Vegan Recipe: Red Shepherdess Pie

This recipe will serve 4 people generously and has approximately 500 calories per serving. Not bad for a deliciously comforting winter treat! If any of the vegetables in the ingredients don't appeal or you just don't have it on hand you can substitute them for one of your faves. In fact, this is a very handy meal to make at the end of the week when you need to use up any left over fresh veggies, and it will give you a healthy start to the weekend!

Vegan Recipe: Roast Squash Cassoulet with a Breadcrumb Crust

This squash recipe is well worth the time and effort; it's really tasty and super nutritious! The entire cooking time is almost 2 and a half hours but it can be pre-made and frozen (without the crust), or put in the fridge for the next evenings meal. It's great served with fresh steamed vegetables for a dinner that's full of goodness and has under 500 calories per serving. The measurements below feeds 6 people.

Why having low Vitamin D levels may slow down weight loss

The 8 Foods you NEED to be Eating

If we're honest, the majority of the time we spend focused on our diet is for the sole purpose of getting firmer abs and reducing ass wobble. That is all well and good, but it means we might well be missing out on the other spectacular things food can do for us. Below are 8 foods that have incredible effects on the body ranging from preventing wrinkles to preventing cancer.

The Biggest Loser is back for season 11!

It's the 8th of January and I'm already openly admitting that I've broken a New Years resolution! I don't feel guilty about it though as I almost see it as part of my workout routine…The resolution was not watching TV as much (or at all - if possible) and I've broken it by watching the first episode of the latest season of The Biggest Loser!

Drink Water to lose weight and tone up!

How well hydrated are you? We all need 2 litres of water a day to keep ourselves in tip top health. If you drink just 5% less than the recommended daily amount of water it will affect your mental and physical performance by 20-30%. Water is the most important nutrient for the body, after oxygen, and is vital for all life forms. Did you know that we can survive for 4-6 weeks without food but only 3 days without water?

10 Things You Didn't Know About Trans Fats

We all know that trans fats are bad for us because...well, we hear it everywhere. Most of us know that it's in fast food and it should be avoided, but that's about as far as our knowledge goes. The other day someone asked me what exactly trans fats were and I explained that it is a man-made, or chemically altered, fat that causes huge problems to our insides. We talked a bit more and I realised aside from that I didn't know a whole lot else so I had a dig around and found out some pretty interesting things.

Emma's New Year's Resolution!

Although I agree with Julia that forming good habits should not just be one day a year, I find New Years is a great time to actually stop and think about the things that need to change. I can get so wrapped up in whatever I'm doing all year long that I forget to take a look and around me and evaluate whether those things I do absent-mindedly need changing. Over the last week I've been making a real effort to think about it and I've come up with my resolutions for 2011!

Julia's New Years Resolution

My New Year’s resolution for 2011...is to not make a New Years resolution!

Most people do not have the will power to make their New Year resolution last longer than a few weeks, according to research anyway. I can remember turning up at my local gym for a workout early one January. The place was packed and I couldn’t get on any of the machines and one of the instructors said to me, very scathingly, that he would eat his own sweaty shorts if 90% of the new members brought their sparkling new trainers back for a second week...How right he was!

Sugar And It’s Health Hazards: Pure White Poison?

Refined into granules, sugar contains no fibre, no minerals, no proteins, no fats, no enzymes. Processed from sugar beet or sugar cane into white crystals, chemically called C12H22O, the resulting substance is an addictive, calorific, non-food that the average British or American person eats 150 lbs of per year. Before the turn of this century, sugar consumption was only 5 lb per year, and diseases such as cancer were virtually unknown. Now that’s something to think about.