Poor posture not only causes you to look 10 pounds heavier and feel less confident ... it also hurts! Check out this video from Stacy McCarthy, the yoga expert from She's Active Health Network. Stacy offers up a few simple stretches you can do anywhere at anytime to get you standing as tall as you should.

For more fun, quick, tips and recipes from degreed experts ...

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Reality TV star and socialite Kelly Osbourne hasn't been in the spotlight much these days, but she's recently been spotted looking slim and trim at various star-studded events. According to Life and Style Magazine, here's how she lost weight and improved her health all at once:

• She munches on Organic fruits and veggies throughout the day
• She cut out her main vice food -- cookies
  
• She quit eating late at night
• She cut out beer
• She kept her caloric intake between 1,200 and 1,500 a day.
  

I'm not a fan of calorie counting, but her other diet tips sound healthy and effective. What do you think?

(via Celebrity Diet Doctor)

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Here's a pretty eye-opening fact: To lose a pound, you need to burn 3,500 calories. How can you burn 3,500 calories? Well, you can run ... for five hours. You can also do aerobics for seven hours, play the guitar for 14 hours or dance for eight hours. But who has the time -- or energy -- to do all that?

My point is this: exercise is great but it takes a lot of work to lose weight. And unless you have an abundance of free time, you'll have to tweak your diet too. If you do the math, you'll realize that by reducing your caloric intake by 500 calories a day, you'll be consuming 3,500 calories less a week, which--if your current diet allows you to maintain your weight -- should result in a weight loss of one pound a week. But it can be done -- with a little dedication.

Thanks for the info, Fitsugar!

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We all know someone like her and we all want to be her -- the woman who never gains a pound, and who never even has to think about her weight. She's just naturally slim. That cow.

OK, jealousy aside, we can all learn something from her, because good genes aside, she must be doing something differently from the rest of us. Our friends over at AOL Health recently revealed the secrets of these naturally thin women. On average, thin women tend to ...

• Get more sleep
• Eat until they're satisfied, instead of eating until they're totally stuffed
• See hunger as a minor inconvenience, not a major emergency -- meaning they can wait until a healthy option becomes available
• Not engage in emotional eating
• Eat more fruits, veggies and other healthy stuff
• Stick to a loose eating routine, rather than letting chance (and cravings) dictate the next meal
• Think twice about indulgences -- particularly if they're not hungry
• Walk a lot -- two and a half hours more per day than the average woman, in fact!

These make sense, don't they? Tell us which one you stuggle with by clicking here.

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When it comes to weight loss, slow and steady wins the race. But what do you do if you only have a week to squeeze into your thin jeans?

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So there's no argument that this is the single biggest time of the year for new weight loss plans and renewed conviction, but there is some argument over the many diet pills that are now lining the shelves in thicker numbers than ever before. The majority of weight-loss pills out there make some kind of promise to speed up your metabolism, because if your metabolism is going faster you'll burn more calories, right? Not really, according to this article at least.

The argument isn't so much that the theory itself is wrong, but more that it's been outrageously exaggerated. The truth? Yes, you will burn more calories in a day -- like 2 more. Who knows how many extra calories really get burned in a day as a result of a metabolism-boosting pill, but the point is that it's such an insignificant number it really won't help you lose weight.

So a new resolution to lose weight and get in shape is awesome, but when making it a reality consider steering clear of the many gimmick weight loss pills you'll see everywhere. Unless, of course, you find one that really helps you feel less hungry, or gives you extra energy for working out -- just don't count on it working miracles and burning all kinds of extra calories while you sleep!

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Recently two studies have uncovered a connection between obesity and bacteria present in the intestines. Both obese mice and obese people had a much higher percentage of a specific family of bacteria called Bacteroidetes in their gut than their normal-weight counterparts, and much less of a bacteria group called Firmicutes. But unfortunately researchers don't know yet if the balance shift in internal bacteria causes obesity, or is simply a result of it.

Obesity research in this area, coined "infectobesity," is growing rapidly and looks at the causes and treatments for weight gain in relation to microbes and viruses. The idea is also spreading to other areas of health, such as diabetes and asthma. And apparently, many researchers are backing off the idea of fighting with naturally occurring internal bacteria, and instead are embracing the idea and working with the microbes to help patients feel and be feel healthier -- and possibly feel and be thinner too.

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