【推荐1】Anyone who’s tried different weight-loss diets is probably familiar with their pitfalls. Low-calorie diets often leave you tired and hungry. Low-fat diets are also tough to follow and, contrary lo popular belief, they do not seem lo prevent heart disease.

Another diet trend, intermittent fasting, takes a different approach. Rather than limiting what you cat, this diet limits when you cat. It normally involves eating only during a certain time window, usually eight hours, over a single day. For example, you would eat only during the hours of 9 a. m. to 5 p. m. and then fast during the other 16 hours. For some people, thal change may be easier to manage,says Dr. Eric Rim, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Short-termism studies suggest that people stick to intermittent fasting diets as well as or better than they do to other diets. And according to a 2019 review article in the journal Nutrients, intermittent fasting promotes weight loss and may reduce risk factors linked to heart disease, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and unhealthy blood lipid levels.

“However, we are currently unsure about how well this diet works over the long term,”says Dr. Rim, noting that there are just two long-term studies of intermittent fasting,each lasting a year. Nor are there large populations of people who’ve followed this eating pattern for years. That’s in contrast to two other diets linked to a healthy heart and healthy body size—the Mediterranean diet and a vegetarian diet.

Some experts add that intermittent fasting diets typically don’t specify what foods you should eat. ”As a nutritional epidemiologist, that makes me a little uncomfortable,“ Dr. David Mushen admits. Eating burgers and French fries five days a week and a single breakfast sandwich on your low-calorie day wouldn’t be-healthy, he says. But with any diet, it’s often a good idea to ease into the changes. You could start by trying a 5:2 diet or time-resisted eating. Once you start losing weight, you can gradually introduce more healthy foods, he suggests.

【推荐2】Parents often tell kids that playing video games will harm their brains. But last June a study found the opposite — certain video games can give your brain help. Researchers from the University of Montreal, in Canada, asked a group of people to play Super Mario 64 for 90 hours over the course of about 10 weeks. They found that those people experienced growth in the part of the brain that is responsible for memory.

But many people think that there’s nothing good about looking at a screen for hours at a time. They say that playing sports, reading, and doing other activities can give you the same benefits that playing video games does. Plus, some video games can be harmful. The study from the University of Montreal also found that playing shooter games like Call of Duty has a different influence from playing Super Mario 64 — it causes the area of the brain that’s responsible for memory to shrink.

Here’s what two of our readers think.

Playing video games can be beneficial because it requires skills like problem-solving, strategic thinking, and sometimes teamwork. A study by researchers at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, found that playing video games improves your communication skills and ability to find ways to solves problems. Video games can also help you become more creative. For example, Minecraft requires you to think outside the box and build things with materials you never even knew existed. Yo can build your dream house! Some schools are even using Minecraft to teach topics like math and computer science.

—Mackenzle Reldy, Nebraska

Playing video games takes time away from other more important things. I used to spend a lot of time playing them. Sometimes that kept me from doing things I needed to do, like studying my spelling words. Playing video games can also be bad for your health. Last year, researchers studied kids and teens in Canada who play video games. They found a connection between playing video games for hours before going to bed and being overweight.

—Devin Lewis, Arizona