospital newsletter article further suggested that Brigham and Women's would only perform partial face transplants, chiefly in response to critics' concerns over "the ethics of changing a person's identity."

Position Shift on Face Tranplant Ethically Justified

Still, surgeons and ethicists alike appear to agree that shifting away from a policy limiting the patient pool for face transplants may not be such a bad thing -- particularly considering the horrific injuries that candidates for this surgery possess.

"I don't think that it makes sense to try and limit face transplantation to those already on immunosuppression," said Art Caplan, head of the bioethics center at the University of Pennsylvania. "That might be preferable, other things being equal, but the number of persons who will fit that selection standard is tiny."

Rosamond Rhodes, director of bioethics education at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, agreed. "When the facial disfigurement is so severe as to merit the risks of transplantation, the extra burdens of immunosuppression hardly adds to the burden.

"In that light, the BWH policy seems designed to spare the surgeons and institution from guilt or public criticism, rather than to serve the interests of patients in need of a face transplant," she added.

Brigham and Women's is not the only institution to have such a policy, however. Dr. L. Scott Levin, chief of plastic, reconstructive, oral and maxillofacial surgery and a professor of orthopaedic and plastic surgery at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., said that Duke has been IRB approved to conduct a face transplant operation, and they, too, have a policy that would limit the patient pool to those already taking immunosuppressants.

But he added that if the opportunity arose to perform such an operation -- even on a patient who was not currently immunosuppressed -- he would jump at the chance.

"There is such a huge need in patients who have been burned, unusually disfigured or injured in war," Levin said. "I'd do it in a heartbeat."

And McCarthy said he has no doubt that Brigham and Women's fully weighed the risks and benefits of the surgery and lifelong immunosuppression before going forward.

"You're at a first-rate institution," he said. "These decisions are not going to be made casually."

Face Transplant Operations Go Global

McCarthy added that Frenchwoman Isabelle Dinoire, the world's first patient to have a face transplant, only went on immunosuppressants after her operation in her home country in 2005, and she appears to be doing well today.

After Dinoire became the first recipient of a partial face transplant in November 2005, similar surgeries in various countries have followed.

The first such surgery in the U.S., took place in December and repaired the face of a female patient using facial tissue from a dead female donor.

Most recently, on the weekend of April 4, a team of doctors at Henri Mondor hospital in Paris performed the world's first simultaneous partial-face and double-hand transplant on a 30-year-old burn victim.
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Promising New Treatment for Fungus-Free Feet

Everyone wants to put their best foot forward, but people with toenail fungus go to great lengths to keep their feet under wraps.

Meghan Rafferty, a 36-year-old from New York City, is one of millions of Americans who lives with toe fungus.

Looking at her toenails, Rafferty said, "It's discolored, it's yellow. It's thick. Um, it's crooked, it just looks, it looks dead, like dead nails."

Not only is toe fungus ugly and embarrassing, it's also easy to catch, as it thrives in wet environments such as nail salons and locker rooms. And people will do just about anything to hide it. Podiatrist Paul Greenberg said he has female patients who say their husbands haven't seen their feet in 25 years.

"In yoga, I would be embarrassed," Rafferty said. "I go to the nail salon, and just like they put tips on your fingernails, I would get tips on my toenails."

Once the fungus gets under a toenail, it's difficult to treat. Topical solutions don't always work and oral medications carry a risk of side effects and can be hard on the body.
Rafferty is trying a promising new laser procedure to treat toenail fungus.

"The laser beam travels through the nail to the level of the nail fungus and kills the fungus instantly," said Gary Evans, a New York City podiatrist.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared the use of PathoLase Inc.'s PinPointe FootLaser system, which has been available in the United States since September 2008. Evans has been using it for a few months and says it's exciting because it's painless and side-effect free.

As Evans moved the laser over the nail, Rafferty said she didn't feel anything.

"We have to go in certain patterns to make sure we get every little millimeter of the nail plate," Evans said.

The procedure takes less than a half hour and, while results aren't immediate, the toenail will grow out normally in nine to 12 months, in most cases.

PathoLase said its laser is 88 percent effective, which it claims is better than anything else on the market.

Fungus-free feet will cost you, though. The treatment goes for about $1,200 and isn't covered by insurance.

Rafferty is willing to pay for normal-looking toes. "I'm just really excited to see what the results are. This is fantastic," she said.

How to Avoid Toe Fungus

Fungus can enter the nail through a cuticle trimming, through an injury near the nail or even a crack on the surface of the skin near the nail.

Killing the nail fungus does not mean you will not get it again. What you need to do is practice good foot hygiene, which, as simple as it sounds, is really tough for some people.

Avoid moist, wet environments, meaning public showers, pools and locker rooms. You've got to be careful when you go to the beach, and even when you go to a friend's apartment.

Be careful when you go for a pedicure. The pedicurist should avoid trimming the cuticles too short, which creates more opportunities for fungus to infect the nail.

Pay attention to your own apartment and home. You have to clean out your shower stall and check that bath mat you've been stepping on for the past few months -- it can be infested with fungus.

And check your shoes. Fungus could be alive and well in those favorite sneakers you've been wearing for years.
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Some Lip Gloss May Promote Cancer

Spring is here, legs have been reacquainted with the razor and women are buying lots of shimmery lip gloss on impulse.

But have you heard the buzz that cheap, fun, non-SPF gloss can possibly increase your skin cancer risk?

Here's the theory: Some dermatologists have said that the translucent sheen helps ultraviolet rays penetrate the already fragile skin of the lips -- thereby increasing your risk. These dermatologists may be on to something, according to some of the top experts in the field.

Dr. Jessica Fewkes, a face and neck skin cancer specialist at Harvard, draws a cautious analogy between wearing non-SPF (sun protection factor) lip gloss in the sun and using baby oil to promote tanning. "You might be able to infer that they both enhance UV exposure," she says.

Dr. Kevin Cooper, chairman of the dermatology department at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, explains that any increased penetration of ultraviolet rays would be due to "enhanced optical passage" of the dangerous rays. But the increase, he qualifies, would be small.

Here's the catch: There are no large, targeted studies proving or disproving this theory, which makes Fewkes, Cooper and the American Cancer Society reluctant to draw fixed conclusions.


Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the society's deputy chief medical officer, says that it seems "like just a theory."

"It's OK," he adds, " to have theories about how diseases are caused or influenced, but we have to see evidence. There should be an effort made to do large, population-based studies."

And, in the absence of such studies, it's hard to get a simple yes or no from a doctor.

Nevertheless, specialists agree that just as it's universally recommended that people wear at least SPF 15 on their faces, it makes sense to do the same for the lips. And in these UV-ray conscious times, it's not hard to find gooey pink gloss that comes with protection.

And consider this: According to Cooper, squamous cell carcinoma (the kind of cancer that makes up 90 percent of new cases of lip skin cancer each year) has a higher risk of metastasis on the lips. That means that it's more likely to aggressively spread if it starts on your lips than if the same kind of cancer appears first on other parts of the skin.

Bonus: If you really need another reason to make sure your gloss is SPF 15, think about the prematurely wrinkle-mouthed look you probably want to avoid. Fewkes says that if gloss does, in fact, increase lips vulnerability to UV rays, it stands to reason that it promotes photoaging as well.

"The damage done short of a true cancer can be very difficult to treat," she says, referring not only to painful fissures, but to solar keratosis -- nonmalignant yet unpleasant crusty bumps.
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