Tis the season to be jolly! Here are a few fun facts regarding the holiday season in the U.S. that you may not know: 1. Nine in 10 Americans say they celebrate Christmas while 32% view it as more of a cultural holiday than a religious one. 2. USPS will deliver 16 billion holiday letters, packages, and cards. 3. Over 100 million Americans will travel for the holidays this year. 4. 86% of Americans say they buy holiday gifts for family or friends. 5. Americans aim to spend an average of $935.58 each during the holiday shopping season this year. 6. Total holiday sales are expected to be over $655 billion. 7. 85% of Americans say they will probably give someone candy as a gift. 8. Americans eat about 3,000 calories worth of food during a typical holiday dinner. 9. 22 million turkeys are eaten for Christmas. 10. Americans bought nearly 26 million real Christmas trees last year and more than 13 billion fake ones. The facts I found most surprising were #7 and #8 abov...

It's Halloween today. That means a few things are certain: (1) Costumed children (2) Lots of candy (3) Election Day looms ahead  -- finally!  (4) The end of the year draws near. Once we hit the end of October, it really feels like the end of the year is just around the corner. On Sunday, we'll be turning the clocks back an hour. Before we know it, we'll find ourselves working on holiday shopping lists and itineraries.  Halloween falls on a Monday this year, which seems rather odd, doesn't it? Many people opted to attend Halloween parties over the weekend in lieu of trick-or-treating on a school night. I see Halloween as officially kicking off the holiday season. You'll notice that many retailers have been stocking their shelves not only with Halloween merchandise, but Christmas ornaments and decorations as well. Their strategy is obvious: Market all the holidays in one fell swoop.  To be sure, it's a smart move on the part of these merchants, as...

It's often been said -- and I believed this myself before conducting further research  -- that calories eaten at night are more fattening than those eaten early in the day. This seems logical given that we're closer to bedtime, and our bodies are mostly inactive during sleep. For this reason, many people are often advised to eat heavy breakfasts and very light dinners. But this isn't the case. Doctors and dietitians say that calories are calories, no matter what time you eat them. In reality, what matters are the total calories you take in. Weight gain is simply eating more calories than you burn; it doesn't matter whether it takes place at 7 a.m. or 11 p.m. What and how much you eat, coupled with any physical activity over the course of the day, ultimately determine whether you gain, lose, or maintain your weight. People eat at night for a host of reasons often unrelated to hunger, like coping with boredom or stress. And after-dinner snacks tend not to be con...