Will Bart continue to blissfully blow Zs into his teen years?

Sleeping and driving. According to a report by the National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep and Teens Task Force: “Drowsiness or fatigue has been identified as a principle cause in at least 100,000 police-reported traffic crashes each year, killing more than 1,500 Americans and injuring another 71,000, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, 1994). Young drivers age 25 or under cause more than one-half of fall-asleep crashes.  A North Carolina state study found that drivers age 25 or younger cause more than one-half (55 percent) of fall-asleep crashes ... 78% were males. The peak age of occurrence was 20.”

Teen sleep needs. Adolescents require at least as much sleep as they did as pre-adolescents — in general, 8.5 to 9.25 hours each night. (Mary Carskadon, Brown University, et al., 1980)

Up all night (or, the vampire thing). Adolescents’ sleep patterns undergo a phase delay, that is, a tendency toward later times, for both sleeping and waking. Studies show that the typical high school student’s natural time to fall asleep is 11 p.m. or later. (Amy R. Wolfson, College of the Holy Cross, and Carskadon, 1998)

Your kids are right — school does start too early. Most high schools in Charlotte and the Triangle start between 7:15 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. The National Sleep Foundation advocates “Legislation to encourage starting high schools no earlier than 9 a.m." The NSF also supports graduated licensing regulations to reduce the number of adolescents driving unsupervised at night (already in place in North Carolina) as well as child labor laws to restrict the number of hours and the time of day that adolescents are permitted to work.

What, did some high school kid come up with that 9 a.m. thing? No. The University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement has studied the issue (Kyla Wahlstrom and C.M. Freeman, 1997) and found that in high schools that start later:

• In suburban districts, students gain an extra hour of sleep each school day.
• Teachers report that more students are alert during the first two periods of the day, and fewer students fall asleep at their desks.
• More homework gets done during school hours because students are more alert and efficient during the day.
• Attendance increases and tardiness decreases.
• Some students reported eating breakfast more frequently.
• Teachers in suburban districts report noticeable improvements in student behavior: quieter hallways between classes and less misbehavior in the lunchroom.
• Counselors from suburban schools describe the school atmosphere as “calmer,” and report that fewer students seek help for stress relief due to academic pressures. (Urban teachers, however, observed no general improvement in student behavior.)
• A downside in urban districts: fewer students were involved in extracurricular and social activities, and the later school schedules resulted in conflicts or compromised earnings for students who worked after school.

Less time for afternoon mischief. National studies and analysis of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation reveal that on school days, 45 percent of juvenile violent crime takes place between 2 and 8 p.m., with the sharpest rise occurring between 2 and 4 p.m. (Wahlstrom and Freeman, 1997; CSPV, 1998). (A 9 a.m. start would mean students being in school until about 4 p.m.) Also during these times: unsupervised adolescents are more likely to engage in acts of violence, as well as sex and recreational use of alcohol or drugs.

Pointers for Parents. From the National Sleep Foundation Sleep and Teens Task Force come these suggestions for parents to help their teens get a full night’s sleep.

• Educate yourself about adolescent development, including physical and behavioral changes you can expect (especially those that relate to sleep needs and patterns).
• Look for signs of sleep deprivation and sleepiness in your teens. Signs include: difficulty waking in the morning, irritability late in the day, falling asleep spontaneously during quiet times of the day, sleeping for extra long periods on the weekends.
• Enforce and maintain age-appropriate sleep schedules for all children.
• Talk with your kids. Look at their extracurricular and employment activities and see how it affects their sleep patterns. If there’s a problem, work with them to adjust their schedules to allow for enough sack time.
• Provide a home environment conducive to healthy sleep. Establish a quiet time in the evening when the lights are dimmed and loud music is not permitted. Do not allow use of the television, computer and telephone within an hour of bedtime. Keep the evening temperature of your house a sleep-friendly 68  to 70 degrees.
• Get enough sleep yourself. Even sleeping, you can be a good role model.

Tips for Teens. Here’s what the National Sleep Foundation Sleep and Teens Task Force suggests for teens.

