How To Fake Before-After Weight-Loss Photos

5 Foods That Raise Your HDL

So you got the results of your recent cholesterol test, and your HDL cholesterol came back low. Since low HDL is a risk factor for heart disease, you know that you need to elevate it...but how? When all the stories you read are talking about lowering your total cholesterol, why would you want to increase this form of cholesterol? 

HDL (high density lipoprotein) is the "good" cholesterol. It acts like a cholesterol dump truck, gathering "bad" cholesterol from the arteries and carrying it back to the liver for clearance. This heart protective effect may even slow the buildup of plaque in the arterial walls of the heart. HDL may also have some anti-inflammatory effects that are beneficial to your heart. That's why you want your HDL to be high, so it can better carry out these responsibilities and protect your ticker. 

What should my HDL be?

According to the American Heart Association, men should aim for HDL levels of 40 mg/dL or greater, and women should aim higher than 50 mg/dL. Levels of 60 mg/dL or more for both genders have been linked to lower disease risks and protection against heart disease. Genetics can affect your HDL level, but lifestyle choices still also play a role. If you want to fight your genes and improve your HDL levels, the following foods can help. 

Nuts

Walnuts, almonds, peanuts, pistachios, pecans, peanuts, and hazelnuts are all good sources of heart-healthy fats and are great to add to your diet to increase your intake. Add nuts to cereal, yogurt, salad, stir fries, pasta dishes or rice. You can eat them raw, baked or lightly toasted, too. 

Seafood

Fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, albacore tuna, and halibut are highest in omega-3 fatty acids, a specific type of unsaturated fat shown to be most beneficial for heart health and reduce the risk of death by heart attack. It is recommended to eat at least 2 servings of fish per week. If you don't eat seafood, you could try fish oil supplements; flaxseed and walnuts contain omega 3’s as well, but fish contains the most usable form of omega-3s.

Olive Oil

Olive oil is high in unsaturated fats and can help you elevate your HDL. Replace butter and fried foods with foods cooked lightly in a heart-healthy olive oil, and switch to an oil-based vinaigrette for your salads. Oil is healthy, but it's high in fat and calories, so remember to practice moderation and keep your portions in check! 

Avocado

Although many dieters shy away from this fruit because of its high fat content, it's perfectly good for you thanks to its heart-healthy fats. Mash avocado to use as a spread on your sandwich or wrap, dice it into your salad, add it to omelets or whip up some homemade guacamole to enjoy with veggies or whole grain crackers. 

Oatmeal

Fiber, especially soluble fiber, can help bump up your HDL while reducing LDL. Oatmeal is an excellent source of soluble fiber, as is rice, bran, barley, dried peas and beans, and certain fruits like prunes and apples. A couple servings a day of these heart-healthy foods can have a positive effect on your HDL. 

Don't Forget Exercise!

Along with these HDL-boosting foods, don’t forget the daily exercise! Regular exercise signals your body to produce more HDL, making physical activity one of the most important factors to raising your HDL. Start with just 5-10 minutes a few days a week, but gradually increase until you're active for at least 30 minutes 5 days per week. Your heart will thank you! 

DVD Rippers - Try DVDFab HD Decrypter

Introduction

While a CD ripper is commonly used for copying raw digital audio from a CD to a file encoded in MP3 or other audio formats, a DVD ripper is usually used for copying the audio and video content of a DVD to a file encoded in AVI, MP4, MPEG, WMV or other video formats. The ripped file saves in a hard disk or other media device for further editing, backup, sharing or playback without the need to load a DVD. If you have a collection of DVD movies or music videos and want to extract a chapter or make a full backup copy from a DVD to a video file in selected format, these are the free DVD rippers you might be looking for. After testing several free DVD rippers, I find it’s really hard to say which one is the best. Perhaps A supports numerous outputs. But it only rips part of the protected DVDs. Maybe B is powerful enough to rip the latest protected DVDs. However, the features are difficult to understand for beginners. Hence, you are welcome to comment below with your own experience. Let’s work together to make this category better and better.

