1 . Do you love holidays but hate the increase in weight that follows? You are not alone.

Holidays are happy days with pleasure and delicious foods.Many people，however，are worried about the weight that comes along with these delicious foods.

With proper planning，though，it is possible to control your weight.The idea is to enjoy the holidays but not to eat too much.You don’t have to turn away from the foods that you enjoy.The following suggestions may be of some help to you.

Don’t miss meals.Before you leave home for a feast (宴会)，have a small，low­fat snack.This may help to keep you from getting too excited before delicious foods.

Begin with clear soup and fruit or vegetables.

A large glass of water before you eat may help you feel full.

Use a small plate; a large plate will encourage you to have more than enough.

Better not have high­fat foods.Dishes that look oily or creamy have much fat in them.

Choose lean meat.Fill your plate with salad and green vegetables.

If you have a sweet tooth，try mints(薄荷) and fruit.They don’t have fat content as cream and chocolate.

Don’t let exercise take a break during the holidays.A 20­minute walk after a meal can help burn off excess calories(多余的热量).

3 . Do you think you would work out more if you were offered money to do so? Science has shown that money can give people motivation to work out, but perhaps not in the way that you think.

According to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine Journal, the best strategy isn’t offering money; it’s giving someone money, then threatening to take it away.

Researchers gave 281 people the goal of walking 7,000 steps every day over 13 weeks.

To motivate the people who took part to reach the goal, researchers divided them into three groups.

People in the first group received $1,40(9 yuan) each day as long as they finished 7,000 steps, the second group was only able to collect the $1.40 if they had reached 7,000 steps the day before, and the third group was given $42 at the beginning of each month and $1.40 was taken away every time someone failed to meet the goal.

The third group met their daily fitness goals 50 percent more often than the other two groups, showing that people were most motivated to walk by the fear of losing money.

“People are more motivated by losses than gains, and they like immediate gratification.” study author Dr Mitesh Patel, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, told CNN. “They want to be rewarded today, not next year or far into the future.”

Our brains tend to avoid wanting to lose things more than they try to get the benefits from gaining them, Patel explained. “It makes people think like the money is theirs to lose from day one.”

In addition, in most programs, many participants will drop out quickly and only the motivated will stay involved, Patel said.

“In ours, we were pleasantly surprised that 96 percent stayed.” he added.

The study provides evidence that what matters is not only the money incentive （激励）, but also how you think about them. This is important to how effective they are. The evidence could have a big effect on health promotion programs in the future, according to the study.

“Incentives themselves are not all you need,” Stephanie Pronk, a health and wellness consultant with the Aonplc corporation, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s really important to change up the incentive design and keep people on their toes.”

8 . Can exercise during childhood protect you against memory loss many decades later? Exercise early in life seems to have lifelong benefits for the brain, in rats at least.

“This is an animal study, but it shows that physical activity at a young age is very important—not just for physical development, but for the whole lifelong track of cognitive（认知的）development during ageing,”says Martin Wojtowicz of the University of Toronto, Canada.“ In humans, it may delay the appearance of Alzheimer's symptoms（阿茨海默氏症）, possibly to the point of preventing them.”

Wojtowicz’s team divided 80 young male rats into two equal groups, and placed running wheels in the cages of one group for a period of six weeks. Around four months later—when the rats had reached middle age—the team taught all the rats to connect an electric shock with being in a specific. When placed in the box, they froze with fear.

Two weeks later, the team tested the rats in three situations: exactly the same box in the same room, the same box with the room arranged differently, and a completely different box in a different room.

The rats without access to a running wheel when they were young now froze the same percentage of times in each of these situations, suggesting they couldn't remember which one was dangerous. But those that had been able to run in their youth froze 40 to 50 percent less in both changed box settings.

"The results suggest the amount of physical activity when we're young, at least for rats, has influence on brain and cognitive health—in the form of better memories—when we're older," says Arthur Kramer of Northeastern University in Boston, who has found that, in humans, exercise promotes the growth of new brain cells.