Kefir Kommunity

If you’re having a difficult time sticking to your New Year’s resolution to lose 10 pounds, there might be someone – or some thing – to blame, other than your penchant for late night snacking. New research out of Emory University, Cornell University and the University of Colorado at Boulder suggests that intestinal bacteria called gut microflora may be conspiring against you, making your store excess fat when all you want is to be thin.

First Lady Michelle Obama is on a mission to help reduce the growing number of overweight and obese children in the United States. Among the “shocking statistics” driving her in this initiative: “One in three kids are obese in this nation,” she told Matt Lauer on the Today Show in early February. “And the numbers go up when you’re talking about the African-American and Hispanic communities. The most shocking sort of reality that really hits you is that, because the young generation is on track for the first time in this nation’s history of being less healthy, having a shorter life span than their parents.”

The big game is less than a week away. But while taco tip and clever commercials may have you salivating already, all too often the fare at SB parties is full of fat, calories and little nutrition.

You know the New Year has officially begun when the gym is packed, enough women are lined up for the locker room scale to make you think you’re in CostCo, and ads for the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet and the Dole Banana Dietare popping up like a bad case of chicken pox.

“I’m going to ditch my muffin top.”

“No more cancer sticks for me!”

“2010 will be the year I stop being such a lazy Blackberry-addicted couch potato.”

New Years resolutions like these are a dime-a-dozen and typically get kicked to the curb – many within just 48 hours of 2010, according to a recent study. Screaming to your girlfriends, “THIS is the year I’m going to find a husband, have a baby, get a promotion, lose 26 pounds and find a cure for cancer” over the nightclub blare of Auld Lang Syne may seem realistic at the time, but after the champagne wears off, you’ll realize that you’re chasing after the impossible. Why not start the year off right with more achievable, realistic goals? Wanna shed some pounds? We applaud the effort. Trying to reduce stress in your life? We need to do that, too. These goals are absolutely doable, it’s just a matter of going about it in a smart manner.

 No one likes to think about bacteria crawling around inside our stomachs, but the fact is, they’re there, and they’re not going away anytime soon. Normally, the bacteria are the good kind helping our bodies run smoothly and efficiently. Certain bacteria even help determines if the food you eat is stored as fat or burned off for energy. But according to a new study, the food you eat can affect these weight-related bacteria, in turn making it harder to shed pounds. The really scary thing? The change can happen with just one meal, meaning, as ThatsFit.com put it, “even if you normally eat nothing but salads, one junk food binge may cause a serious shift in your body making it easier to pack on the pounds.”