 

Discussion

Handbrake: general-purpose, open-source, cross-platform and multithreaded DVD ripper HandBrake is a good choice. It is an open source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD ripper or video transcoder, available for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. The latest version is released on May.18, 2013. It now has a GitHub Mirror. The program has a relatively small file size for all the features that it offers. Despite the slow speeds it transcodes at using the CPU to do the job, the transcoded video is surprisingly good quality for the amount of time it takes to rip. However, if you have a graphics driver installed that supports Open GL, it will take a rather small fraction of time to transcode the content. Handbrake produces an MPEG-4 file which is compatible with a wide range of media players. Note that you’ll need to have the right codecs installed for the type of file you wish to convert however such as DivX, Xvid, OGM, 3ivx, etc. A very great feature is Handbrake is designed with preconfigured profiles for Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod and Apple TV. It also provides numerous video and audio parameter settings for advanced users to alter the file size and video quality accordingly. However, unencrypted-protection methods including CSS are not supported internally and must be handled externally with third-party software and libraries. That is to say, Handbrake can rip SOME of your commercial DVDs.

WinX DVD Ripper: fast rip DVD to MP4 WMV MPEG Music iPod iPhone Android HTC Samsung WinX DVD Ripper is also an up-to-date free DVD ripping software designed for PC. The latest version is 5.5.12 built on May.13, 2013. From the interface, you may notice it supports ripping DVD to MP4, H.264, WMV, MPEG, MOV, FLV, Music, iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, PSP, HTC and Samsung Galaxy Tab. The profile for AVI is removed which could be seen in earlier versions. But objectively speaking, its features fall in with popular demand. The most attractive feature, to me, WAS its ability to rip encrypted DVDs. I tested WinX DVD Ripper with quite a few encrypted DVDs last year, old and new, and it worked without any problem. But it looks like the developer “weakened” its decryption capacity in the recent versions. That is to say, if the DVD you want to rip is encrypted by Disney X-project DRM, etc, the program is not able to read it. Two options: 1. Use other programs to decrypt the DVD to hard drive first, and then make use of WinX. (Two steps.) 2. Wait for the next update. It might work like it used to.

DVDFab HD Decrypter: remove all the DVD protections and copy DVD to hard drive DVDFab HD Decrypter (latest version 8.2.2.8 built on Feb.26, 2013), as its name indicates, enables you to remove DVD protections and copy the DVD content to hard drive. It comes with two Copy modes so that you can either copy the full disc or just copy the main movie. I tested it with a few DVDs including Chronicle and The Hunger Game. The protection was removed nicely and a video folder (VIDEO_TS) was produced quickly. Just like WinX DVD Ripper which has a premium edition, this HD Decrypter is just a free portion of the DVDFab application. You need to purchase other advanced features in order to output more formats, such as ripping DVD to MP4, WMV, iPhone, iPad, etc. Due to this reason, it looks like a "big" program. But actually it is very easy to handle.

DVD Shrink: easy-to-use solution for shrinking original DVDs onto recordable media Another alternative is DVD Shrink . It is able to rip DVD to your hard drive as video files or as an ISO image. Then you can burn the output files by integrating with Nero or other DVD burning software. What makes this program unique is its ability to compress DVD data to the standard 4.7-gig DVD. You will rarely, if ever, notice any decrease in video quality. The latest version is 3.2.0.15 built in July 2004. The UI looks “unfashionable” today. But personally, I like its considerate and friendly design very much. It lists the DVD structure including Menus, Main Movie and Unreferenced Materials. This means you can easily choose which parts of the DVD you want to include for ripping and shrinking. It’s a nice feature for you to leave out unwanted bonus features, audio data for languages, etc. DVD Shrink offers built-in decryption algorithms to “read” encrypted DVDs. Unfortunately, as it stopped updating in 2004, some recent copy protection methods are not supported. I tested Transformers 2 and UP. It freezed when analyzing the DVD info. Non-encrypted DVDs work perfectly.

