How it works: the body-fat scale.

Step 1 When you step on the scale’s electrodes, a 500 microampere current shoots up your leg. Human skin can sense currents only stronger than 1 milliamp, which is twice as powerful as this charge.

Step 2 As the current moves throughout your lower body, it encounters resistance in tissue. Water is a much better conductor than fat, so muscle – which is about 73 percent water – provides easier passage.

Step 3 The body-fat scale detects the total time it takes for the current to complete its path. The faster it travels, the more muscle and less fat you have. With this data, it computes your body-fat percentage. (more…)

Growing up, “people would say, ‘That fat girl, she’s Muhammad Ali’s daughter,’” recalls Khaliah Ali, 32. By 26, she hit 335 lbs., but her dad “made me feel beautiful no matter what size I was.”

Still, as she writes in a new memoir, Fighting Weight, after a lifetime of dieting, in 2004 she chose reversible banding surgery.

Now 155 lbs. and a paid promoter of the LAP-BAND System, Ali sees a doctor for twice-yearly adjustments (saline injections tighten the band). (more…)

Continued from The Sun-Protective Diet.

As summer approaches, men and women might be surprised to learn that their eating habits may determine not just how well they fit into their Speedos and bikinis, but also how well they protect their skin against sun damage and skin cancer.

Tomato Sauce In a study of volunteers who ate tomato sauce daily, sun sensitivity was reduced by 32 percent. (The 11 volunteers consumed two to three tablespoons of tomato paste with olive oil daily for ten weeks.)

Cooked tomatoes provide large amounts of the antioxidant lycopene, and oil improves the body’s absorption of it, says Wilhelm Stahl, biochemistry professor at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf in Germany. (more…)

Continued from Lactate Threshold Test.

VO2 Max The amount of oxygen your body can convert to energy each minute, in milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body mass. The higher the number, the fitter you are.

How it’s measured On a treadmill or stationary bike you exercise at gradually increasing intensity while wearing a heart-rate monitor and a face mask that’s connected to a computer.

When you reach a plateau at which your body can no longer efficiently process oxygen, that’s your VO2 max. (more…)

A hundred calories a day may not seem like much, but when the calendar turns, we’re talking more than 3,000 calories a month – and that is enough to reduce the pressure you’re putting on the scale. It’s not even as life-changing as you might think, either.

Many diet experts recommend this approach to losing weight, simply because there’re probably more than 100 ways to cut 100 calories or more from your diet without depriving yourself.

One reason many diets fail before they even have a chance to show us what the can do for us is that they deprive us of the food we enjoy. Chances are you won’t even notice that you’re missing 100 calories from your total daily calorie intake, but I bet you’ll soon start seeing that you’re losing weight.

Here’re some tricks to help you shave off 100 calories or more from your diet: (more…)