Health tips for the "Loosers Weight Group"

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•All About YOU: Don't Confuse Hunger with Thirst

The reason people eat is because their satiety centers are begging for attention.

But sometimes, those appetite centers want things for quenching thirst, not filling the stomach. Here's how to figure out what your body is really asking for.

Quench or Crunch?

Thirst could be caused by hormones in the gut that produce feelings much like hunger cravings. To figure out what your body really needs when you feel hungry, drink a glass or two of water. If the craving goes away and you feel more satisfied, you have your answer.

Satiety Training

Thirst could also be a chemical response to eating; eating food increases the thickness of your blood, and your body senses the need to dilute it. A great way to avoid confusing your hormonal reaction to food is to make sure that your response to thirst activation doesn't contain empty calories -- like the ones in soft drinks or alcohol. Your thirst center doesn't care whether it's getting zero-calorie water or a megacalorie frappé.

•Grapes Kick Out the Nasties

If you need another reason to pull some grapes off the bunch, you just might have one.

Grapes contain chemical cousins -- pterostilbene and resveratrol -- that work as a cleanup crew, mopping up nasty free radicals in your body so they're less likely to cause problems such as heart disease and cancer

Protective Phenols In a study of mice, pterostilbene and resveratrol -- phenolic compounds found mainly in grape skins -- had an antioxidant-like knack for knocking out breast cancer cell processes. It's early news though; researchers still need to examine how the grape compounds affect human cancer cells.

Great Grape Nutrients

But we already know that the resveratrol in grapes has heart-protective properties, regardless of its effect on cancer. And grapes have lots of other good things going for them -- like anthocyanins, which attack disease-fostering inflammation, and vitamin C. So don't wait for further evidence before improving your health with a juicy bunch.

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And if you freeze grapes, they are a great snack on a hot day.