Format Factory: rip DVDs and mucis CDs to video file as well as create ISO images Format Factory also won votes from us. The strongest point of this program lies in its support of converting numerous file formats, including video to video, audio to audio, DVD to video, and also image to image. The latest version (v3.0.0 built on Oct.15, 2012) supports up to 60 different languages which further makes it a global application. This program supports converting videos to mobile devices as can be seen on the top of the Video column on the left side. 20+ mobile devices or mobile device compatible formats are available, including Apple, Sony, Google, Nokia, etc. It's really convenient for some folks who wanna playing various videos on their portable devices. (However, when loading ISO file as source video, it failed.) In addition to converting videos, FormatFactory also acts as a DVD/CD ripper. But the output format seems a little bit limited. It only supports ripping DVD to ISO/CSO file. What's more, it can’t rip DVDs with CSS according to my test. (But perhaps it supports some old CSS protected DVDs, I guess.)

Freemake Video Converter: multifunctional media converter to rip DVD to AVI, MP4, WMW, MKV, MPEG Someone suggests adding Freemake Video Converter to the review list. When talking about this freeware, I must firstly mention its all-round video converting features. It supports 200+ input videos which cover almost all popular video formats users would require. Besides converting from one video format to another, it's also capable of converting videos to portable devices, such as iPad, iPhone, iPod, Android, PSP, Blackberry, etc. By Pasting URL, you can convert online videos from 50+ sites. That's really an impressive feature to simplify the converting task. But when comes to another ability – ripping DVD, I’m afraid, this application is not all satisfying. It can rip DVD to AVI, WMV, MP4, MPEG, MKV, FLV, SWF, 3GP, but it doesn't support encrypted DVDs. It crashes on almost all my commercial DVDs such as UP and Thor. I feel sorry if this review doesn't fit "the Best Free DVD Ripper" category. I just personally wish the developer can improve its DVD ripping function and make it as powerful as its video conversion ability.

Getting past the weight-loss plateau

The numbers on the scale are not budging — no matter what you do. They were moving so fast before — what happened?

Anyone who has ever been on a diet knows about hitting a plateau. It’s the barrier that comes after you’ve lost the initial weight, and you can’t seem to lose another ounce. The plateau typically happens after six months of dieting.

Try the following tips to break through your plateau:

Acceptance and expectation management

Weight-loss programs typically produce a 10 percent weight loss. But many people don’t find this acceptable. You can probably achieve the weight you want, and reset your metabolism, but it takes time. Expect a two-year process.

Increase protein consumption

Foods that are high in protein slow the movement of food through the gastrointestinal tract, and slower stomach emptying means you feel full longer and get hungrier later. Make sure to keep your meat (no visible fat and portion controlled) and poultry (white meat, no skin) lean. Egg whites are a great low-cal source of protein. Also nuts, seeds, beans and legumes are super healthy, but nuts and seeds are very high in fat (although it’s good fat), so limit portion sizes.

It’s not just numbers

Don’t just focus on the numbers. Do you have a little extra zip? Are you sleeping better? Feeling healthier? You are probably continuing to benefit from your workout and diet even if you are not seeing losing weight.

Increase physical activity — a lot

You need to increase the duration or intensity of your current workout. Walk at least 60 to 90 minutes per day, even if you have to break it up.

Strength training

Lifting weights builds muscle mass, and muscles are more active than fat when it comes to burning calories.

Change your exercise routine

Your body adapts to repetitive training stimuli. Change your routine every two weeks. Try some new exercises, and change the intensity of your workouts.

Social support / find a buddy

No matter how motivated you are when you start a new regimen, you should have someone there to keep you from becoming discouraged.

Write it down, take a photo or use an app

We typically underestimate calories in foods by as much as 45 percent. A food diary will provide a heightened self-awareness, which is an early step toward behavior change. There are now many smartphone apps and other tools to help you to keep track.

Too much fruit

Fruits typically are higher in sugar than vegetables, and vegetables are generally lower in calories on a per-gram basis. Fruits are still an important part of your diet, but you should not consider fruit a free food. Most non-starchy vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, peppers and celery, are very low in calories and sugar, and you can usually eat as much of them as you like without worrying about your weight.

