Staying thin by staying cool

It's always nice when something that you do for your pocketbook (dialing down the thermostat) has benefits to the environment and now, to you personally! Besides reducing the amount of fuel used to heat my home, research now shows a potential health benefit too - weight loss!

I'd suspected that more was at play this past year in my loss of poundage than the braces I had that limited my eating. Now I can trace my loss to burning more calories staying warm in my house during the brutally cold winters.

Never one to have the heat set too high, this year it went down two degrees from 67 to 65. And that made a difference in my bill, and perhaps in my body weight. The following story from the New York Times explains why...

HEALTH
Well: Central Heating May Be Making Us Fat
By By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: January 26, 2011
Turning down the thermostat may help us lose weight, some scientists say.

More food info

As of the first of the year, cuts of meat sold in stores will now have to contain nutrition information. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. Some friends raise grass fed beef cattle and sell it and fortunately they can just go online and download a generic label for grass fed beef that shows the standard nutrition facts. However, it doesn't show a lot too. Like what was the animal fed? Was it given hormones and antibiotics? Was it stressed in life and at slaughter? These thing impact the quality of the meat and are as important as the amount of fat, cholesterol and protein. Too bad it won't be part of the label's requirements so everyone can make really informed choices.

Listen to the NPR story.