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    SHAPE magazine

    SHAPE magazine

  • Is Coconut Butter the New Coconut Oil?

    Coconut oil spinoffs have also gained popularity, with the most prominent being coconut butter. This is because it's made up of more than 90 percent saturated fats, which solidify at room temperature. Coconut butter, on the other hand, contains similar nutritional characteristics, but since it is comprised of pureed, raw coconut meat-not only the oil-it is not made exclusively of fat. One tablespoon of coconut butter provides 2 grams of fiber as well as small amounts of potassium, magnesium, and iron.

  • The Other Woman: Why Female Friendships Matter

    The Other Woman, in theaters Friday, tells the story of three very different women-Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, and Kate Upton-who think they've found the love of their lives. The script is hilarious, features Hollywood hunks like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Taylor Kinney, but above all else, it's a film about friendship.

  • Is Caffeine Turning You into a Monster?

    And while the caffeine boost may seem to help combat stress at first, it may also push you to move too fast and too furious (seriously, why are you mad?), which can ultimately sabotage your performance. This probably seems insane, but stress often helps you power through the hardest days at work. Add caffeine to the mix for an extra jolt of energy, and you may feel unstoppable-or perhaps like a runaway train. "Caffeine is one of the safer stimulants out there," says Christopher N. Ochner, PhD, assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

  • Is Self-Confidence at an All-Time Low?

    To start, we live in a culture that perpetuates judgment based on looks and weight, says Jennifer Lombardi, executive director of the Sacremento-based Eating Recovery Center of California. It starts early, with children as young as five learning that being "thin" or "skinny" is good and being "fat" is bad, she says.

  • You've Been Breathing Wrong Your Entire Life

    "We're all born knowing how to inhale and exhale correctly, but with today's technology, hurried schedules, and everyday stress, most of us have lost that ability," says Belisa Vranich, Psy.D., author of the new book, Breathe: 14 Days to Oxygenating, Recharging, and Fueling Your Body & Brain. "As a result, most of us 'under-breathe' in a dysfunctional way." And this dysfunctional breathing can make you feel winded during CrossFit or after climbing a few flights of stairs, no matter how fit you are. Oxygen is fuel, and part of feeling fatigued during exercise has to do with not fueling our cells well enough through our breath. "You can have the heart and cardiovascular system of an elite athlete but the lungs and breathing muscles of a total couch potato," Vranich says.

  • How Stress Can Increase Your Risk of Infertility

    "Eliminating stressors before trying to become pregnant might shorten the time couples need to become pregnant in comparison to ignoring stress," says Germaine Buck Louis, the study's principal researcher. This is exactly why Ingrid Rodi, M.D., a gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist at Saint John's Health Center, makes mental health care as much of a priority as the physical care for her patients.

  • 5 Weird Remedies for Neck and Back Pain

    Talk about a pain in the neck: Two-thirds of Americans 18 to 34 years old have had chronic pain, or know someone who has, in the past year alone, according to an American Osteopathic Association survey, and neck pain was third on the list of trouble spots. Neck and upper-back pain is mostly caused by stress and ergonomics (how we sleep, sit, and work), says Manhattan-based massage therapist John Ellsworth.

  • Everyone's Clamoring for Lollipop Kale

    What do you get when you cross kale and Brussels sprouts together? A writer for Grub Street reported about lollipop kale yesterday, and I just had to investigate. I love Brussels sprouts but am not a fan of kale (I know, shocking for a nutritionist to confess) and have many patients who love kale and not Brussels. The lollipop, also known as kale sprouts, belongs to the same plant species (Brassica oleracea) as other popular veggies.

  • 6 Texts You Should Never Send Him

    1. "Looking forward to more nights with you like that."
Alluding to a shared future-however benign your comment may seem-is a serious no-no at the start of a new relationship, says Laurie Davis, founder of eFlirtexpert.com and author of Love at First Click. You might as well text, "Want to have sex?" because they're basically the same message, Blew says.