Watch your alcohol

Many dieters forget that drinks have calories — lots of them. The alcohol is what contains most of the calories, so the lower the alcohol content, the lower the number of calories.

Stick to beer or wine. Alcohol is packed with calories, but when you add mixers — soda, juice, syrup and other ingredients — watch out! Skip anything creamy, frozen or fruity.

Gerrymander

When I saw this cartoon, I was shocked to see that the original gerrymandered district dated to 1812.  You would think that we had better things to do at the time (e.g., conduct the War of 1812) than do this.

The original gerrymander: Massachusetts legislature, circa 1812

The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette on 26 March 1812. The word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under the then-governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced /ˈɡɛri/; 1744–1814). In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a salamander. The term was a portmanteau of the governor's last name and the word salamander. The redistricting was a notable success: in the 1812 election, both the Massachusetts House and governorship were won by Federalists by a comfortable margin (costing Gerry his seat), but the senate remained firmly in Democratic-Republican hands.

A portmanteau (i/pɔrtˈmæntoʊ/, /ˌpɔrtmænˈtoʊ/; plural portmanteaux or portmanteaus) or portmanteau word is a combination of two (or more) words or morphemes, and their definitions, into one new word.[1][2] The English is derived from Frenchportemanteau (portmanteau luggage which has two compartments). A portmanteau word fuses both the sounds and the meanings of its components, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or the term "wurly" to describe hair that is both wavy and curly. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph which represents two or more morphemes.

American Gigolo

I was watching the third season of Doctor Finlay, and the semi-retired Doctor told a patient that she could cure her backache by hanging from the rafters by her fingertips for five minutes a day.  This rang a bell because hanging by my feet with gravity boots solved a back problem that I had since childhood.
Of course, my use of gravity boots came from American Gigolo.  Unfortunately, I never resembled Richard Gere.

Hot Trailer: ‘Austenland’

Keri Russell strays just a weensy bit from her badass Soviet spy character in FX’s The Americans for her latest film role. In the Sundance rom-comAustenland, she plays Jane, a single gal with a borderline-unhealthy Jane Austen obsession who’s looking for her very own Mr. Darcy. She books a pricey stay at the resort billed as “the world’s only immersive Austen experience,” but — having bought the lowest-level Austenland package — she is relegated to the servants’ quarters. Jane is determined, though: “An Austen heroine gets engaged by the end of the book,” she asserts. “That is what I am going to do.” J.J. Feild, Bret McKenzie, Jennifer Coolidge and Jane Seymour also star in the pic directed by Jerusha Hess, who co-scripted with the source novel’s author Shannon Hale. Produced by (Twihard alert!) Stephenie Meyer, Gina Mingacci and Meghan Hibbett, the Sony Pictures Classics film opens August 16. The first trailer:

Sondheim - A Few Theater DOs & DON'Ts

Joseph (Joseph In Egypt - 1995) Paul Mercurio

Five-Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

 

Introduction

This mug cake is perfect for when you want a little something sweet.

Number of Servings: 1

Ingredients

1 coffee mug
2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar 
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 serving packaged egg whites
2 tablespoons skim milk
2 teaspoons oil
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla

Directions

Mix the dry ingredients in the mug.
Mix the wet ingredients in a separate small bowl, then pour into the mug and stir just until combined.
Microwave for 3 minutes on high. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired. 

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 1
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 223.9

• Total Fat: 5.6 g
• Cholesterol: 0.6 mg
• Sodium: 163.9 mg
• Total Carbs: 42.4 g
• Dietary Fiber: 3.7 g
• Protein: 6.0 g

View full nutritional breakdown of Five-Minute Chocolate Mug Cake calories by ingredient

Henry VII's Descendants

Henry and Elizabeth's children are pictured below.

Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, first husband of Catherine of Aragon.

Margaret Tudor, wife of King James IV of Scotlandand great grandmother of
James I of England.

