It's Official: Chocolate Helps You Lose Weight

SKY NEWS

Chocolate lovers no longer have to fear the flab as eating more can help you keep slim, new research claims.

A study has found that despite boosting calorie intake, regular chocolate consumption is related to lower body mass index (BMI).[READ MORE]

“VP Namadi Sambo Knows about My Connection With Boko Haram” – Senator Ndume

Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume who is currently under going prosecution for supporting/financing the dreaded Boko Haram sect and with-holding vital security information from security agencies had fingered the vice president as being in the know about his (Ndume) transactions and contacts with the sect.[READ MORE]

Woman Sacrifices Her Only Daughter to River Goddess Awube for More Children

Idenyi Abbah, a middle aged woman residing at Anumajogwu, in Ogbadibo Local Government Area of Benue State has confessed to killing her 8-year-old daughter, Enyanwu, because she wanted more children.[READ MORE]

Don't Be a Martyr! 10 Steps to Letting Go

Finding a balance between what you give and what you get in your relationships is essential to your happiness, health and well-being. From co-workers to friendships to family, take Dr. Robert Holden's Sacrifice Test to identify the key reasons behind the sacrifices you're making in your relationships. Once you have your results, use these 10 powerful exercises to help you let go so that you can finally say yes to a more beautiful life.  [read more]

Just Say What You Want, Dammit! How to Speak Up

Hanging back, dropping hints, and generally mousing around gets you nowhere and drives other people nuts. Here's what you should do instead.

"I want my husband to have more sex with me," a girlfriend remarks at lunch. "I feel like he rarely initiates it, and I want to do it more often."

"Did you tell him how you feel?" I ask, after the waiters have administered strong smelling salts and propped me back in my chair. "Don't you think that the first step might be saying that to him instead of me?"

"Honestly, I could never," she responds. "He would assume I was dissatisfied or accuse me of being a nag. But I've been buying lots of silk lingerie and sheer little nighties and making sure I look my best at bedtime, hoping to pique his interest. Besides, it's not like I necessarily want to have more sex per se, I just want him to want me to."
[READ MORE]

Why It's Really Okay to Mess Up

                                                                                                            Here we are, a quarter of the way through 2012, and the resolutions I made on New Year's Day are really starting to pay off! I love getting up before sunrise for 90 minutes of yoga and meditation—almost as much as I love being vegan! Fresh seaweed energizes me so much that it's easy to stay on top of all my work and still (finally!) learn Russian! And right now, if you're not thinking, "Can't she come up with a better April Fools' joke?" it's because your sense of humor is clogged with Pinot Grigio or OxyContin or walrus blubber or whatever else you resolved—and failed—to quit this year. [read more]                                                                                                         

Dear Every Woman I Know, Including Me

There's never a better time to start loving yourself than right now.

  |   few years ago, I was at a lunch for the launch of a TV show called How to Look Good Naked. (Do I need to say that the host was a slim gay man and the soon-to-be-almost-naked were all women? Can we even imagine a show in which men try to improve their appearance before the big reveal in the boudoir?) The middle-aged woman sitting next to me almost spat out her white wine. "How to look good naked?" she said. "Wear clothes!"

I wish that helped. But after so many years of being female, I've come to the conclusion that a healthy, positive body image is hard to find, and neither caftans nor liposuction nor Photoshopping is the answer.

This seems to be one of those puzzles you can tackle from any angle, a Rubik's cube of bad feelings, unhealthy attitudes, and unforeseen consequences. (It's great that we shifted away from the preceding centuries' proscription against women exercising and getting sweaty. But who knew we'd wind up in a world in which we're expected to weight train ourselves back into "bikini ready" shape six weeks after giving birth?)