  • Why Everything You Know About Sports Nutrition is Wrong

    "A lot of women finish a hard day and end up flat-on-their-back exhausted," says Stacy Sims, Ph.D., exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist, and co-founder of the performance nutrition company Osmo Nutrition. "And your menstrual cycle has a lot to do with it." And our performance has suffered. Unlike men, we have high and low hormone phases throughout the month, during which estrogen and progesterone fluctuate, causing slight changes to metabolism, glycogen, and blood plasma levels, all of which affect performance, recovery, and how hard you can push during a workout.

  • 5 Reasons NOT to Let Your Friends Set You Up

    At one point in your life, you've likely either considered having your friends set you up on a date or you've done the matchmaking. It seems like such a great idea-if you're friends with both of them, they must have lots in common and will probably hit it off, right? A new study from Harvard Business School found that matchmaking brings happiness to matchmakers but not necessarily to the folks getting set up. "While it seems like your pals would be the ultimate matchmakers because they know you and your tastes so well, the reality is that having them set you up can actually lead to a number of detrimental situations," says Christie Hartman, Ph.D., a psychologist and dating expert in Denver.

  • How to Heal a Broken Friendship

    by Annie Daly for SHAPE.com In a perfect world, you'd treat your friends like a saint 24/7. But you're human, and sometimes you mess up. Maybe you spilled your friend's secret after you swore to keep it on the DL, or you blurted out something hurtful in the heat of the moment.

  • How to Feel Happier and Less Stressed in 24 Hours

    While you can't do anything about the weather, you can brighten your mood and bust happiness-sapping stress with the small changes in this schedule. "Yoga calms your central nervous system and increases the flow of energizing oxygen in your body by incorporating deep breathing," says Mark Gerow, a mind-body specialist at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA, and author of the upcoming book Years of Posing: A Yoga Teacher's Struggle With Addiction and Trauma.

  • Your Post-Weekend Detox Meal Plan

    by Valerie Berkowitz for SHAPE.com

  • Why You Shouldn't Join the Gluten-Free Craze

    by Deb Dellapena for SHAPE.com

  • How to Bounce Back from a Fall like an Olympian

    It's moments like these that make us love watching the Olympics: Yesterday, 31-year-old Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko, a four-time Olympian who won gold in the first-ever team event earlier this week, tweaked his back doing a triple axel during the warm-up right before his scheduled short program performance. Shortly after, American skater Jeremy Abbott, 28, crashed into a rink wall (pictured) during his performance when he failed to land a quadruple toe loop.

  • Study Confirms: We Really Love Pizza

    by Cristina Goyanes for SHAPE.com As if you really needed a study-let alone one conducted by the government using your money-to prove just how much you love pizza, here it is: A new federally-funded reportanalyzed the consumption of pizza among U.S. children and adults between 2007 and 2010, and found some unsurprising results, including that 1 in 8 Americans eat pizza on any given day. That means in a yoga class of 24, three of you are thinking about picking up a slice afterward. ...

  • The Biggest Turn-On No One's Talking About

    While it's fair to say that most of what you'll find in the sex shop movie aisle doesn't cater to the average woman, that doesn't mean erotic movies aren't for you-it's just that you need better options. Dusk! TV, a female-oriented, erotic digital TV channel based in the Netherlands, is coming to the U.S. in the spring or early summer.

  • The Tour De France is (Finally!) Inviting Women

    The Tour de France, the world's most prestigious pro cycling race, is no longer just for men. The Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), the owners of the annual three-week-long event that started in 1903, announced this weekend that they will be offering a one-day women's race called La Course on July 27, the final day of this year's Tour de France. The big gender-barrier-breaking news came on the heels of receiving a petition with nearly 100,000 online signatures from Le Tour Entier, an organization of women racers, including Olympic gold medalist Marianne Vos and retired Ironman triathlon champion Chrissie Wellington, who launched a campaign for a women's Tour de France last September. It's a race that not only cycling fans all around the world tune into but also people who don't normally watch cycling, so it's a great way to give women's cycling some awareness," says two-time Australian national champion Kristy Scrymgeour, owner and director of the world's fastest pro women's cycling team Specialized-lululemon.

  • Do You Have Friend Guilt?

    "Friend guilt is increasingly common among 20-somethings," says Carlin Flora, a friendship expert and author of Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are. What's making us all think we're horrible friends?