Henry VII's elder surviving daughter Margaret was married first to James IV of Scotland (reigned 1488–1513). Their son became James V of Scotland (reigned 1513–42), whose daughter became Mary, Queen of Scots (reigned 1542–67). Margaret Tudor's second marriage was to Archibald Douglas; their grandson, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley married Mary, Queen of Scots. Their son, James VI of Scotland (reigned 1567–1625), inherited the throne of England as James I (reigned 1603–25) after the death of Henry's granddaughter, Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603). (After divorcing Douglas, her third and final marriage was to Henry Stewart, with whom she had another daughter, Dorothea Stewart.) The daughter of James I/VI, Elizabeth Stuart, was the mother of Sophia of Hanover whose descendants were the monarchs of the House of Hanover and the succeeding House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Windsor.

Henry VIII of England, Henry VII's successor.

Mary Tudor, Queen of France and subsequently wife of Charles Brandon.

Henry VII's other surviving daughter, Mary first married King Louis XII of France (reigned 1498–1515), who died after only about three months of marriage. She then married the Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, without the permission of her brother, now King Henry VIII. Their daughter Frances married Henry Grey, and her children included Lady Jane Grey, in whose name her parents and in-laws tried to seize the throne after Edward VI of England (reigned 1547–53) died.

Drink more water, lose more weight?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Dieters who drink more water have greater weight loss, according to a new review of several prior studies.

In one study that asked dieters to drink water before a meal, for instance, "the water enhanced the weight loss," said Brenda Davy, a professor at Virginia Tech who led some of the work included in the review.

Researchers said there is not yet enough evidence, however, to say for sure that drinking more water will help people shed the pounds.

Rebecca Muckelbauer, a researcher at the Berlin School of Public Health, Charité University Medical Center Berlin in Germany, led the new review of the water studies.

She said that, as a nutrition researcher, people had often asked her about whether they should drink water to lose weight, and she didn't know the answer.

She and her colleagues decided to examine all of the studies on weight and water consumption.

Eleven studies fit their criteria.

Three of them showed that increased water intake among dieters was tied to greater weight loss.

A study by Davy's group found that middle aged and older adults who drank two cups before a meal lost about four pounds more than a group that didn't drink the extra water.

Yet another study found that women who increased their water consumption while they dieted lost more weight than those who kept it below one liter a day.

It's not clear how water might help people shed pounds.

One possibility, said Davy, is that water could squelch feelings of hunger.

"This may have helped them reduce their calorie intake," she told Reuters Health.

Muckelbauer agreed that increased fullness is the most likely explanation, but another possibility is something called "water-induced thermogenesis."

The idea is that "drinking water itself increases energy expenditure of your body. It has an energy consuming effect. This is not very well studied," Muckelbauer told Reuters Health.

The Institute of Medicine recommends that adults consume between 91 ounces of water for women and 125 ounces for men (2.7 - 3.7 liters) each day, but this total can come through food, plain water or other beverages.

While the experimental studies suggest that drinking water may aid in weight loss, the surveys Muckelbauer examined don't always show that people who drink more water are slimmer.

In fact, some found that obese or overweight adults drank more water than people of normal size, while others did not find such a link, Muckelbauer's team reports in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"We don't have conclusive evidence that increasing water intake reduces weight, but there are certainly other benefits to increasing our intake," said Davy.

She said people in the U.S. typically drink about 400 to 500 calories a day from other beverages, and replacing them with water is not a bad idea.

One study found that women who drink water, rather than sweet drinks, had a slightly lower chance of developing diabetes (see Reuters Health story of May 31, 2012 here:).

And women who don't drink plenty of water have greater odds of getting kidney stones (see Reuters Health report of March 29, 2012 here:).

"There's not a lot of risk for recommending (increased water intake) for individuals," Davy said.

Muckelbauer said it will be helpful to have larger experiments looking at the potential weight loss benefits of adding more water to the diet.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/17EdiFq The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online June 26, 2013.

7 Ways To Lose Weight Without Exercise

Keeping weight off is tough

Getting people to lose weight and keep it off is extremely hard, and some research has shown that over time many dieters regain most of the weight they've lost.

Some people don't view obesity as a disease but as a condition caused by poor choices, says obesity researcher Donna Ryan. They think that obese people can simply eat less and exercise more to lose weight. They believe it's all about "personal choice," but the research shows that the biology of obesity is not that simple, she says.