• Sleep is food for the brain. Lack of sleep can make you look tired and feel depressed, irritable or angry. Even mild sleepiness can hurt your performance — from taking school exams to playing sports or video games. Learn how much sleep you need to function at your best ... and strive to get it every night. You should awaken refreshed, not tired.
• Establish a routine, with a regular bedtime and wake time, and try to maintain that routine through the school week, the weekend, on those ubiquitous teacher work days and on vacation.
• Get into bright light as soon as possible in the morning, but avoid it in the evening. Light signals to the brain when it should wake up and when it should prepare to sleep.
• Understand your circadian rhythms. Then you can try to maximize your schedule throughout the day according to your internal clock.
• After lunch/noon stay away from caffeinated coffee and colas.
• Relax before going to bed. Avoid heavy reading, studying and computer games within one hour of bed. Don’t fall asleep with the television on — flickering light and stimulating content can inhibit restful sleep.

The story was about a study revolving around two questions: At what age do you you consider yourself to be old? At what age do you stop considering yourself to be young? The question was put to people in several countries and the results differed wildly depending upon local. The British, for instance, stopped seeing themselves as young at 35 and officially old at 59. The Greeks, on the other hand, thought themselves young until 51 and not teetering into geezerhood until 68. Speculation abounded among the experts interviewed about the discrepancy. (I’ll post a link to the story when it’s posted by the BBC.)

I wondered how Americans would answer this question. I especially wondered how Jack Stanley of Kernersville might answer. Stanley, at age 71, was the second oldest runner at Saturday’s Blue Points 5K on the Runway at PTI. He won his age category with a time of 26:05, meaning he ran the 3.1-mile race at a speed of 8 minutes and 25 seconds per mile.

Stanley finished 152nd overall. To put that in perspective, according to the race results he beat nearly two-thirds of the 441-person field. His time would have placed him 4th among the 15 boys age 15 and under in the race and it would have won the women’s 20-24 age group.

Bobby Christiansen of Greensboro would have had an interesting answer as well. Christiansen is 53 and finished 9th overall with a time of 18:18 — a time good enough to make him competitive on a high school cross-country team. Ditto 60-year-old William Menius of Greensboro, who ran the race in 20:19 to finish 28th overall, 61-year-old Karl Fields, who finished 30th in 20:41, and Bob Milan, also 61, of Greensboro, who came in 43rd overall with a time of 21:20.

Of the 441 runners on the tarmac Saturday, 44 percent fell into the 40-49 age demographic (79 women, 114 men), and 17 percent (19 women and 57 men) were 50 or older.

Social scientists speculating over the results of the study I heard on the BBC suspected that Greece’s more relaxed style of living may contribute to the Greek people’s perception of themselves as, if not forever young, at least young for a good long while. The explanation behind the extended youth of Jack Stanley, Bobby Christiansen and the other chronologically older runners at Saturday’s Blue Points 5K is likely the opposite: Stay young by not stopping. Both approaches appear to work, according to author/researcher Dan Buettner. For insight into the various ways people stay young, check out his “The Blue Zones,” which looks at several communities around the world where people tend to live longer. While the reasons behind longevity may vary, they all have one thing in common: A healthy approach to life in general.

As for me, I’ll stick with the don’t-stop approach. By continuing to chase the Stanleys, the Christiansens, the Meniuses, the Fields and the Milans, I hope to keep pace with their youth.

Photo: Runners at Saturday's Blue Points 5K on the Runway at PTI: One way to stay young.

I had to: According to the National Institutes of Health, while 55 is when males generally start dropping weight (sorry gals, it doesn’t happen for you until around 65), I’m now more inclined to hang on to the weight I'm keeping — in the form of fat — around my midsection.

Some other interesting bits I learned from the NIH on getting older:

• Shrinking Coming into 55, I was worried I might start the geriatric shrinking process. Turns out I should have started worrying about that 15 years ago: According to the NIH, people generally shrink 0.4 inches every 10 years. After 70, your height can diminish by up to 3 inches over a decade. (That shrinkage, incidentally, is in the torso, not in the arms or legs.)
• Muscle and organ atrophy Muscles, liver, kidney and other organs start to lose cells. I’m not so worried about the liver and kidneys, but that loss of muscle can make them weaker, fatigue more easily and result in “reduced activity tolerance.” (Worried that might have happened overnight, I’ve also celebrated today with a 70-minute, 12-mile mountain bike ride at Lake Crabtree.)
• Slowed reflexes Did I mention that on the aforementioned mountain bike ride I reacted late to a tree root, hit the disc brakes and flew into, then over, the handlebars? This reduction is caused less by a slowing of nerve impulses and more by changes in the muscles and tendons.
• Dehydration A “change in body water” makes it easier for older people to get dehydrated. May be time to upgrade my Camelbak from a 70 ml bladder to 100.
• Stiff joints, less flexibility. Hips and knees, in particular, ankles less so. Seems the best way to keep them from stiffening up is to not let them stop moving.
• Wrinkly, sagging skin, gray hair, crow’s feet, less hair growing where I want it, more growing where I don’t ... I’m ahead of the game on these counts, but who cares? Gray eyebrows don’t keep you from running a half marathon, droopy eyelids don’t keep you from riding a mountain bike.