This is not a tirade against the tabloids or the beauty industry. The tabloids produce crap, but people (mostly women) buy it: pictures of the overweight (they've let themselves go!), the enhanced and shapely (you, too, can look like this if you eat garlic and grapefruit!), and the shame-on-her-for-getting-too-skinny (as if no tabloid editor can imagine how a six-foot starlet came to think 130 pounds is obese). The beauty industry sees opportunity and shoots for it. The question is, how do we keep ourselves from being the opportunity, from seeing the mirror—and food, and other women—as the enemy? And how do we make all this stuff less terrible for our daughters, our nieces, the 19-year-old who feels her life will be ruined without breast implants?

I don't expect little girls and teenagers to fend for themselves in this matter; we have to save them and—just as if we're on a plunging airplane—we have to start by saving ourselves. We need to make friends with the mirror. Even if it's DIY aversive therapy, in which you look at yourself in the mirror for one minute one day, then two the next, then three, you have to be able to bear the sight of yourself. (Must you bend over a compact and closely examine the drooping underside of your chin? No.) You cannot be a healthy person, let alone hope for healthy children, if you sigh and moan every time you encounter your own image, eat a cookie, or see an airbrushed supermodel on a billboard. Even if it amounts to wholesale pretending—go pretend. Walk around pretending to be a woman who likes her body. Pretend you think your thighs are not disgusting appurtenances but normal, flesh-covered limbs that help you get from place to place. Likewise your not-so-taut arms and not-so-flat tummy. Because every step toward self-love you take, and every inch of confidence you give someone's daughter, makes the world a better place.

So stop. Stop talking to the girls in your life about "healthy eating" if what you actually mean is, "Your 11-year-old stomach isn't flat and it freaks me out." They will hear what you mean; they will not believe a dinner of four grilled shrimp and a spoonful of blueberries is really healthy. (Psychology research shows that even 5-year-old girls know a diet when they see it.) Stop criticizing other women's bodies for sport or to soothe yourself.

And start. Start admiring aloud the things you really do admire. Show what you love and value. If you think Marta of Brazil is fantastic, put up her poster and get a group together to watch women's soccer. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Hillary Clinton or Aung San Suu Kyi is your hero, say so.

I take these small steps myself—most days—not out of virtue, but out of vanity. My hobby is watching people, and what I see is that even the most Botoxed, lipo'd, lifted woman cannot conceal herself. If you hate yourself, it shows through every cream and cure there is. Until we stop trying to exorcise our own imperfect selves, driving out normal physical traits as if they were signs of pathology, there will always be some misery in the eyes that nothing can hide.

You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful. .

12 Things I'm Too Stubborn to Tell My Mother

Between mothers and daughters, there's love—and a whole lot of other stuff. How do you undo past misunderstandings? One woman gives it a shot.

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Photo: Courtesy of Leigh Newman

1. Regarding the broken Art Deco hand mirror in the bathroom: I broke it. I apologize. There were only two of us living in our house, you and me. Who did I think I was fooling with that ghost story?

2. I too now say "you're plucking my nerves" to my children, especially when they are having water-splashing contests in the kitchen—right next to my cell phone. [read more]

‘I hate it when women don’t dress their age’

Kelechi Okere's love for making clothes pitched her against her father who wanted her to study Law at all costs because he felt she would make a great lawyer. As a woman who knew what she wanted in life, she spent her holidays and strike periods during her University days to make clothes for her friends and acquired two sewing machines before she left school.

In a chat with Daily Sun, the CEO of GZK opened up on the challenges confronting the fashion industry, and what she dislikes about a woman's style. Excerpts:[read more]

Women should be empowered to stand against any form of abuse

Even through she was attacked in her Port Harcourt home, some years ago the Amazon of the Niger Delta agitation, Annkio Briggs has no plans to slow down in addressing the issues facing her people.
Briggs, the spokesperson of Ijaw Republican Assembly and United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy (UNDEDSS) doesn't care for her life especially when she is fighting for a good cause.{read here}

Modern Kindness: 9 Day-Brightening Stories of Generosity

From spare change to vital organs, these tales of everyday giving will put a smile on your face—and inspire you to pay it forward.

By sisi-rosa[read more]