During the weight-loss effort and after a person loses weight, there's a cascade of biological responses in their body designed to thwart weight loss and return them to their pre-diet weight levels. For example, leptin, the driver of fullness hormones, plummets; the hunger hormone ghrelin goes up and other appetite signals start "raging," which makes dieters feel really hungry, she says.

"Leptin is a big driver in obesity," Ryan says. "If you lose 15% of your body weight, leptin is going to drop by 65%, which means your body thinks it's starving.

"On top of that, your metabolic rate (the calories you burn at rest) is lower. If, say, you lose 10% of your starting weight, your metabolic rate is reduced by 20% because your thyroid hormone drops," she says.

But there are ways to combat your biology, she says. Research shows that people who successfully lose weight and keep it off do enough physical activity each day to burn up about 450 calories to compensate for their lower metabolism, Ryan says. You've really got to really move. "This is not strolling around with the dog."

Exercise changes the way fat is stored

Rigorous exercise is known as the best way to burn off some excess calories, but it may also bring another advantage – it helps to change the way fat is stored in the first place.

Scientists found that six months of regular exercise, such as cycling or aerobics classes, changed the action of genes involved in the storage of fat and the development of obesity.

The exercise added and removed chemical groups to the DNA in a process known as epigenetic imprinting, or methylation, causing the genes to be switched on or off.

The researchers found more than 7,000 genes were affected in this way as a result of exercise in overweight volunteers.

They also found that key genes involved in storing sugar from blood stream inside fat cells have their activity reduced by the exercise.

Dr Charlotte Ling, a diabetes expert at Lund University in Sweden, said: “Our study shows the positive effects of exercise, because the epigenetic pattern of genes that affect fat storage in the body changes.

To Hellenikon - The Greek Thing (Who Were The Greeks?)

Herodotus stated the main characteristics that defined Greek identity: common blood, common language,common  shrines & rituals, and common customs. Plato said of the Greeks, “Like frogs around a pond, we have settled down upon the shores of this sea.”

New York City Fireworks Display

A History of Britain

Edward VI (1537 - 1553) & Mary I (1516 - 1558)

Edward VI (1537 - 1553)

Edward was king of England for only a few years, and died at 15, but his short reign saw the full-scale introduction of Protestantism.

Edward was born on 12 October 1537 at Hampton Court Palace, the only legitimate son of Henry VIII. Henry's desperation for a son had led him to divorce two wives, but Edward's mother, Henry's third wife Jane Seymour, died a few days after his birth. Edward was given a rigorous education and was intellectually precocious, although his health was never strong.

Edward became king at the age of nine, when his father died in January 1547. His father had arranged that a council of regency should rule on his behalf, but Edward's uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, took power and established himself as protector. Somerset and the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, were intent on making England a truly Protestant state, supported by the young king. An English Prayer Book was issued in 1549 with an Act of Uniformity to enforce it.

In the summer of 1549, peasants in the West Country revolted in protest against the Prayer Book. Kett's Rebellion in Norfolk was focused on economic and social injustices. At the same time, the French declared war on England. The Norfolk rebellion was suppressed by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick. In the atmosphere of uncertainty, Dudley exploited his success by bringing about the downfall of Somerset, who was arrested and later executed. Although Dudley, later duke of Northumberland, never took the title of protector, this is the role he now assumed. Protestant reform was stepped up - the new Prayer Book of 1552 was avowedly Protestant. Altars were turned into tables, religious imagery destroyed and religious orthodoxy was enforced by a new and more stringent Act of Uniformity.

It soon became clear that Edward was suffering from tuberculosis and would not live long. Northumberland was determined that his religious reforms should not be undone, so he persuaded Edward to approve a new order of succession. This declared Mary illegitimate and passed the throne to Northumberland's daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, who was a more distant descendant of Henry VIII. Edward died on 6 July 1553. However, Jane was only queen for a few days until, with overwhelming popular support, Mary took the throne.