So I’ll have a few more age-related challenges in the year ahead. All the more reason to be disciplined, and the best way I know to do that is to have goals. Thus, to mark the milestone of having turned 55 I’ve adopted the number 55 as my theme for the year ahead. That said, my goals (some of which are inspired by a book I’m starting to write on adventure sports in the Carolinas):

• Run 11 5Ks (11 x 5 = 55, for those of you who didn’t come here expecting math problems)
• Climb “The Mummy” at Linville Gorge, a 5.5-rated rock climb.
• Do a 55-mile backpacking trip.
• Do a 55-mile canoe trip.
• Do 55 straight push-ups. (I’ve been especially slack over the years on strength training; with my muscles atrophying staying strong becomes even more important.)
• 55: Total of my waist size (30) and BMI (25). I’m an inch or two away on the waist size, and while the body mass index is still woefully flawed, I’m still irked that my current rating of 26 makes me overweight in the government’s eyes.
• Resting heart rate of 55. Cheating a little on this one: Last time I checked my resting heart rate was 54.
• 55-mile mountain bike race. Still looking for a candidate for this one. Could come in a 6-hour endurance race, though the most miles I’ve racked up in one of those was 48. Yell if you know of any 55-mile mountain bike races.
• 55 miles on my mountain bike on my birthday. I cut this one short because I need to fetch kids from school starting a 2 p.m. Hopefully next week.
• Umstead 50-miler trail run. OK, so it’s five short. I’ll be dang lucky to make the 50. (Most runners in this race, btw, run 100 miles.)

As my 55th approached, I was asked a few times how I felt about turning 55. I gave the only answer that made sense: It beats not turning 55.

Besides, look at all the cool stuff I get to do!

“Dogs can be a great motivator for physical activity,” study author Mathew Reeves, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Michigan State University in East Lansing, told MedlinePlus. “People who walk their dogs, walk more. They walk about an hour longer each week,"  added Reeves, who is also a vet.

Of the 6,000 people, who participated in the 2005 Michigan Behavioral Risk Factor Survey, 41 percent owned a dog. Of those, nearly two-thirds reported walking their dog for at least 10 minutes at a time. The remaining one-third didn't regularly walk their dogs. Overall, the dog owners were 69 percent more likely to partake in leisure-time physical activity than the non-dog owners.

If you’re now thinking of getting a dog for exercise, consider that the survey found that smaller dogs led to shorter walks, younger dogs afforded more exercise. The dog-as-exercise regimen proved especially helpful for folks 65 and older, and those earning $20,000 a year or less.
Read more here.

Running feet, runny nose

If you ran in yesterday’s Tobacco Road Marathon (congratulations to Chapel Hill’s Kipyegon Kirui for 2:24:27 first-place finish) and woke up today with itchy eyes, runny nose and congestion, there’s a reason: Turns our you’re more susceptible to allergies after running 26.2 miles.

A study of 150 runners from last year’s London Marathon found that one-in-three suffered allergy-induced symptoms following the spring race. Such symptoms are common after a race, but were thought to be the result of infections taking advantage of a run-stressed immune system. Blood tests of the London runners found the presence of immunoglobulin E antibodies, a sign of an allergic reaction. Only 8 percent of the runners were taking meds for allergies.

"These post-event sniffles might seem minor, but there are clear risks that people could go on to develop exercise-induced asthma and airway inflammation,” cautioned Dr. Paula Robson-Ansley, who lead the team conducting the study. In short: Don’t be so quick to write off those post-race sniffles.

Read more here.

Photo: Astro helped George Jetson keep trim.

On average, the workers (88 percent of whom were female, mean age 40.2) used the pedaling devices 12 of the 20 possible work days, for an average of 23 minutes each of those days. Some pedaled as little as a third of a mile per day, one went 13.5 miles.

The workers, who said they sit 83 percent of the time, said they liked having the gizmo under their desk and would use it regularly if it were made available. (I can only envision one better scenario.) The study was published online Monday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Read more here and here.

