It's probably no surprise that your heart is pretty dang important. The constant beating of your heart circulates oxygen-rich blood to each organ, muscle, and tissue down to the very last cell. Heart damage or disease can rapidly affect your entire body. So, it pays to take good care of your heart — as well as the associated structures, like blood vessels — that do all of this crucial work.

When your thyroid doesn't work like it's supposed to, losing weight can be even tougher to achieve than usual. Perhaps you heard about intermittent fasting and are wondering if, given your hypothyroidism, fasting could be an option for finally changing that number on the scale. So, are intermittent fasting and hypothyroidism a good fit?

Your body is incredible. It works constantly to keep you alive and functioning. Your hormones — chemical messengers that coordinate bodily functions by carrying signals through the blood to the organs, muscles, tissues, and cells — play a huge role in this. There are over 50 different hormones in the human body, and in the context of weight loss or gain, insulin is thought to be one of the most significant.

If losing body fat is your goal, slowing your metabolism is the last thing you want. Yet that very thing tends to happen when we cut calories to lose weight. (We know, sometimes it feels like the human body is quite obnoxious, but this is actually a primal survival response that makes sure we don't conk out in times when food is scarce.) So now you're wondering, does intermittent fasting slow metabolism, too?

When you're weighing up a new weight loss or wellness strategy, you need to think through the cons as well as the pros. Here's a quick 'n easy shortcut: If one of the cons of whatever you're considering turns out to be muscle loss, run away. Our bodies need muscle. Without it, disease risk and dysfunction go up, and health and performance go down.

Your skin copes with a lot. If you live in a hot, sunny climate, it can receive almost constant sun damage. If you live where it's cool and dry, you may have to work harder to keep it hydrated. Big cities cover it in smog and dirt. It's not just where you live: so many things can affect your skin's health.

Intermittent fasting is a food routine that can unlock a range of health benefits, like improved energy levels and metabolic changes such as enhanced insulin sensitivity and improved blood lipids, as well as things like weight loss and fat burning, especially in people who are overweight or living with obesity. However, if you're eating less or less often, you might run into some sticking points around hitting the nutrient levels you need each day.

To date, thousands of women have used the Simple app to support their intermittent fasting journey. Whether it's losing weight, improving their health, having more energy, or all of the above and more, Simple's female users have enjoyed many benefits from intermittent fasting — a dietary approach that involves alternating between periods of eating and fasting.

Intermittent fasting — which alternates fasting periods with an eating window — is a wonderfully flexible principle that you can customize for your needs, wants, and lifestyle. But if you're interested in intermittent fasting, you've probably felt like there are so many options that it's hard to decide which schedule to choose.

No matter what algorithms your search history is triggering, you probably can't go a few clicks through the internet without running into click-bait advertisements for ways to lose belly fat. From intense workouts and restrictive diets to holistic remedies or chemical-heavy supplements, every corner seems to cheer (loudly) for a different solution.