Weight drops, mood soars

A big reason many of us want to lose weight is simply to feel better-happier, healthier, more at ease, more energized. Now there's evidence a twist on lowcarb eating not only speeds off fat, "it can lead to remarkable mood improvements," says Georgia Ede, M.D., Harvard-trained author of Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind. Consider this: When scientists recently put seniors on a low-carb plan enhanced with nuts, they lost 14.8 times more weight and saw spirits soar 6.89 times higher than traditional low-cal dieters. As a bonus, "when well-being increases that much, sustaining healthy changes becomes easier long-term," notes Dr. Ede. Colorado grandmother Ashley Malik is living proof. Four years after dropping five sizes and reversing prediabetes, Ashley's still lean and flying high. Read on for her inspiring story and to learn how to get your own waist-shrinking, joy-boosting results.

- ALLISON NEMETZ

Can nuts really give us an edge as we slim down? The UC-San Francisco study we just told you about got our attention because it demonstrated how much nuts seemed to help dieters in their 70s, a stage of life when many people struggle to drop pounds. Meanwhile, other labs report similar findings. The UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, for example, set out to determine if snacking on mixed nuts "would cause weight gain due to increased calories and high-fat content," shares lead investigator Zhaoping Li, M.D. Nuts not only led to weight loss and better heart health but, to everyone's surprise, brighter moods. Intrigued, the UCLA team conducted additional tests. Turns out, nuts, with all their fiber and polyphenol antioxidants, feed bacteria in our guts that help us make feel-good brain chemicals. "Participants in the study who ate nuts had higher levels of serotonin," Dr. Li reveals. "When your serotonin levels are higher, you are, overall, in a happier mood."

For anyone who isn't sensitive or allergic, nuts can add this feel-good factor to most healthy diets. But if you're aiming to be seven times more joyful while burning 15 times more flab like dieters in the UC-San Fran experiment, consider adding them to a wholesome lower-carb approach...

"It Worked For Me"

Ashley lost 5 sizes!