Mary I (1516 - 1558)

The first queen to rule England in her own right, she was known as 'Bloody Mary' for her persecution of Protestants in a vain attempt to restore Catholicism in England.

Mary was born at Greenwich on 18 February 1516, the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Her life was radically altered when Henry divorced Catherine to marry Anne Boleyn. He claimed that the marriage was incestuous and illegal, as Catherine had been married to his dead brother, Arthur. The pope disagreed, resulting in Henry's break with Rome and the establishment of the Church of England.

Henry's allegations of incest effectively bastardised Mary. After Anne Boleyn bore Henry another daughter, Elizabeth, Mary was forbidden access to her parents and stripped of her title of princess. Mary never saw her mother again. With Anne Boleyn's fall, there was a chance of reconciliation between father and daughter, but Mary refused to recognise her father as head of the church. She eventually agreed to submit to her father and Mary returned to court and was given a household suitable to her position. She was named as heir to the throne after her younger brother Edward, born in 1537.

Edward VI succeeded his father in 1547 and, under the protectorate of the Duke of Northumberland, zealously promoted Protestantism. Mary, however, remained a devout Catholic. When it became clear that Edward was dying, Northumberland made plans for his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, to take the throne in Mary's place.

On Edward's death in 1553, Jane was briefly acclaimed queen. But Mary had widespread popular support and within days made a triumphal entry into London. Once queen, she was determined to re-impose Catholicism and marry Philip II of Spain. Neither policy was popular. Philip was Spanish and therefore distrusted, and many in England now had a vested interest in the prosperity of the Protestant church, having received church lands and money after Henry dissolved the monasteries.

In 1554, Mary crushed a rebellion led by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Making the most of her advantage, she married Philip, pressed on with the restoration of Catholicism and revived the laws against heresy. Over the next three years, hundreds of Protestants were burned at the stake. This provoked disillusionment with Mary, deepened by an unsuccessful war against France which led to the loss of Calais, England's last possession in France, in January 1558. Childless, sick and deserted by Philip, Mary died on 17 November 1558. Her hopes for a Catholic England died with her.

Apple Cider vinegar For Fat Reduction

One of the most trusted natural products to increase your overall health is apple cider vinegar. In use since the time of the Ancient Greeks, apple cider vinegar has been reported to cure everything from colds to muscle pain.

With body image becoming such an important factor in modern life, apple cider vinegar has been explored as a possible fat burner. Its ability to speed up the metabolic process as well as support healthy digestion has caused many to declare it the next major supplement in the field of weight loss.

Apple cider vinegar contains acetic acid and pectin which help block the absorption of fat while ridding the body of cholesterol. Your body is aided in burning calories throughout the day with your small intestines absorbing less fat overall, causing them to be more effective. There is also a great number of minerals found in apple cider vinegar including iron, calcium and potassium used to support healthy bones, hair and teeth.
Vinegar itself can sometimes act as an appetite suppressant with the ability to regulate blood sugar levels. If a person's blood sugar level is stable, he or she is less likely to fall victim to a sugar crash. The first reaction to a sugar crash is to grab the nearest source of carbohydrates to shoot your blood sugar back up. The problem is usually the quickest carbohydrate you grab isn't going to be healthy for you. Apple cider vinegar regulating those levels prevents a person from grabbing something that may inhibit their weight loss goals.

Studies have shown apple cider vinegar also plays a role in the levels of cholesterol in the body. One study found rats who were fed food mixed with apple cider vinegar experienced lower levels of LDL (“bad”) and HDL (“good”) cholesterol.

Adding as little as 1,500 mg per day will help you not only burn fat but may help promote good blood circulation, improve metabolism and relieve arthritis stiffness.

The supplement doesn’t have to be taken only in its liquid form to be effective, however. Due to the rather bitter taste of vinegar, companies have begun to offer it in capsule form.

Apple cider vinegar has shown to be most effective when used in combination with other elements. Creating a salad dressing, which normally has bitter tendencies, with apple cider vinegar masks the taste more than ingesting the vinegar directly.

No matter your reason for trying apple cider vinegar, it remains highly recommended for so many health reasons, you really can’t lose.