If you’re trying to lose weight, chances are you avoid pizza like the plague. But fear not, there are ways of preparing pizza that make it much healthier.

While pizza may never be considered a health food, Men’s Fitness has come up with a few ways of making it or ordering it that can keep you in fighting shape.

The basic ingredients of pizza are not bad for you – it’s the quantity of the ingredients that causes problems. You can minimize the bad stuff in a few simple steps:

• Don’t go crazy on the cheese. Of course you have to have cheese on your pizza, but f you stick to a single layer the extra calcium it adds to your diet can actually be healthy.
• Load up on the sauce to the get the cancer-fighting benefits of tomatoes.
• Sticking to thin crust pizzas lowers the overall calorie count of your meal.
• Stay away from the pepperoni and sausage. If you can order veggies on your pizza you’ll be much better off.

To see more healthy pizza tips, check out Men’s Fitness.

There’s something about watching football that just screams out for junk food. Chips, wings, pizza – as long it’s greasy, it goes with the game. But if you’re trying to stay fit this fall, you can’t just pig out in front of the tube.

Here are a few easy-to-make ideas for healthy football snacks from Dr. Margaret Lewin, Medical Director of Cinergy Health:

• Toasted pumpkin seeds – Check out this recipe at Epicurious
  and add your favorite seasoning (see readers reviews for variations).
• Seasoned nuts such as Black Pepper Almonds ? sweet and spicy; check out a recipe here.
• Veggies – cut up raw vegetables such as carrot sticks, celery, green beans, broccoli, and cauliflower and add some healthy dips such as:
  • Muhammara – a Middle Eastern dip with roasted red peppers, garlic, cumin and pomegranate molasses ? Epicurious has a good recipe.
  • Guacamole
  • Bottled salsa
  • Smoky Chipotle Hummus – check out this recipe.
  • You can also bake your own low-fat chips for any of the dips listed above.
• Portobello Bruschetta – these take a bit more time to prepare, but fly off the plate when you entertain. Recipe is here.

If you’re up for something sweet, try:

• You can make your own sports bars with dried fruit and peanut butter. To make it even healthier try using brown rice syrup rather than corn syrup (see readers? reviews for variations).

• Maple pecan popcorn – try using less salt, a healthy brand of microwave popcorn and heart-healthy margarine and mixed unsalted nuts.

See – it’s not so hard to be healthy while watching football. Now put down the chips and start cooking!

A new study conducted by the University of North Carolina has found that couples who marry or move in together double their risk of obesity. The UNC report also found that the longer a couple lives together, the higher the obesity risk becomes.

Scientists at the University of North Carolina found numerous health benefits to marriage such as decreased smoking and lower death rates. But couples who are living together or married tend to gain more weight than others of the same age.

Researchers believe people living together tend to have meals together, possibly preparing bigger amounts or eating out more often than when they were solo. Settling down also means more nights in front of the TV and less going to the gym.

So if you’re married or thinking about getting married, make an extra effort to cook at home and prepare healthy meals whenever possible. And don’t completely forget about the gym.

If you don’t have the time to spend hours working out at the gym, you may want to consider intense interval training. New studies suggest you may be able to get fit in as little as 6 minutes per week if you exercise at the right intensity.

That’s the surprising conclusion by a growing number of sports scientists. New research suggests much shorter, more intense exercise could provide the same benefit as longer, less strenuous workouts.

The effectiveness of interval training has been known for years. Athletes have been incorporating one or two interval sessions a week into their regular exercise routine. What’s new is that many researchers now believe you only need a few minutes of strenuous exercise per week to do the job.

One of the leading proponents of shorter, more intense workouts is Dr. Martin Gibala at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. In one recent study, Gibala had one group of healthy but not athletic college students ride a stationary bike at a moderate level for between 90 and 120 minutes. A second group of students completed a series of short, very intense intervals by cycling for 20 to 30 seconds for as hard as they could. These students would then rest for 20 to 30 seconds and repeat the cycle four to six times.

Each group exercised three times a week, but while the first group spent up to two hours on the bike, the second group only spent 2 to 3 minutes pedaling. After two weeks, researchers found that both groups had achieved nearly identical increases in their endurance. Researchers also found both groups exhibited molecular changes in mitochondria that signal increased fitness.

Another benefit of the intense interval sessions studied by Gibala was weight loss. High-intensity exercise increases energy expenditure well into the recovery phase. Other scientists have found interval training also improves cardiac health, even for those with heart disease.

To get these results, however, researchers say you have to go all out during training. It’s going to hurt and you’ll be out of your comfort zone. You also need to be in relatively good shape before starting a program like this as it can take a toll on your body.

One established interval method to try is called Tabata, developed by a Japanese scientist who did research in the field. You can check out this New York Times article for more information on intensity training.