diet

Everyone wants to lose weight, but for many folks, the rewards of looking better, feeling better, and living longer aren't sufficient motivation.

Ah, but what if there's money involved?

That's the idea behind DietBet, a "social dieting game" with a twist: You bet some money with friends and/or strangers, then spend 28 days trying to lose 4 percent of your body weight. Winner takes the pot -- which can end up being pretty sizable. If there are multiple winners, they split the cash.

In other words, here's your chance to lose weight and … Read more

Did you indulge at the Super Bowl party last night? Maybe you're still trying to work off the excesses of the holidays. Well, here's a dieting tool that's quite breathtaking -- literally.

Created by four Ph.Ds, mostly from Arizona State University, Breezing is a portable device that measures your metabolism using a method called indirect calorimetry. It analyzes your rates of oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production.

You breathe into the mouse-size gadget that contains a sensor cartridge. It gauges your resting energy expenditure (REE), the metabolic rate indicating how quickly you're burning calories at rest. If you're trying to slim down, the faster the better. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Does your mom's lasagna taste better if you savor each bite as if it were your last?

It might or might not, but if you slow down when eating, chances are you'll eat less. That's the idea behind HapiFork, shown off at 2013 CES Unveiled.

The fork vibrates if you take a bite less than 10 seconds after the last mouthful. That will teach you to slow down, enjoy each morsel, and allow your brain to rein in your appetite.

After all, it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to start sending out signals that … Read more

Jeff Nimoy is the founder of Sameplate.com, a dating site that pairs you up with other singles with the same food and dieting preferences. Inspired by his quest to find a partner who respects his love for the Paleo Diet, Jeff tells us the process that led to the site's inception and how you can make an easy transition to a healthier lifestyle.

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- The Cooking Caveman documents Jeff's experience eating and dating in LA.

- Entering the Cave: How to get started with The Caveman Diet, also known as the … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Who inherits your iTunes library? Why your digimedia may go to the grave.

- Meet a group of journalists in L.A. who share a passion for listening to police scanners.

- Bic geniuses who unveiled pen made for women get roasted by Internet.

- Let us not forget that Apple and Samsung are in bed.… Read more

When it comes to certain diseases -- think heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers -- some basic lifestyle changes are the best preventive medicine.

And while most of us know to eat a balanced diet, exercise, and abstain from smoking, it can be far more motivating to make healthy changes if we also know we're prone to certain diseases.

Enter Zuum, a free new iPad app that estimates your risk of common diseases and personalizes tips to prevent them and improve your overall health.… Read more

All fat is not equal. Brown adipose tissue, more commonly called brown fat and abundant in both newborns and hibernating mammals, is the good fat, playing a prominent role in how quickly our bodies burn calories.

Brown fat also produces as much as 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body, according to scientists at the University of Nottingham, so these scientists have developed a thermal imaging technique to measure not only a person's brown fat stores but also how much heat that fat produces.… Read more

Diet apps are a dime a dozen. And with good reason: your smartphone is the ideal mobile companion for counting calories, managing exercise, and tracking overall health.

The latest entry into this crowded field: Super Diet Genius. What separates this $3.99 app from the likes of Lose It, Calorie Tracker, and MyFitnessPal? It's all in the "super."

Specifically, Super Diet Genius puts you on a diet that relies heavily on superfoods -- stuff that packs the maximum vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, and overall nutrition goodness. (You know: not pizza. Not candy bars. Not French fries.)… Read more

Body suit simulators are nothing new. Earlier this year the Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan unveiled Mommy Tummy 8.0, designed to help the partners of expecting moms--as well as teenagers thinking about getting it on--to understand the physical ramifications of, well, getting it on.

Now students at MIT's AgeLab are taking this empathy concept to another level with AGNES, the Age Gain Now Empathy System, a suit designed to help wearers understand the physical ramifications of neglecting our bodies for decades on end. (AGNES is meant to emulate a 75-year-old with arthritis and diabetes.)

The suit incorporates shoes that compromise one's sense of balance and shorten one's gait; knee and elbow braces that limit joint mobility; earplugs that tune out soft or high-pitched sounds; a helmet that compresses the spine; and gloves that reduce not only strength and mobility in one's hands and wrists but also tactile sensation.… Read more