I'm not going to lie to you — I love cheese. I use it all the time to add a hint of flavor, protein, calcium, and cheesy goodness to my foods. I honestly believe that cheese makes everything better. I also love anything that makes my life easier, so every week, I buy bags of shredded cheese to sprinkle on my salads, soups, sandwiches, pasta, and omelets.

When I walked down the dairy aisle, there's a huge variety of shredded cheeses, and I wondered how they compared nutritionally. So I decided to make this handy chart of Kraft shredded cheeses. For all the 8-ounce packages, the serving sizes varied between either seven, eight, or nine servings per bag. I did some calculations to make it easier to compare them, so all these numbers are based on 1-ounce serving sizes.

To see the rest read more

Although I think healthy living is often about simplifying things, I still love techy health gadgets. If you're a health nut like me, you probably wonder everyday if you've gotten enough sleep or how many calories you burned on your morning jog. Most fitness gadgets only monitor your workouts, but the Fitbit ($99) keeps tabs on your sleep too. So it keeps track of you day and night.

It contains a motion sensor like the ones found in a Nike+ Sports Kit or the Nintendo Wii. The Fitbit measures the duration and intensity of your walks or runs, how many calories you've burned, the number of steps you've taken, and distance you've traveled each day. It also monitors your bedtime habits by tracking how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up during the night, and how long you were actually asleep. It has a small blue OLED display that shows your steps, calories, distance, and overall activity level. Interested in more details? Then read more

Ruby weighs 487 pounds. She doesn't know how she got that big, but she knows it is time to do something about all that weight before it kills her. A new reality TV series, bearing the eponymous title Ruby, is about the life or death story of this woman's struggle to survive. The show premieres this Sunday, Nov. 9, at 8/7c on the Style Network. To see a sneak peek, check out the video below.

I'm wondering how you feel about the concept behind this show and following an obese woman's weight-loss journey. Do you see it as an inspiration to live healthy, or is it degrading and insensitive to people with weight issues? It could be the Biggest Loser without all the game play. Are you going to tune in?

At a time when money is keeping worried people up at night, finding ways to get quality rest is a challenge for more people than before the economy was a constant stress. Efficient solutions are important for busy gals like us, and this two-in-one formula is a welcome fix: exercise can help you battle the money-induced stress and get you to sleep through the night.

A recent study involving insomniac patients in Brazil found that moderate cardio exercise has a calming affect on anxiety and improves sleep quality, both in the amount of time it takes to fall asleep and total sleep time. It is noteworthy that the patients participated in moderate, not heavy, aerobic exercise.

Sleep gives us energy for the day, improves mental clarity, and allows us to get through the day with wide-open eyes and diminished dark circles. If exercise can help us achieve a good night's rest, it's just another reason to get moving!

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Taking a relaxing bath is a wonderful way to reward yourself after a long run or a tough day at work, so while you're soaking in and letting go, why not reap the benefits of epsom salts? The salts are very inexpensive and can be found at the grocery store or the drug store — taking care of yourself doesn't have to be costly! Check out these five things about the salts and tell me, have you ever experimented with them in your bath water?

1. Muscle relaxer: Epsom salts are known to relax tight muscles and reduce inflammation. Just add about two cups of the salts to bath water.
2. Soak away the toxins: Soaking in the salts can flush toxins from the body.
3. Sleep more soundly: Epsom salts are made of magnesium sulfate, and soaking in them can reduce stress and help you sleep more soundly by restoring magnesium levels.

For two additional ways you can benefit from epsom salts, read more

Dear Fit Sugar,
I'm on a mission to lose that last 10 pounds, which has been so difficult, and I'm training for a half-marathon as well. I eat well and exercise a lot — cardio almost every day and strength training five days a week. I've always heard that muscle weighs more than fat, but after I reached a plateau, I've found that I've been gaining weight. Not much, just a pound or two, but still gaining weight. How do we know when weight gained is added muscle mass, and when it means we need to reevaluate the calories we consume? I'm frustrated that all the hard work only turned into a weight gain.
—Confused and Frustrated

This is a common source of frustration and confusion, but I think I can help clear up a few questions. To see what I have to say about muscles and fat, just read more