Junior’s BMI rises the more mom works

Kids whose moms work tend to have a higher Body Mass Index, according to figures pulled from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Researchers from American University, Cornell University and the University of Chicago analyzed the data on 900 kids in grades 3, 5 and 6 in 10 U.S. cities. More than 70 percent of moms in the United States work.

Researchers were surprised that the connection wasn’t related to the time the kids went unsupervised and how much screen time they had (as a  result). In fact, it didn’t seem to matter when the moms worked: kids whose working moms were home when they got home from school were just as likely to have higher BMIs than kids whose working moms weren’t home. Researchers speculate the problem might be that moms who work have less time to grocery shop, less time to cook at home and thus spend more time eating prepared foods and fast food, which are higher in fat and calories. There was no mention of what the dads were up to.

Read more here.

Again, kids who exercise do better in school

Yet another study that shows kids who are active do better in school, in the case of this study by  Georgia Health Sciences University researchers, in math. Read more here.

Spring into action

Finally, a timely reminder — especially considering temperatures this week have mysteriously broken out of a winter-long funk in the 40s and flirted with the 70-degree mark — to start limbering up for spring. Dr. Anders Cohen with The Brooklyn Hospital Center says you should spend at least three weeks working on strength and flexibility issues before immersing yourself in the physical pleasures of spring.

If you play in a spring softball league, for instance, he suggests starting to play catch and throwing at varying distances and angles to increase flexibility, reflexes and to loosen your arm. Before doing whatever you do, advises Cohen, take 10 minutes to warm up and afterward, 10 minutes to cool down.

More here.

Chocolate: the new super fruit

You’d expect scientific news about chocolate coming out of the Hershey Center for Heath & Nutrition to be favorable toward the brown elixir. And you wouldn’t be disappointed.
Chocolate, which recently has been embraced as the ultimate recovery drink by recovering athletes, has been deemed by the Hershey center as a rich source of antioxidants, those naturally occurring elements that helps us fight disease. Further, chocolate contains more polyphenols and flavanols than fruit juice. The testing found this property for antioxidants in dark chocolate and cocoa. (Hot chocolate was also tested, but proved not as rich in antioxidants because of the processing involved.

Read more here.

Exercise: Out beats in

Research again confirms what most of us already know: Exercising outdoors beats exercising indoors. The latest evidence: A research team from the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry looked at 11 control trials involving 833 folks who exercised indoors vs. those who exercised out, and found that the latter experienced “greater feelings of revitalisation (Peninsula is in the UK) increased energy and positive engagement, together with decreases in tension, confusion, anger and depression.” They also liked exercising outdoors better than in.

Read more here

A five-year study of 288 seniors (ages 60-79) in Davidson, Forsyth and Guilford counties found that those who walked regularly and lose weight improved their mobility by as much as 20 percent. The Wake Forest University study divided the seniors into three groups: a control group   that was lectured about healthy living but not directed to do so proactively, a group whose physical activity levels were upped and a group that walked and was put on a weight-loss program. The walkers/dieters should significant improvement in their mobility, increasing from 5 percent to 20 percent based on how long it took them to walk 400 meters. (The 400-meter walk is considered a gold standard in senior mobility: Those who can’t walk that far are significantly more likely to lose their independence.)

Wake partnered with the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service and health care centers in the three counties to conduct the study. Read more here.

* * *

Worried your child isn’t getting enough physical activity? You might try getting him to buddy up with the neighborhood jock. A study at the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences in the University of Bristol’s School for Policy Study found that kids whose best friends were active tended to be more active themselves. The study focused on 10- and 11-year-olds.

A no-brainer, perhaps, and odds are that if your child’s best friend is active, your child is inclined to be active as well. Still, good to know. Read more here.

While we’re on the topic of making big kids smaller, you might be wise to resist the urge to wake your slumbering spawn on Saturday mornings. A study published in yesterday’s issue of the journal Pediatrics reports that getting sufficient sleep can help kids fight obesity. Among other things, the study found that kids whose BMI was in the “obese” range slept fewer hours every night, showed more significant variations in how long they slept on weeknights vs. the weekend and exhibited “inconsistent sleep patterns.” The study, which you can learn more about here, found that catching up on sleep over the weekend also reduced the likelihood of obesity.

So let ‘em sleep in this Saturday. They can clean their room in the afternoon.

At the time, I thought I was pulling a fast one (in addition to saving my sanity). But according to a study published in the Jan. 12 online edition of the European Heart Journal, I was actually SAVING MY LIFE!

Sorry for the all-caps drama. But for someone whose butt was glued to a chair from 8 to 5, those short breaks, it turns out, were staving off The Big One down the line.

