Weight

When roasted at 475 degrees, coffee beans are sometimes described as rich and full-bodied. But for the full-bodied person who is not so rich, unroasted coffee beans - green as the day they were picked - may hold the key to cheap and effective weight loss, new research suggests. In a study presented Tuesday at the American Chemical Society's spring national meeting in San Diego, 16 overweight young adults took, by turns, a low dose of green coffee bean extract, a high dose of the supplement, and a placebo.

In one instance, Metta World Peace defended Mike Brown's coaching job after the Lakers lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder in five games in the Western Conference semifinals. In another, he quickly poked fun at Brown."It was a drastic change. It was big getting used to, but at the same time we should still be up 3-2," World Peace said. "Mike wasn't out there guarding Kevin [Durant]. That was me. Kevin scored on me. Mike didn't throw turnovers at the end of the game.

Until recently, very few people had ever heard of raspberry ketones, the aromatic compounds that give the berries their distinctive smell. Today, health food stores have trouble keeping the capsules or drops of the stuff on their shelves. Almost overnight, an obscure plant compound became the next big thing in weight loss - and all it took was a few words from Dr. Oz. In a February episode of "The Dr. Oz Show," Mehmet Oz told viewers that raspberry ketones were "the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. " Once Oz calls something a "miracle," it doesn't remain obscure for long.

Billionaire Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, sent his Falcon 9 rocket into space early Tuesday morning with an unmanned Dragon capsule after an original mission was aborted over the weekend. How’s he feeling? Extremely relieved. After the rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. at 3.44 a.m., Musk tweeted: “Falcon flew perfectly!! Dragon in orbit, comm locked and solar arrays active!!

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era. It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence. A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity - and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. Just eat your cake - or better yet, an apple - earlier.

WASHINGTON - Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana said they improved his strength and posture. Celebrity Kim Kardashian boasted they allowed her to ditch her personal trainer. But federal and state officials said the rocker-bottom Shape-ups and other toning shoes made by Skechers USA Inc. don't live up to the hype from the company and its high-profile endorsers. On Wednesday, the Manhattan Beach company agreed to pay $50 million to settle false-advertising allegations by the Federal Trade Commission and the attorneys general of 44 states, including California, as well as the District of Columbia.

BMW has been striving to reconcile its dueling images for years. Best known for its luxurious, sport-oriented cars, the German manufacturer's motorcycles are only beginning to shed their reputation as wheels for safety-conscious old men, thanks to exciting new bikes like the S 1000 RR and K 1600 LT. At this weekend's International Motorcycle Shows event in Long Beach, BMW is likely to confuse its image even further when its first scooters make...

It was evidently good enough for Gilligan and Robinson Crusoe. But is coconut water a healthy choice for people who aren't stranded on a deserted island? A longstanding treat in tropical regions across the globe, coconut water hit U.S. supermarkets a few years back and is now being marketed with a vengeance. Sometimes billed as nature's sports drink, the slightly sour beverage has also acquired a reputation for being able to improve circulation, slow aging, fight viruses, boost immunity, and reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke.

You look fat in that. Of course I'll be late. Your baby reminds me of Gollum's uncle. This is what the 2013 Subaru BRZ might say if it could talk. The all-new, rear-wheel-drive sports car starts at $26,265, and boy is it honest - perhaps more so than any other car on the market today, save for its mechanical twin, the Scion FR-S. The two were jointly developed by Subaru and Scion's parent company, Toyota, with both assembled by Subaru in Japan. The question about the BRZ is, can you handle the honesty?

Rats fed fructose-laced drinking water for six weeks performed more slowly in a maze-navigating task, UCLA researchers have found. (Read this L.A. Times opinion article .) They think the effect is due to changes in the way the brain responds to insulin as a result of exposure to fructose. “Our study shows that a high fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body,” study senior author and UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla said in a release about the finding, which was published in the Journal of Physiology (postdoc Rahul Agrawal was first author)

Re "A wait control approach," May 18 Talk about unrealistic. The study suggesting that allowing 16 hours between dinner and the next meal will help you lose weight is ridiculous. Assuming you finish dinner as early as 6 p.m. (unlikely, especially if you prepare it after work), waiting 16 hours until the next meal means 10 a.m., too late for breakfast before work or school. And skipping breakfast is associated with weight gain, according to many other studies. Avoiding snacks after dinner is good advice, but otherwise the article is yet another reminder that we are not rats.

For postmenopausal women who are obese, breast cancer is more likely. That's because fat tissue seems to behave essentially as an organ of the endocrine system, pumping out the hormone estrogen. And estrogen is a driver of many common breast cancers. But losing as little as 5% of one's body weight - 10 pounds for a 200-pound woman - drives down levels of estrogen and other hormones that raise breast cancer risk, a new study finds. In combination with weight loss, exercise drove down hormone levels even more, an effect that is likely to reduce a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era. It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence. A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity - and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. Just eat your cake - or better yet, an apple - earlier.

'The Weight of the Nation' Where: HBO When: Parts 1 and 2: 8 and 9:10 p.m. Monday Parts 3 and 4: 8 and 9:10 p.m. Tuesday Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children) 'For Kids' 8 p.m. Wednesday Rating: TV-G (suitable for all ages)

The proposed weight-loss drug Lorcaserin, rebuffed in its bid for Food and Drug Administration approval last October, on Thursday won a recommendation of approval from the agency's advisory committee, a major step toward winning the FDA's go-ahead to enter the U.S. market. If the agency follows the advice of the panel of independent experts--which is common but not routine-- Lorcaserin would become the first new prescription weight-loss drug to go on the U.S. market since Orlistat (now marketed over-the-counter as Alli)

Next week, the combined efforts of an entertainment giant, a health insurance titan, a group of academic heavyweights, a technology philanthropist and two federal agencies bring forth “The Weight of the Nation,” a four-hour, four-part HBO documentary that gives the nation's obesity crisis a face. The program, produced in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's “Weight of the Nation” conference in Washington, D.C., balances on a knife's edge between determined hope and realistic discouragement.

Tris O'Shaughnessy runs on a regular basis: four to five days a week, for 30 to 45 minutes at a time. Every once in a while, though, she ratchets up her routine, extending her workouts or training for a race. It's then that she notices a change in her behavior. She'll treat herself to eggs Benedict and a Bloody Mary at brunch, margaritas with dinner or extra cookies for dessert. "The way I get myself in the mood is I have to bribe myself. I go hog wild. If I want brownies for dinner, I have brownies for dinner," she says.

A high-fat, high-sugar diet does more than pump calories into your body. It also alters the composition of bacteria in your intestines, making it easier to gain weight and harder to lose it, research in mice suggests. And the changeover can happen in as little as 24 hours, according to a report Wednesday in the new journal Science Translational Medicine. Many factors play a role in the propensity to gain weight, including genetics, physical activity and the environment, as well as food choices.

The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030, experts said Monday. Kicking off a government-led conference on the public health ramifications of all those expanding waistlines, the authors of a new report estimated that the cost of treating those additional obese people for diabetes, heart disease and other medical conditions would add up to nearly $550 billion over the next two decades.

An Italian court has upheld an order for the seizure of a masterpiece of the J. Paul Getty Museum's antiquities collection, finding that the bronze statue of a victorious athlete was illegally exported from Italy before the museum purchased it for $4 million in 1976. The ruling Thursday by a regional magistrate in Pesaro will likely prolong the legal battle over the statue, a signature piece of the Getty's embattled antiquities collection whose return Italian authorities have sought for years.