The study arose out of scientific curiosity about the fact that people in developed countries tend to spend more than half their day seated and the fact that heart disease is the No. 1 cause of premature death in the United States and Europe. Could there by a relationship, researchers wondered? Four years (2003-2006) and 4,800 male and female study participants later, the study concluded that indeed there was. Further, the study found that even if you religiously hit the gym before or after work, but don’t get up from your desk during the workday, you still had a higher risk for heart trouble down the line.

“Even if you exercise for 30 to 60 minutes a day, what you do for the rest of the day may also be important for your cardiovascular health,” Genevieve N. Healy, of the Cancer Prevention Research Centre at in the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland in Herston, Australia, told the online MedlinePlus. “This research suggests that even small changes to a person's activity levels [as little as standing up regularly] might help to lower cardiovascular risk. These changes can be readily incorporated into the person's day-to-day life. Stand up, move more, more often, could be used as a slogan to help get this message across.”

So the next time Mr. Dithers whines that he couldn’t find you at your desk, look him square in the eye and ask why he wants to see you keel over from a heart attack at your desk. Or, if you really want to appeal to his base instincts, ask why he wants to see you under the care of a heart specialist, on pricey subscription drugs, running up the tab on the company health plan.

Enjoy your new health breaks.

For details ion the study, go here.

Photo: Run! RUN! (Or at least get up once an hour and take a five-minute stretch.)

Act I: Leave it to poor cholesterol

The scene: Lunchtime at Grant Avenue Grammar School as Larry and Gilbert sit down to eat. Let’s listen.

Gilbert: Lunchables?
Larry: Yeah, why?
Gilbert: Ya knucklehead! Don’t you realize that the lifestyle choices you make today can have a profound effect on your cholesterol levels as an adult? Hey, there’s Judy! Load up a spitwad in your straw, would ya?

Hopefully Larry followed Gilbert’s sound advice (on the lifestyle choices, not the spitwad), for a study by researchers at the University of Tasmania in Australia and Finland’s University of Turku has found that smart lifestyle choices made in adolescence can affect cholesterol later in life. Researchers tested the cholesterol and triglyceride levels of 539 youngsters — aged 9, 12 or 15 — in 1985 (they also recorded their height, weight, waist circumference, skin-fold thickness and smoking behaviors). In 2005, they remeasured the now not-so-youngsters and found  that the ones who had good LDL, HDL and total cholesterol levels as kids only maintained those levels if they ate wisely and didn’t smoke; the kids who let themselves go saw their cholesterol levels go to pot. Similarly, the kids with poor readings in youth were able to improve their cholesterol levels through good living.

"Our findings are important for two reasons,”wrote the study’s authors. “First, they suggest that beneficial changes in modifiable risk factors (smoking and adiposity) in the time between youth and adulthood have the potential to shift those with high-risk blood lipid and lipoprotein levels in youth to low-risk levels in adulthood. Second, they emphasize that preventive programs aimed at those who do not have high-risk blood lipid and lipoprotein levels in youth are equally important if the proportion of adults with high-risk levels is to be reduced."

For more info, go here.

Act II: Of changing voices and devastating deltoids

The scene: It’s after school at Robert F. Kennedy Jr. High School as 7th graders Kevin and Paul decide what to do.

Kevin: We could ride our Stingrays downtown to see if any new comic books are in.
Paul: Ya, ya, we could. But I feel like getting pumped up instead.

And that, despite a persistent but erroneous belief that weight training in youth may inhibit bone growth, would be a good after-school activity for a 12-year-old. In fact, medical non-profits from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the American College of Sports Medicine agree that weight training can help prevent injuries, improve sports performance, play a key role in rehabilitating an injury and enhance long-term health no matter one’s age. Studies back up the notion (including a University of Connecticut probe that found that teenage boys who engaged in Olympic style weightlifting had bone mineral density values 20 percent to 35 percent higher than their non-lifting peers) and gyms are starting to encourage supervised lifting programs for youths.

Here’s a good first-hand account by a father of a weightlifting 12-year-old who’s also a certified strength and conditioning coach.

Act III: The ultimate energy drink?

The scene: A highchair in anyhouse USA. A 3-month-old aspiring Olympian watches annoyed as his mom plucks a bottle of formula from the fridge and warms it on the stove.

Annoyed 3-month-old (via a thought bubble): What’s she trying to do, kill my chances for gold in the high jump at the 2032 Olympics!?

It’s true, according to a study of 2,567 adolescents by the University of Granada, those who were breastfed wound up with stronger leg muscles.

The study has more far-reaching implications than simply fueling a field of extra-good high jumpers. Read more here.

Photo: Easy on the gravy, Beav.

Move more and eat better in 2011 using these seven simple strategies:

1. Mix it up. The big trend in fitness isn't one thing, it's everything. Avoid drudgery, avoid stressing the same muscles and work your entire body by doing a variety of workouts. "Incorporating several different forms of exercise in a training program can be an excellent way to develop the various components of fitness," according to the American Council on Exercise. If your goal is to lose weight, varying your exercise regimen — walking one day, lifting weights the next, taking a Zumba class after that — keeps your muscles from becoming too efficient at any one exercise and thus burning fewer calories.

Bikes have changed since you were a kid.

2. Find what works. If you don't enjoy it, you won't do it. Think, personal trainers advise, about what you like to do, or what you liked to do in the past. Did you love riding your bike as a kid? A preponderance of fun-to-ride bikes — from the aptly named "comfort" bikes to speedier and more aggressive urban bikes — has flooded the market, and with nearly 150 miles of greenway in the Triangle, it's easy for the grown-up you to rekindle your childhood love. Or maybe you get so caught up in the joy of dance you don't realize you've had a good workout until the following morning. Zumba, dance exercise with a Latin zing, and Nia, a marriage of dance, the martial arts and the "healing arts,"  are two popular dance options.

3. Eat smart, eat simple. It's a paradox, but the more we learn about food, the poorer we seem to eat. Good-eating advocate and author Michael Pollan writes in his latest book, "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual," "for all the scientific and pseudoscientific food baggage we've taken on in recent years, we still don't know what we should be eating." Pollan, whose "In Defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma" were both best-sellers, doesn't claim to have all the answers, but his "Food Rules" offers 64 succinct suggestions for common-sense eating. They range from "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" to "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle" (fresh food generally lines the walls, processed foods are in the aisles). Some suggestions are only a sentence; none takes up more than a page.

4. Try the unthinkable. Running, for instance. Few exercises elicit a more visceral negative reaction than running. Yet an increasing number of people who find their metabolism slowing as they pass 40 are turning to running as a way to keep the pounds off. Consider: A 170-pound person who walks three miles in an hour will burn 337 calories; that same person will burn more than twice that many calories (775) running six miles in an hour. One reason running doesn't seem as arduous anymore: an explosion of walk-to-run programs. A walk-to-run 5K program takes nonrunners and, over the course of 12 weeks, converts their walks into runs to the point that they can run an entire 5K (3.1 miles).

5. It's a lifestyle, not a quick fix. There's a reason programs such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and TOPS have been around so long while the all-grapefruits-all-the-time diet fads quickly fade. Fad diets — promising fast results based on a quick fix — may work in the short term, but once you've dropped that 20 pounds, you're back to your old, bad habits. Programs that focus on changing behavior have a better chance of helping you lose weight and keep it off. According to WebMD.com, a healthy weight-loss program should include a daily minimum of 1,000 to 1,200 calories for women and 1,200 to 1,600 for men; promote slow, gradual weight loss, generally 1 to 2 pounds a week; offer flexibility in food offerings; and not cut back on your recommended daily allowance of vitamins, minerals and proteins.

"Marge, there's a Twinkee banging on my front door! What should I do?

6. Find a support group. Look at it as misery loves company, if you must, but knowing you're not alone in any challenge can make a difference. According to the Mayo Clinic, "A support group can help you cope better and feel less isolated as you make connections with others facing similar challenges." In a convenience store getting hit on by Little Debbies? A fellow dieter who can talk you down is just a cell phone call away. And for those times after a long day of work when you don't think you have the strength for Pilates? The guilt of knowing your classmates are gutting it out should be enough to get your butt in gear.

7. Persevere. Losing weight, moving more and adopting a healthier lifestyle aren't easy. It won't happen, in a healthy way, over night. And studies have shown that most resolutions fall by the wayside before January is over. But if you slip up, don't throw in the towel. According to a study by the University of Scranton, 71 percent of people surveyed who achieved their resolution slipped up at least once (and usually early on, in January). So you miss a day at the gym or a seductive slice of cheesecake crushes your vow of no desserts? Look at why you slipped up — maybe five days a week at the gym is too much with your schedule, maybe one dessert a week isn't a bad thing — and adjust if you think it will help you reach your goal, and carry on.